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When I think of Zanzibar I think of spices. It is therefore a great delight to actually be here, on this pearl of an island set in a warm, turquoise ocean teeming with exotic marine life, and to visit a spice farm. We are treated to knowledge of how the various spices grow and for someone like me, who is avidly interested in things that grow and things that can be eaten, this is a fun learning experience.
We see vanilla growing like green beans on a vine (did you know they have to be hand-pollinated?), roots dug up from the ground that look like ginger but are actually turmeric (bright orange on the inside!), and a nutmeg covered with the bright red rubbery filaments that constitute mace (I always wondered where mace came from). Tiny green flower buds that look like cloves are actually cloves, in their “raw”, undried state.
Zanzibar also has other wonders, one of them being Jozani Forest. Here we see the endemic Kirk’s or Zanzibar red colobus, a monkey with a beautiful pelt in shades of burnished brown, white and black. The monkeys are not at all timid and permit us to come close enough to almost touch them. The Jozani Forest is dense and green like a rain forest and contains a large variety of plants including flowers with fantastic forms and colours. A mangrove is also part of the package where, when the tide is out, we can see how the tree roots clutch the wet ground like many-fingered claws. While the tide is out we can also see black crabs and fiddler crabs scurrying around.
