Spice Tour
If you go to Zanzibar, take a half or full day and go on a spice tour. Zanzibar is known for its spices and it grows a wide variety of them. The tours are pretty straight-forward - the tour company picks you up at your hotel and a group of you travel out to a spice farm where a guide and some assistants walk you through a test plot to show you the different plants and spices they grow at the farm.
Everyone was really friendly and the guide seemed very knowledgeable. They’ll usually pull samples from the trees/bushes/vines and let you smell, taste or eat them. They’ll also make you something to hold the different samples in.
I forget that is in the inside of the red nut above, but I remember the guide explaining that the flavor from the pulp of this fruit is used in special British marmalade.
Even though you wind up being in a group, it’s interesting how quickly folks started interacting with each other.
Our group had several Austrailans, a couple British, a group of Singaporians who were studying in London, a few Americans, a Kenyan, a Polish travel agent and a French human rights worker.
Some of the stuff they showed was really interesting. Ripe vanilla beans whose smell (from the oils in the pods) stayed on my fingers the entire day, turmeric that left everyone’s fingers orange/yellow, lemongrass that smelled like candy, . . . it went on and on. And then there was the “lipstick” plant:
Open up the pod and there were little seeds that were a soft and made a bright red paste. And to show that it works, one of the guys decided to make himself up.
After he did that, most of the women tried it out on their lips. I passed up on that one.
During the tour, the assistants were making things from plant leaves and giving them to folks. I wound up with a tie and a wrist band - both of which I gave to some kids at the end of the tour. Some tours get creative with their fashion accessories. Here’s a shot of our colleague Jose, who went on a different spice tour, as we were boarding the boat to leave Zanzibar.
After the tour we went to a part of the village where folks were making products with the spices. They had different perfumes, soaps and skin lotions that they made, as well as dried spices.
The end of the spice tour itself was a lunch made with spiced rice, greens and bread. It was excellent as only home cooking can be. Nothing fancy, but delicious. Since I and a colleague (and some others) had to catch the ferry back to Dar, we didn’t get to continue on with the rest of the group, who apparently spent several hours on a secluded beach.
Well, maybe next time!