The Bazaruto Archipelago, Mozambique.

Bazaruto Island — Ilha do Bazaruto in Portuguese — is the largest in the archipelago at 10,700 hectares and 37 km long. Wide enough to hold freshwater lakes, small fishing villages, and some of the tallest coastal sand dunes in southern Africa along its eastern shore. The dunes rise over 100 m and are walkable from the landing sites in about thirty minutes. Look closely and you’ll see two layers: a Pleistocene red-orange core under younger Holocene white shore sand — the same geology that gives Vilankulo’s mainland dunes their colour.

Day trips land at Ponta Dondo, the southern point, where the dunes rise straight off the beach. Iron Age archaeological remains have been found here — people have been coming ashore at Ponta Dondo for a very long time. By the 16th century the archipelago was part of the Swahili coast trade network, connected to ports like Mombasa and Malindi. The plantation hotels and the slave trade emptied the islands later; small fishing villages came back.

The island is home to Anantara Bazaruto Island Resort and sits next to Two Mile Reef — a shallow, sheltered reef with 2,000+ fish species and some of the clearest snorkeling water in the Indian Ocean. If you’re only visiting one island, this is usually the one.

Benguerra Island — Ilha de Benguerra, and historically Ilha de Santo António on Portuguese-era charts — is the second-largest in the archipelago at 2,399 hectares, and quieter than Bazaruto. Thick dune forest covers most of its interior, with saltwater lakes that attract flamingos and — surprisingly — freshwater crocodiles. The beaches on the seaward side are long and usually empty.

Benguerra is home to three of the most celebrated lodges on the Mozambican coast: andBeyond Benguerra Island, Azura Benguerra, and Kisawa Sanctuary. The seagrass beds in the channel between Benguerra and the mainland are the most reliable place in East Africa to spot a dugong — sightings are still rare, but this is as good as it gets.

Magaruque — Ilha de Magaruque, and on older Portuguese charts Ilha Santa Isabel — is the closest island to Vilankulo at about 14 km off the mainland, and the smallest of the three main islands at 189 hectares. It’s undeveloped, without lodges or infrastructure, and that’s part of the draw. A wide shallow lagoon on its leeward side stays calm even when the open channel gets choppy.

The shallow, soft-sand bottom makes Magaruque a favorite with families, first-time snorkelers, and anyone who wants a quieter beach lunch away from the resort crowd. It’s often combined with Bazaruto or Benguerra on longer day trips or dhow safaris.

Santa Carolina — Ilha de Santa Carolina, also called Ilha do Paraíso (Paradise Island) — is the northernmost of the five islands and the smallest at 59 hectares. In the 1960s, when Mozambique was one of the glamour destinations of southern Africa, this was where you came. The old Santa Carolina hotel has been abandoned for decades — a crumbling colonial relic on an otherwise empty island. For a certain kind of traveler, that’s exactly the point.

The reefs around Santa Carolina are still some of the best in the Bazaruto Archipelago, and the crossing is less traveled than Bazaruto or Benguerra. Photographers love it. So do readers of a certain kind of travel writing.

Bangué — Ilha de Bangué — is a sandbank more than a proper island: about 15 hectares of white sand that only fully surface at low tide. Some operators call it the “Pansy Shell Island” for the flat, flower-patterned sand-dollar shells that wash up here at low tide. No vegetation, no buildings, just a ring of turquoise water and an improbable view.

Geologically, Bangué is the baby of the family. While Bazaruto and Benguerra sit on Pleistocene dunes hundreds of thousands of years old, Bangué was built within the last 3,000–4,000 years from wave-deposited tidal sediment — and it’s still actively reshaped by storms and currents. Most visitors see Bangué as a swim stop on a dhow safari or multi-island day trip: twenty minutes in the water and a drink in the middle of the ocean, then on to the next anchorage. On a clear day it’s one of the most photographed places in the archipelago.