Today we make our way to the island of Zanzibar with a rotten hangover. Two islands that are technically part of the United republic of Tanzania, but use to be it's own country. To get to the island we hop onto the truck at 7am & drive for 10 minutes to the first ferry terminal. We board this ferry with hundreds of locals & cars for the 10 minute ride across the harbor. After this we walk 20 minutes to the next ferry terminal and then pass through security into the boarding lounge. We've arrived ahead of schedule & have 45 minutes to wait before we can board, if the ferry was on time. Today the ferry was late & We waited an hour to board. This ferry service takes 2 hours to get to Zanzibar & our ferry was called the Kilimanjaro 5, one of five brand new boats bought from Australia. It's an extremely long & tedious process at the best of times, terrible if you are hungover!
Once Tom & I have taken our seats in the aircon we both fall asleep & don't wake up till we arrive. We are both still feeling very seedy from yesterdays overindulgence & the mixing of red wine, beer, tequila, gin & vodka. Once we get off the ferry in Zanzibar we go through customs & immigration which is a disorganized mess & then walk the 10 minutes to our hotel in Stone Town.
Stone Town is another one of those charming old towns full of different era architecture, culture, art & history. Already I wish we had more than the one night to explore it. It's famous as the birth place of Freddy Mercury from Queen. Our hotel is nicer than I thought it would be but we have very limited time to enjoy it. Once we've checked in we have 40 minutes to freshen up before we need to be in the lobby & ready for lunch, a local spice tour & a guided walk through the streets.
We are introduced to a local guide called Ally G, who will be looking after us for the rest of the afternoon in atone town. We begin by taking a local bus 20 minutes out of town & into the local farming communities. The soil is red & rich with nutrients, the crops are of many different variations & grow in abundance.
Lunch is in a local house & cooked by a local family. All the food is aromaticly spicy. There is a rice & potato dish, with a seafood stew, sautee'd greens, bread fruit & a fresh salad. We both thought it was delicious, despite the occasional gritty sensation of dirt. We could see other people were not happy with the food or the sitting on the floor.
After this we started on our spice tour by walking through the village & fields. We are told that the islands of Zanzibar have a population of 1.5 million people with 95% Muslims, while the remaining are Hindus & Christian's. Our guide had a lot of pride in the fact that the 3 religions could co-exist peacefully & without tension. He happily pointed out a mosque & a church side by side & insisted we are all sons & daughters of Adam & Eve. We had guessed the population was heavily Muslim prior to this. All the women on the street wore burkas or had their heads covered & were extremely conservatively dressed. The Houses in the spice farms were very basic by design, made of a wood structure with mud walls & a roof of coconut leaves that get replaced every 3 years. The design is to keep the occupants cool in the hot Zanzibar weather. The spice tour went for a couple of hours & we were shown the plants in their basic, raw, un- harvested forms. We learnt a lot about the various spices & fruits grown locally.
We saw: Bananas, jackfruit & green peppercorns, durian fruit, bread fruit & teak tree. We saw the nutmeg fruit & learnt about it's potent aphrodisiac usage & hallucinogenic usage if eaten while green. Ideally it should be picked & eaten when yellow.
We also saw cloves & cinnamon tree's. We were shocked to learn cinnamon is bark cut from the tree. When the bark dries out it becomes a cinnamon stick. We saw a very large rain tree from the mimosa family & arabica coffee beans in their green form. There was lemon grass which is grown for the oil that is used as citronella. Pineapple plants & ylang ylang tree whose flower is used for perfume.
The process of making natural local perfume the villagers called Chanel no 0 was explained to us. It's a very similar process to the Egyptians perfumed oil. We brought soap from the locals which had a complex & exotic smell from the local flowers. We continued on with our education & saw Cardamom plants, Ginger plants, Turmeric & a Vanilla vine that the locals hand pollinate the flowers. This was followed by the Henna tree & finally the Rambutan, known to us as Lychee. Despite being hungover & now only just starting to feel good again, likely because of the sniffing & tasting of spices & fruit, we had a good time walking through the village & learning about the plants.
After the spice farm tour we drove back to Stone town for our walking tour & to learn about the East African slave industry. There was a very informative & sad exhibit, depicting the years of 1800 - 1909. There was also a church & a monument For David Livingstone.
The Walking street tour around stone town took us past a bank, an ATM, a supermarket, the local vendors selling their various African crafts & onto the main beachfront. It was here we were shown the house that Freddy Mercury from Queen was born in & some Arabic forts. Zanzibar has a lot of Indian & Arabic architecture & history. The Fresh seafood open market starts every evening at 6pm & continues till 12am. The locals flock down here every evening to buy & sell, eat, drink & socialise. We are told Zanzibar is very safe & we can walk around in small groups after dark & find our own dinner. Tom, Phil, Natalie, myself & another girl from Australia called Sarah decide to find a local restaurant after noticing the abundance of flies & seafood lying out. I'm sure it's fresh.... but we don't want to risk eating street food & getting sick.
We find a nice restaurant down on the water & after much debating we decide to go all out & celebrate! We do this by ordering 2 seafood platters that have bugs, prawns, octopus, calamari, 2 types of fish, chips, rice & 3 types of dipping sauce which was accompanied by garlic bread, spring rolls & beer! We shared it all & were very full & content. We had some leftover fish we couldn't eat that we got put in a takeaway container. As we walked back along Stone Town we fed the street cats along the way. We probably fed close to 20 of them. This would have been an excellent way to finish the night except that Tom kicked his big toe on a drain grate that was protruding out of the road & cut across his nail bed. It would of hurt a tremendous amount & it bleed quite a bit. We got home & cleaned it up, there's not a lot of damage to the nail bed & a band-aid should protect the sensitive tissue.
Bed was fantastic that night!
- Alli
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