Although you might not know it from our previousposts, there is more to Zanzibar than Stone Town and spice plantations – including a fascinating forest and a series of gorgeous beaches. When our Kiwi friends suggested renting a car and road-tripping across Unguja (Zanzibar’s main island) to take in the forest and several beaches, we decided to join them!
Jozani National Park
Jozani National Park, located about 35 kilometers from Stone Town, is the largest remaining area of mature forest in Zanzibar. Most notably, it is home to the Zanzibar red colobus monkey, a rare rain forest species that lives only in Zanzibar.
Learn from my mistake: Do NOT wear a white, floor-length skirt on your trip to Jozani.
One of the Zanzibar’s most important industries is spice production, and one of the most highly recommended things to do while visiting there is tour a spice plantation. As enthusiastic fans of spices, a spice tour was on our must-do list.
Shaded spice plantation path.
Plenty of people (tour operators, your hotel, random folks on the street) will sell you a spice tour. We chose to go on an inexpensive, full-day group tour organized by Mr. Mitu, a tour operator recommended by our guidebook. We paid for the tour in his office in Stone Town one afternoon, and he gave us a receipt with his phone number on it and told us that someone would pick us up at our hotel the next morning between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. Continue reading Taking a Spice Tour in Zanzibar (Or, That Time We Were Sort-Of Accidentally Kidnapped)→
Programming note: Our next stop after Iringa was technically Dar es Salaam. But we spent less than 24 hours there and later returned, so this blog will tackle our time in Dar as a whole in a future post.
Even while we were on the idyllic shores of Lake Malawi – where life couldn’t have been much better – we were looking forward to visiting Zanzibar. We had heard such enticing things about Zanzibar, and the name alone conjured an exotic aura.
“Zanzibar” is actually the name of the entire archipelago, which consists of two large islands and a number of small ones. The main island is called Unguja, and that is where Zanzibar City, the capital of Zanzibar, is located. Zanzibar City is often generically called Stone Town, but the term “Stone Town” technically refers only to its historic city center.
From Dar, we took the ferry to Zanzibar City. The ferry, called the Kilimanjaro IV, couldn’t have been more different from the Ilala that we had taken across Lake Malawi. For starters, there was no livestock. Other subtle differences included the facts that: (i) the Kilimanjaro IV’s departure time had a basis in reality; (ii) we did not have to disembark the ferry through a combination of dinghy and wading through water; and (iii) we had comfortable seats instead of perching on pipes and coils of rope amongst piles of drying fish.
Drafting blog posts from the Kilimanjaro IV.First glimpse of Zanzibar.
