Spice Tour

This weekend we got out of Stone Town for a few hours and went on a “Spice Tour,” one of the most common tourist excursions in Zanzibar (a.k.a. “The Spice Island”). Like tours of orchards or wineries in Washington, this particular agricultural tour involves sightseeing, a little science, and good food.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, not least because we Northwesterners have been missing trees in our lives as city dwellers. On the way to the spice farm, we drove through some parts of the island that we hadn’t seen before, including the largest hill in Zanzibar, known as “Kilimanjaro.” In Tacoma, we would scarcely have blinked at this hill, but it was a surprise after seeing so much flat ground for so many weeks. Near the top of the hill, there is a famously spiralled coconut tree.

At the farm, we saw one of the many 19^th-century ruins on the island (tropical humidity and storms take their toll on buildings in short order). Even more exciting, we saw a top-notch public elementary school; Brady and I envied the desks, as they’re far nicer than any of the desks at the schools where we teach.

On the agricultural part of the tour, we learned from our guide Salum about the botany of many of the spices we use here in Zanzibar and at home: cinnamon, cloves, cardamom (the “big three”), turmeric, ginger, vanilla, black pepper, lemon grass, curry, nutmeg, and mace, as well as one that was new to us and that is called lipstick plant. We also saw and tasted bananas, pineapple, jack fruit, star fruit, pomelo, green coconut, and oranges. Along the way, we watched someone climb up to get the green coconuts from the top of the tree and were given hats and other accessories woven out of palm leaves. The climax of the tour was eating a Zanzibar lunch of green bananas and kingfish in tomato sauce, fresh tuna and cooked cassava, potatoes in tomato and lipstick plant sauce, pilau (a rice dish), and a relish of raw red onions and tomatoes in vinegar. Yum!

For more pictures, follow this link.