Spice Tour

So after our amazing day of snorkeling and lounging yesterday, we wanted to see a little of what made Zanzibar globally famous. No not Jack Black, but rather spices. Zanzibar was at one time the largest exporter or spices in the world, and though places like India and Indonesia have taken a large share of the spice industry from Zanzibar, a large industry remains.

We were picked up from our hotel at around 9 am and then drove 30 or so minutes to the spice plantation where the tour was done. We were led by a university student who was studying for an exam in communication off of his cheat sheet while we walked between the different spice sections. Multitasking like an American.

We started with turmeric, which is a root related to ginger. He passed around cut sections of the root, and encouraged us to smell them. He also warned us that if we tasted it, it would stain our teeth, but for some reason, I didn’t believe him. 8 hours later, I’m writing this blog with yellow teeth.

We then walked through the following spice/fruit areas: cinnamon (the leaves smelled like cinnamon, but the roots like eucalyptus!), ginger, nutmeg, mace (nutmeg and mace are actually the same plant!), cloves (Zanzibar is famous for cloves), curry, starfruit, bananas, vanilla (grows on a vine and has to be hand-pollinated because the bees that pollinate them are only found in Mexico) , birdseye peppers (JBP couldn’t even tolerate the sight of them), among others.

The red is the mace and the dark colored nut in the center is what you grind to get nutmeg:



There were a few coconut trees, and one of the local boys gave us a demonstration of climbing the trunk to harvest some coconuts for us. He sang the whole way up, as apparently the rule is that if you’re singing, you can’t be held responsible if a coconut falls on the head of a passerby. Actually, this makes good sense. Of course, I asked to try to climb as well, as it looked so easy. Apparently, a lifetime of practice makes it look easier than it is. I made it up a few feet, at which point I had succeeded in making my clothes filthy and skinning up my arms.

Notice John's shoulder for reference on how high I climbed:



Fortunately, our next stop was the iodine tree, which bleeds the famous antibacterial fluid. After rubbing that salve on my wounds, we progressed though the red mahogany and teak sections, passed through the spice market, and then sat on some mats for a “spice lunch”, which consisted of pilau (spiced rice), coconut curry, and spinach. The food was pretty good, though the pilau had whole cloves and big pieces of cinnamon bark, which proved slightly fibrous. We then headed back to the van in a deluge, which was actually quite refreshing.

That drop you can see on the right of the bark is iodine (click to make it larger). When you cut the tree, it bleeds iodine:



The deluge starting:



We haven't seen daytime rain since September so this was very exciting. The other tourists thought we were a bit strange:



The tour was actually really fun. It was cool to see what the spice plants look like, as aside from things like thyme and basil, we in the Western world don’t ever see spice plants. Here, spices are grown everywhere and are quite a bit cheaper than in the US. Our hotel serves homemade jams at breakfast with a ridiculous amount of vanilla bean in the jam, which is just delicious and not economically feasible in the US.

After the tour, we took the requisite McRun though Stone Town, which is the part of town with very narrow alleys and people who are very interested in giant and tiny Americans running around in the middle of the afternoon.

We have our last night in Zanzibar tonight, and then we head Arusha, in central Tanzania. Stay tuned!