One year ago today: Oct 17, 2005 (Mitu's Spice Tour)

Final day on the island of Zanzibar. We spent most of the day on one of Zanzibar's famous "spice tours". We drove around with a vanload of other tourists to various plantations, learning about, seeing, and most importantly smelling the different spices grown on the island. Apparently, Zanzibar is the world's largest producer of cloves. We also saw cinnamon, pepper plants, allspice, vanilla, tumeric, lemongrass, neem, and nutmeg. It was pretty fun, like a scratch-and-sniff field trip.

After the spice tour, we visited a beach where I got stung by a jellyfish (minor sting, so no big deal) and visited an old slave holding area (essentially a big pit in the ground built to hold slaves).

Oh, I forgot to recount a funny incident on the previous day. Kim and I were catching up on email at an Internet cafe, halfway through our session the proprietor asked us to watch the store for him. Apparently, it was time for prayers and he needed to go to the mosque. So for about 10-15 minutes, we were in charge of an Internet cafe in Zanzibar.

We found a great restaurant for dinner. The use of spices in Zanzibari cooking is really special and delicious, if I'm lucky maybe I'll find it in the States someday. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to return to Zanzibar...

This is what nutmeg looks like...


I love spices!