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.