8 – 13 November 2011
After our time on the coast we headed to Stone Town, the capital of Zanzibar for a bit of culture and history. As we arrived at Maruhubi Beach Villa’s just outside of town, we met Samantha – a post-grad student from ASU (the same university that Brian Watson is doing his post-grad at in Arizona) – who we ended up spending most of the next few days with. Samantha is our new hero; she is studying the behaviour of chimps (from an anthropology point of view so that her findings can be tied into human evolution) and she has just spent the last year at a remote field base in Western Tanzania. In a tent. Water had to be trekked from the nearest river. Four local male field assistants who only spoke Swahili. Nearest town 2 hours away. Yes, we thought she was extremely hard-core! After making it to the end of her year she decided to tag on a safari and a few days in Zanzibar which is where we met up.
Zanzibar was once famous for its spices and although they don’t produce and export anything near what they used to, one of their big tourist attractions is a visit to a spice farm. We visited Butterfly Spice Farm just outside of Stone Town at the top of “Zanzibar’s Kilimanjaro” and were taught about everything from cardamom (the queen of spices – a kitchen is not a kitchen if it doesn’t contain cardamom), cloves, lemon-grass (although I don’t think that’s technically a spice!), tumeric, ginger, cinnamon (the king of spices because every part of the tree from leaves to roots is used for something) as well as a whole host of fruits including finger bananas, giant bananas, coffee, litchis, mangoes, pineapples and jack fruit. The best part of it was tasting all the spices as we went along, and the tea and fruit tasting stop overlooking the beautiful tropical valley.
Next stop was a tour of Stone Town itself, which was fascinating. 90% of the Zanzibari population is Muslim and there are 50 mosques in Stone Town and only 2 churches. One of the churches was built on the location of the slave trading area of the town and there is a round tile in front of the altar marking the position of the slave beating post. We went down into the slave chambers where slaves were held in the most awful, cramped and airless conditions, a very sobering experience. The tour took us in around and about the buzzing city from the fruit and vege market past the fish auction, through the meat market, down alleyways full of shop-keepers trying to get our attention and tangles of wires hanging precariously overhead and ended up at the House of Wonders – the largest building in Stone Town and the first in East Africa to have electricity and an elevator, which has now been turned into a museum. As we passed through the old fort we heard that Prince Charles had been there earlier that day but unfortunately we must have just missed him…
After three nights outside of town we moved to a hotel in the centre of Stone Town and enjoyed being in walking distance of the sights and sounds and so as soon as there was a gap in the rain clouds, we dashed out and tried to find a decent cup of coffee or a meal. Some highlights of our time in Stone Town include:
- Forodhani Gardens sea-front evening market: starting at sunset loads of stall owners set up barbeques and start selling the most amazing array of food. Kebabs, prawns, fresh fruit, Zanzibari pizzas (which are more like calzones but fried on both sides) filled with Nutella and bananas, ice creams, sugar cane and lime juice. We visited the first time on the last evening of the Muslim Haj festival and there were people everywhere. Literally thousands had turned up in all their finely – quite a spectacle.
- The world’s most delicious latte served in a really funky glass “mug” overlooking the sea
- Watching some of the SA vs. Australia cricket match after hearing on Facebook that it was turning into a game for the history books.
- Lazuli: Stone Town’s hidden gem of a restaurant which we unfortunately found in time for our last meal on the island. It is the cutest little café serving delicious and healthy fresh wraps and sandwiches as well as smoothies which are to die for. What a find and a pleasant change from all things fried!
- Supper at Mercury’s at the harbour where we felt like we were in a trendy Cape Town restaurant. (Incidentally, Freddy Mercury was born in Zanzibar and so you can visit the house he was born in etc.)
Sunday was time to say goodbye and head back to the mainland. The ferry ride home was HORRENDOUS and super choppy and so we braved the dark clouds in order to sit outside away from the madding crowd who were not coping with the seasickness. Not fun! But seeing Paul Hofmeyr (Stu’s cousin from the UK who is working in Nairobi for 4 months) waiting for us at the Dar es Salaam airport to join us for a couple of weeks made it all worthwhile.
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