Spice Island/ Prison Island

I think my most treasured memory on this trip was interacting with the children and visiting their schools. However, this day might be a close 2nd. Zanzibar is also known as the Spice Islands, and we started off our day with a spice tour.

In route to the spice tour we stopped off at one of the Sultan’s palaces. Most of the palace had been burned down in a fire, but you were able to walk through the ruins. This palace had been used by the sultan for his concubines. It was filled with toilets, hot baths, and rooms for massage.

The spice tour was just amazing! We saw cardamom, cloves, lemongrass, cinnamon (did you know cinnamon root smells just like Vick‘s Vapor Rub?), curry tree, pepper vine (apparently all varieties of pepper are from the same plant, but are harvested and prepared differently), jack fruit, bread fruit, yummy star fruit, nutmeg, some plant that the leaves are used to make lipstick locally, among many others! Throughout the tour our guides showed amazing dexterity and skill, creating bracelets, rings, neck ties, and frogs for us – all out of banana leaves! At the end of the tour, we got to try a bunch of different kinds of fruits, many of which we do not have in the U.S.A. including custard apple, a fruit that looked just like litchi fruit, but was not litchi, HUGE grapefruit (and the best tasting grapefruit I have ever had), some kind of fruit that tasted sort of like a cross between a banana and a pineapple, and several others.

That afternoon we took an excursion out on a Dhow boat (small wooden boat) to snorkel in the Indian Ocean on a coral reef. It was beautiful. There were many vibrant colors of coral. We saw giant clams, clown fish, brain coral, and countless other sea creatures I don’t know the names for!

After snorkeling, we boated out to Prison Island. This island was originally used as a quarantine center. It now hosts a beautiful hotel. The hotel was currently closed and under renovation, but our guide, Mohammed, told us that there were giant tortoises on the island to see. In my head I pictured a few tortoises roaming around. We would stand from a distance and snap a few photos – boy was I wrong! Not only were the tortoises HUGE (some on the island were over 100 years old!), there were tons of them, and they were friendly to people. We were able to hand feed them – and they love it! As soon as you walked over with a leafy green in your hand, the tortoises would race (ok, maybe more like waddle) towards you, eager for a treat. They let you pet them, and were really quite cute in a scaly, cold-blooded type way. We literally had six or seven tortoises surrounding each of us patiently waiting to be fed. Too cute!!!

After feeding the tortoises, we wandered through the hotel grounds, reading about the history of the island. We watched the sunset on the beach, with the clear blue waters tickling our toes as they dug in to the white sand.

As we set sail on the boat ride home, with the sun sinking behind the horizon, and the lights of Stone Town coming in to view, I had one of the quiet, peaceful moments were all feels right in the world. I knew I was having the moment of a lifetime, and I hope I will be able to hold on to the feeling of that memory forever.

The morning before we left we visited the Jozani Forest. We went to the forest to see the Red Colobus monkeys. Zanzibar is the only place in the whole world where they can be found! The monkeys were absolutely adorable, and very fun to watch. The most amazing part, was how completely unaffected they were by our presence. I would be literally no more than one foot from a monkey taking a picture while she would nonchalantly chew on her food and scavenge the ground looking for more to eat.

All in all, I found Zanzibar to be a stunning, fascinating, and exotic place. Momma Moshi always jokes each year with her students that she has to hire extra security to make sure all her students leave the island – and I can see why! Luckily for me, whenever I close my eyes, I can hear the busy sounds of cars, street vendors, and children playing in Stone Town, I can taste the sweet fruits and spices of the spice tour, and feel the sun warming my back and wind racing through my hair on the Dhow – these all are the best souvenirs anyone can ask for.