Kiwayu Island
Travel advice affects this destination. As checked on 21 September 2026, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office advises against all travel to Lamu County except Lamu Island and Manda Island. Kiwayu is in Lamu County, at the far north-eastern end of the archipelago and closer to the Somali border than anything else in it, and it is not one of those exceptions. It falls inside the advise-against-all-travel area.
Check your own government’s current advice for Kenya before planning any travel here. Governments issue advice separately and revise it without notice, so a dated statement on any page, including this one, is a snapshot and not a standing position. Check it again close to departure rather than only at the point of planning.
That statement is necessary because a great deal of what is written about Kiwayu online describes it, in the present tense, as an operating luxury beach destination. Much of that writing has not been updated since 2011, and the reason it has not is set out below.
Where Kiwayu Is
Kiwayu is a long, narrow island in the eastern part of the Lamu archipelago, roughly 49 kilometres north-east of Lamu, lying inside Kiunga Marine National Reserve. Kiwayu village sits at the southern end of the island. Mkokoni is a mainland village directly opposite the island’s northern end, across a channel.
The island is dunes, scrub and beach rather than the coral-rag and mangrove landscape of the islands closer to Lamu. Its eastern side, facing the open ocean at Shimo la Tewa, carries the more varied coral. Its western side faces the channel and the mainland.
There is no airstrip on the island, no road of any kind to the region, and no electricity grid. The nearest thing to infrastructure is the fishing village.
Kiunga Marine National Reserve
The whole of this water sits inside Kiunga Marine National Reserve, run by the Kenya Wildlife Service, which protects a chain of more than fifty limestone islands running up the coast towards the Somali border, along with their reefs, mangroves and seagrass.
It is the least visited of Kenya’s marine protected areas by a very large margin, and ecologically one of the most significant. Dugong, a species now extremely rare in Kenyan waters, are recorded here, and the reserve’s beaches and shallows are used by nesting and feeding sea turtles including olive ridley, hawksbill, green, leatherback and loggerhead. Kiwayu’s own beaches are an important turtle nesting site.
The sea turtle watching guide covers the species and the seasons, and the reserve has its own page for its boundaries, its fee band and its access rules.
What Happened in 2011, and Why the Advisory Stands
On 11 September 2011, armed attackers raided Kiwayu Safari Village, a beach lodge on the mainland shore near the island. David Tebbutt, a British visitor, was shot dead. His wife Judith Tebbutt was taken across the border into Somalia and held for six months before being released.
The attack was one of a short series of kidnappings on this stretch of coast and in the north-east during 2011, and the sequence of them led directly to the Kenya Defence Forces crossing into Somalia that October. The lodge did not reopen. Tourism in the northern archipelago beyond Lamu and Manda effectively ended at that point and has not resumed, and the restrictions in force today trace back to that period.
This is stated because accuracy requires it, not to dramatise the place. Kiwayu is a fishing community where people live, work and raise families, and the events of 2011 happened fifteen years ago. What they explain is why the travel advice is drawn where it is drawn, and why pages describing an operating resort here are describing something that no longer exists.
The Island Itself
Kiwayu’s reputation, before 2011, rested on emptiness. Long dune-backed beaches on the ocean side, almost no one on them, clear water over the reef at the northern and eastern ends, and a village at the south living by fishing and by cutting mangrove poles.
Marine life is the substance of the place: turtles on the beaches, dugong in the seagrass, dolphins in the channels, and reef that has seen far less visitor pressure than anything further south. Birdlife along the reserve’s islands is significant, with breeding seabird colonies on some of the smaller limestone islets.
None of that has gone anywhere. What has gone is the means of visiting it.
Reaching Kiwayu
Access, when it happens, is by boat from Lamu: roughly two hours by motorboat, or about seven hours under sail by dhow, depending on the wind and the tide. There is no scheduled service. Mkokoni on the mainland is the other point of arrival, reached by the same means.
Both journeys run along a coast currently covered by travel restrictions, and neither is a casual undertaking. Anyone considering it needs to check their own government’s current advice for Kenya, and to treat that as something to verify shortly before travelling rather than something read once at the planning stage.
Questions About Kiwayu Island
Can you visit Kiwayu Island?
Kiwayu lies inside an area currently carrying an advise-against-all-travel restriction from at least one government, covering Lamu County with only Lamu Island and Manda Island excepted. That position is dated and subject to revision, so check your own government’s current advice for Kenya before making any plan, and again close to any departure.
Is Kiwayu Safari Village still open?
No. The lodge was attacked in September 2011, in an incident in which a British visitor was killed and his wife kidnapped and later released, and it did not reopen. A number of pages online still describe it as operating, which is why the question comes up.
Where exactly is Kiwayu?
In the eastern part of the Lamu archipelago, roughly 49 kilometres north-east of Lamu, inside Kiunga Marine National Reserve and closer to the Somali border than any other island in the group. Kiwayu village is at the island’s southern end and Mkokoni sits opposite its northern end on the mainland.
What is Kiunga Marine National Reserve?
A Kenya Wildlife Service marine reserve covering more than fifty limestone islands and their reefs along the far northern coast. It is the least visited marine protected area in Kenya and holds dugong, five species of sea turtle and significant seabird colonies.
Are there alternatives for the same kind of experience?
For empty beaches and boat-based days in the archipelago without the restriction, Shela and Manda Island are the answer, both inside the exception and both reached by flying to Lamu Airport. For the best reef on the Kenyan coast, Kisite-Mpunguti at the far southern end is where to go instead.
Kiwayu lies at the far end of the archipelago beyond Lamu, Shela, Manda Island and Pate Island. For the coast as a whole, start at the Kenya Coast.
No operator on the marketplace currently lists a safari to Kiwayu Island.
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