Zanzibar/Dar: the adventure continues

Sunday morning, we woke up early and checked out of Safari Lodge.

The door of Safari Lodge. There are two types of doors in Stone Town: Arabic and Indian. We were told (by perhaps a dubious source) that the Arabic doors have brass metal on them because they were designed to keep angry elephants from kicking them in. (Or maybe it was the Indian doors. I don't really remember.

Then we met Omar and Abdi to go on a spice tour! Official spice tours can take 5-6 hours and cost quite a bit of money, but I had asked Omar if he could get us a "quick, cheap" spice tour, and he came through for us.

A bit of context: Zanzibar is known as the spice island, and a huge part of their slave history is due to the spice trade that flourished there in the 1800s. I'm sure on an official tour we would have gotten all the history, but we didn't really learn about any of that on our tour. Basically, we drove outside of Stone Town to a spice farm and met a guide, who then walked us around on the farm. We picked leaves from the plants that spices come from and got to smell them, and taste the ones that tasted like anything, etc. We got these cones made from leaves to store everything along the way too, and by the end it all smelled so good.

From the back: Abdi, Omar, Christine and our guide

Rain tree.

Eating starfruit.

These spikes eventually erupt into a cottony substance that isn't cotton. It's used for pillows and mattress stuffing.

Palm tree plantation!

Black pepper

The most eventful thing to happen, probably, was when I got stupidly brave and decided to eat an entire peri peri. It's a pepper... it was labeled as a capsicum of some type, but there was a debate over what kind of peri peri it was. Peri peri ho ho? Peri peri something else? It looked kind of like this (from Google image), only neon orange:

As soon as Christine tried it, her first comment was, "Katie, don't eat it!" She knew I can't really handle spicy food. At that point, it became a challenge. I took a deep breath and popped the whole thing in my mouth. It took a second, but when it finally hit, it was the most painfully spicy thing I have ever eaten. It just exploded everywhere in my mouth, and I felt like my entire mouth was on fire. It was physically painful. I was sort of flailing around with tears streaming down my face. I pulled out my bottle of water, but that didn't help. Omar found a starfruit on the ground after he stopped laughing at me and gave it to me, which helped a little bit, but it took probably 10 minutes for the pain to go away. I swear, I thought I would never taste anything again. Serves me right for putting something neon orange in my mouth, I guess. I don't know what I was expecting. But everyone had a good laugh at my expense, at least.

At one point, we got to a tree where something called langi langi was growing really high up, and the guide told us it's what Chanel uses in its No. 5 perfume. At that point, a gentleman appeared out of nowhere with tiny bottles of -- you guessed it -- perfume! And soap, made from the spices we were smelling and tasting on our tour. Christine and I caved and bought a couple.

Omar seemed to have taken a liking to me, because at one point, he pulled a necklace out of nowhere and put it around my neck, and then looked really embarrassed about it. It was sweet though, and I do like the necklace, so that's a win/win situation. It was apparently a day for jewelry decoration, because there was a kid along the walk with us too whose job it was to crumble the leaves that would smell nice -- but at a certain point, he popped up with leafy rings, bracelets and necklaces for Christine and me as well. Very stylish.

Sporting the new jewelry.

A clove tree. My favorite spice!

The collection "basket" at the end of the tour.

After we finished with the spices, we sat down and got to taste all sorts of tropical fruit. Soursop, different types of mangoes, jackfruit, guavas and more -- it was so delicious. Unfortunately, while we were stuffing our faces with fruit, the kid was making us more grass adornments. This time, crowns and purses. We felt obligated to wear them, lest we hurt his feelings....

Queens of the spice farm?

At the end of the tour there is, of course, an opportunity to buy spices. Shockingly, they weren't expensive, so I bought a few things (mostly clove-based).

Spice shopping

After we were done, we headed back to Stone Town. Christine had mentioned she wanted to buy a pair of leather sandals, so we set off on an ultimately ill-fated search for leather sandals. It took us all through Stone Town, though, including into a market that was the craziest shopping atmosphere I've ever been in. It didn't really seem conducive to actually buying anything... everyone just seemed really desperate to get out of everyone else's way.

We did wander through some quieter parts of Stone Town as well, on our way back to the port to catch the Kilimanjaro back to Dar.

We went through immigration again to get out of Zanzibar, and then got onto the ferry (the right ferry) and set off for Dar. Christine and I were both so exhausted that we slept most of the way back, although that didn't stop either of us from feeling the really violent pitching the ferry did. The sea is choppier in the afternoon, so despite the fact we were on a much bigger ferry, it was still pretty violently rocking back and forth. We both took the anti-motion sickness medication though, so we were both fine! And we made it back to Dar alive, despite the frequent ferry sinkings, so I count it all as a victory.

Back in Dar, there were zero immigration procedures. We got hassled repeatedly at the port by taxi drivers, who wouldn't believe us when we said we had someone coming to pick us up. King did show up after about 20 minutes though, and we went back to Christine's apartment to get ready to go to the bar-b-q I mentioned before. Christine's boyfriend is Tanzanian (although he lives in New York), and his sisters and brother live in Dar. Christine has gotten to know them while she's there, and they were having a bar-b-q for their friends and had invited Christine (and, by extension, me). One of the sisters and a friend picked us up, and we drove across town to her house. It was a bit awkward for a while, because Christine had met them all already, and obviously they all knew each other -- they were mostly friends who had all gone to university together. I sort of floated around for a while, before settling down and having a good long chat with her boyfriend's brother, and then one of his friends. I even tried goat again, and liked it this time! Unfortunately, I had already eaten so much other food that I didn't really have room to eat much of the goat. Ah, life is hard.

I did manage to somehow end up in what should have been a family photo, though. Awkward memories! :)

Christine had really wanted to get back home in time to watch the 100m final in the Olympics, since Usain Bolt was obviously going to win and, as a Jamaican, she wanted to see it. We didn't make it though -- we were still at the sister's house at midnight. We caught a ride back with one of the friends (who was a terrifyingly bad driver), and only caught the highlights. I crashed out at that point, because I had to be up at 4am to get to the airport to catch my flight back to Johannesburg.

So, that's pretty much it. My weekend in Tanzania and Zanzibar. I have one more tiny post to make about Joburg (because it snowed here this week, for the first time in 5 years, the most since 1981, and only the 7th time in history) -- but that will have to wait, because I'm leaving for the airport in 7 minutes. Then I'm off toe Cape Town with my parents. I will have lots more blogging of those travels to do, I'm sure, but this entry pretty much ends my summer of living in Johannesburg!