Spice tour (which was about 5 days ago)
It is awesome being a tourist!! yesterday gina and i had a tour booked to go to the spice farm and then to prison island.. zanzibar is known for its spices. We got up early and were picked up in a van right from our guest house which was nice.. we had the van all to ourselves with a tour guide. First we went to the spice farm. It was cloudy in the morning which meant rain was probably coming, but that was ok. As soon as we got to the farm and got out to walk it started raining and didnt stop the whole time.. it was still awesome, even with us carrying around umbrellas the whole time! we walked down various paths and had a tree climber guy along with the guide.. he would climb the trees or get the leaves and fruit and nuts and roots for us to smell or taste. we saw so many different spices and were told what they were used for here. it was really interesting. that lasted about an hour and a half and then we sat down and were able to try all of the fruits we had seen!!
after the spice tour we headed back into town to get a boat and go to prison island. first we went to see the giant tortises. they ranged in age from just born to 104 years old!!! the biggest one’s shell was about 1.25m long and .75 m tall. we got to feed them and touch them which was pretty cool. there weer about 35 big tortises and then about another 30 that were kept in a cage because they were too small to be with the others. we were there for a bit and then got a short tour of the island. unfortunately it was not perserved very wel and the prison was turned into a hotel. it was originally built as a prison but never used for that and was instead used as a port for the slave market.
we headed home after that and then had some time to relax before going out again.