Getting there & around Anjouan

Although few, but there are flights direct from Europe, non-European cities and other islands in the area. You can sometimes get a berth on ships sailing from mainland Africa to Madagascar, and they will drop you off at either Grande Comore or Anjouan on the way.

This method requires diligence and patience, as there are no ready-made systems to handle foreigners from the mainland traveling to Comoros by sea.

Getting Around

The airport at Moroni, Hahaya, is 19km (12mi) north of the city centre. After paying for your on-the-spot visa you can get to the city centre by taxi, although a lack of money-changing facilities at the airport means the fares rocket into the upper stratosphere. Planes flying into Mayotte land at Petite Terre (Pamandzi), and getting to the mainland of Grand Terre requires catching a share taxi to the ferry terminal at Dzaoudzi, and then catching another taxi, or walking, to your hotel, at the other end.

There are no money-changing facilities at Pamandzi airport either, so fly in with French francs already in your pocket.

All the islands of Comoros have taxi-brousses to take you from destination to destination, although the frequency and efficiency of the service varies from place to place. Share-taxis operate in well-populated areas but tend to be rare in the more remote villages.

Cars can only be hired on the larger island of Grand Comore, but for most travelers it's still cheaper and easier to flag down a taxi-brousse. Hopping from island to island can be done by plane, with the exception of Mayotte, where internal flights have been stopped altogether in an effort to curb the number of Comorans illegally immigrating to Mayotte.

All four islands are connected by a network of shipping routes, and catching boats and ferries is usually the cheapest and least complicated method of getting from island to island.