Zanzibar Spice Farm Tour Videos

Finally posting the last of the Zanzibar videos.

Coconut tree climber has a pretty awesome voice.

The coconut tree climber cut a green coconut open for us

and we drank the coconut water and ate the flesh inside.

The flesh was kind of transparent and very slimy and tasteless.

Coconut water was super refreshing...

I've had it store bought before but this definitely trumped that.

If you let the coconut mature,

the liquid turns to milk and the coconut flesh

becomes more dense and white.

Maybe I'm a bit behind the curve but I had no idea

that coffee beans grew on trees

...always thought they were grown on plants.

This tree isn't one you'd wanna climb with all of it's spikes.

It sounds kind of hollow when you knock on it.

Apparently when it matures, the bark turns more whitish

and the spikes fall off and it produces some kind of cotton substance.

Nutmeg Tree. Nutmeg can be used to calm upset stomachs.

Cinnamon Tree...I had no idea cinnamon sticks came

from the bark of a tree. The leaves also are used for allspice.

When you burn the wood, it smells like cinnamon.

That'd be a pleasant smelling campfire.

These plants are called "Touch me nots". Pretty cool.

This is just a video of the most beautiful thing I saw

while at the Spice farm. Ooooh...Berni's spicey! :)

StoneTown & Zanzibar Videos

This video is a quick view

of the coast while at stonetown.

Berni and our driver Simon have a cameo.

Bunch of boats off the coast of stonetown area.

They all had names painted on the side

and some were pretty funny.

This is a video of our hotel the Green Turaco.

We were walking around stonetown

waiting for our dinner to be made and

saw these young men off on a side road

practicing some pretty amazing acrobatic feats

which can be seen in the next few videos.

The next 2 videos are the street vendors

where we got dinner a couple of nights.

 

Will upload spice farm tour videos soon...

Zanzibar Spice Tour

So Berni and I went on a spice tour while in Zanzibar. 

Wasn't sure how exciting it was going to be,

actually I thought it was going to be pretty boring. 

I was totally wrong about the boring part. It was pretty amazing.

 I guess from the title I should've known it'd add a little spice to our trip.  

We wished we could of shared it with our teens and parents.

I've only captured a few highlights here and in the video section

but there were many more spices and fruits that we were able to smell and taste. 

There were a lot of cool little details about each plant

and spice that made this tour so interesting

...but I forgot most of them, sorry. :P

This gentleman was our tourguide, Azeem.

The fruit has seeds inside that are smashed up

and used to add color to things like makeup and food (ie, curry).

This was our tour guides assistant

as you can see him fashionably displaying the color on his face and lips.

Below is a banana tree. Did you know there is a male and a female tree?! This of course is a female tree since it's bearing fruit. The bananas grow in that little brown covered pod thing. Once the bunch is complete, the pod falls off and another pod forms but the bananas continue to get smaller and smaller with each pod. (this is all from memory so if I get any of this wrong my apologies)

This little chili pepper packed a powerful punch.

My mouth was pretty hot after just cutting into it with my teeth.

I guess you could say it was a red hot chili pepper.

I didn't know cloves grew on trees. Lots of uses for cloves to include medicinal for toothache relief. The leaves are also ground up and used in all-spice, they smelled super yummy.

 GrapeFruit Tree. The grapefruits were gigantic.

 Star fruit tree. The fruit was pretty sour at that time and is used mainly in fruit juices.

 

The tour guide assistant had fun decorating Berni w/Star Fruit cuttings.

 

The farm had a rice patty and they showed us what the rice looks like on the plant.

Kind of grows the same way as wheat and other grains. Pretty cool.

 Below pic is of a bunch of vanilla beans (didn't turn out very well). After learning about them we then understood why vanilla is so expensive. Vanilla beans are very labor intensive. Each day workers must comb through the bean vines looking for bean "pods" that are ready for forced pollination between the male and female part of the plant. Without the workers, the vanilla bean would not become pollinated on its own and then it would die. Pretty crazy.

 

 

 These are yams on a vine.

The yam plant not only grows yams underground to be eaten

but also grows yams above ground that are used as seed to plant more yam plants.

Thats yamtastic.

 This is a nutmeg fruit. The outside flesh is thrown away and the middle part is used for 2 things.

The red part is used for coloring and the meat inside is used for nutmeg.

It can also be used for pain relief.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce the king and queen of the Oompa Loompa kingdom.

The assistant made these as the tour guide took us around and then presented them to us at the end. I have a big head so he had a hard time shoving the hat on there.

 

After the tour was over they fed us lunch and then we had a fruit tasting. Super good.

 

Zanzibar, Tanzania Trip

Zanzibar is a beautiful city on an island off the coast of Tanzania.

Berni Traveled many many miles to come see me on my 96 hour pass.

Thanks Baby! And thanks Kim for watching the kids!

We stayed at the Green Turaco Hotel

which was very much like a bed and breakfast.

We had breakfast made for us every morning by Janet

and a driver (Simon) that would take us anywhere we wanted to go.

 This is a picture of us on the coast in StoneTown.

Behind us would be direction towards mainland Tanzania.

What a beautiful lady. Weather was amazing, upper 70s and a slight breeze.

Below is a bunch of tourist shops under a hotel

in Stone Town that we did most of our tourist bartering.

Lots of fun. Berni and I made a great haggling team.

 The next few pics are just random throughout stonetown.

We noticed quite a few intricately carved wood doors. Very pretty.

 There were tons of fishing boats like the one in the foreground

and then several piratey looking ships like the one in the middle. Pretty cool.

Notice the hump on this cows back...super floppy and fatty.

These cows were used all over to pull carts.

 A really fun restaurant with the ocean in the background

(pic doesn't quite capture that) that we ate at for lunch and

a couple of times for their really good icecream.

 Food below is from a street vendor closer to our hotel.

The sweet bread was our favorite.

All the food was pretty good, and we didn't get sick!

which was a bonus.

 Simon our driver took us to the food street vendors and kept trying to get us to eat the camel meat. He said the Muslim population really enjoyed eating it during Ramadan. It was very fatty and even hairy looking. We also noticed that no-one else seemed to be buying it. Maybe next time Simon.

 The pool was a perfect way to relax and enjoy the end of the day.

Uganda Roundabout Traffic

So this 2 minute video is cut up into 5 segments

so that it'd upload easier. Notice the way everyone

 pushes their way into the roundabout. Crazy traffic

actually made the trip kind of fun.

The bodo-bodo's (motorcycle taxis) are abundant 

and some street vendors can be seen towards

the end of video.

 

 

Uganda videos

Took a bunch of videos while in Uganda

of super random things.

This is a video of a guy transporting melons

or something on his motorcycle. Pretty impressive.

 

These are what our driver called trash birds.

Way off in distance and hard to see

so I included a close-up pic from google below.

They are huge and kind of scary looking.

 

 

Above video are a bunch of farmer market stands

w/fruits/veggies on side of road in rural areas.

Video above is markets in more of a city area with lots

of bodo-bodos (motorcycle taxis) and van taxis,

try to notice how packed the van taxi's are.

They have a total of 5 bench seats which seat 3 people each.

That's as many as our van seats, which is considerably longer.

Termite Mound.

Lady carrying stuff  on her head. Saw many ladies

and children carrying things this way. Did a slo-mo on this

so that you can see what's on her head better.

Uganda Trip

Went to Uganda to perform a Food and Water Vulnerability Assessment for a couple of camps that were hosting a Marine Exercise. Uganda was beautiful with lots of agricultural fields growing pineapple, sugarcane, plantains, maize (corn) and rice along with many other fruits/vegetables that we know but also a few fruits that I didn't know...didn't get a picture though.

They were masters of transporting big loads on whatever vehicle they had access to.

Not sure what this guy on the bicycle was transporting but pretty impressive.

 

 Cows and people.

 This guy had lots of stuff up there.

 Quite the load for a motor bike.

 Plantains about to be used for one of the Marine meals...they were storing them on a tree next to the kitchen. They eat them green and apparently before they get sweet...if they are sweet then they don't eat them.

 Took a pic of a random cow on the side of the road. Later googled it and apparently these cows are a breed called Ankole "the cattle of kings"...not sure why but apparently they're beef is super low in cholesterol and very tender. Yum.

 My late night trip to the Emergency Room (My hotel bathtub was out to get me)
where this nice doctor stitched up my head in a couple of places (chin & behind ear).
Just to give you an idea of how inexpensive things were, my ER visit was $53...
U.S. would be in the hundreds to thousands depending on area.

 This Termite mound was one of many all over the side of the road in one of the areas we traveled.

Me standing by some plaque at the start of river Nile which is behind me. Leading down to the river were many shops of people selling tourist trinkets. Reminded me of Tijuana but way cheaper. Lots of people thought that my partner and I were Special Forces. Pretty sure it was due in part that he was very muscle bound and I had bandages all over my head. 

Just a different kind of "special" forces I suppose.

 

 Walking along the Nile river to a restaurant for lunch beyond this old boat.

 Fun location/distance sign.

 Funny bottle tree behind the outdoor restaurant we ate at.

 Funny signs above the men/women bathroom.

Can't really argue with that.

MMMMM...Lunch. Nile Perch. Our African driver literally ate the entire thing down to the bones which were very clean once he finished.  I had buffalo wings.