I'm not gonna cook it, but I'll order it from Zanzibar!

It's 80 degrees, the sun is shining, the Twins are in a pennant race, and we're in Zanzibar! Life is good. We have spent a little over week here in Zanzibar, and we've enjoyed it throughly. We started in Zanzibar Town, better known as Stone Town. Totally fascinating. This little town is an absolute maze in every sense of the word. The streets are very narrow, go in every direction except straight, and most of them have a concrete pillar that prevents car traffic. They do not, however, prevent the scooters, motorbikes, and bicycles which abound here. Whether we're walking down a one-way street (wait, there are cars going in both directions, they just have to stop and back up to where it's a little wider) or an alley that I can touch the buildings on both sides, we have to keep our heads on a swivel!



It is also next to impossible to find the same place twice using the same route. We changed hotels after the first two nights to a place we found the previous day, but we couldn't find it the next day! But the atmosphere here is infectious, and it has extended our stay. The "streets" are lined with shops and restaurants and cafes. Some of the people are a little overly aggressive with the tourists, but in all it's a very laid back place. We've eaten Indian and Swahili food while listening to live Taraab music, and we even had some fresh crab claws grilled on the street. But a trip to Zanzibar wouldn't be complete without a trip to a spice farm and the beach.


We took a "spice tour" one afternoon. We had a van ride about 30 km to what I expected to be like the plantations of the American south. I was way off. It's more like a forest with a few trails in it that happens to have spices growing around each corner. It's obviously organized and the spices grow only where they are planted, but to my untrained eye it just looked like any other stretch of woodlands. It was really fun to get a chance to see the spices, and of course taste them fresh from the ground/vine/tree. I thought of all of the women of my family who love cooking and wondered if they knew where all those bottles of powdered spices come from (now they probably come from Asia, but in the 1200-1700 era they would have at least passed through Zanzibar). Kim also got a tremendous laugh at me in my attire fashioned by the boys at the spice farm!

Kim told me that she was going through beach withdrawls since we hadn't seen the ocean in four weeks, so we headed to the beach village of Bwejuu on Zanzibar's eastern coast. I can not justly describe exactly how beautiful the beach was. The sand was bright white and soft as powder, literally powder. It reminded me of unmixed drywall putty when it was dry, and mixed putty after the tide went out. The beach extended for miles in both directions and was lined with palm trees--not towering resorts. The weather was perfect for all four days, sunny and warm with a gentle breeze. That said, there was very little to do there beyond relaxing and reading and getting a sunburn. We learned a couple new card games and ate dinner (mostly a mixed vegetable salad and french fries) at the same place each night. The place we stayed didn't really have much in the way of lighting, so we walked back, about 1 km or so, along the beach after dark each night. There were SO MANY ghost crabs on the beach during those walks! I would hold the flashlight and we would stop, jump, studder step, screech, and run as the crabs tried to do the same. There were some big ones! Looking back I think we would have been better served to leave the light off and just pretend the crabs weren't there.

We also spent one afternoon at Jozani forest with the red colobus monkeys. It was mostly just a nice relaxing walk in the woods, but the monkeys are so calm in the presence of people and photogenic it was worth the quick mention.

We're back in Stone Town for a couple nights to do some SCUBA diving and to try to arrange our trip to Serengeti National Park and Ngorogoro Crater. Just enough time to eat a little more Swahili food and remember the cool vibes of Stone Town.

ps. Did anyone get the Tenacious D reference?