Stone Town

Stone town is really cool - its like a tiny little Marrakesh with its winding alleyways with little shops on it. There is so much to do and see here, I could have spent a lot longer!

I found an Anglican Cathedral built on the remains of a slave chamber. The alter sits on what was then the whipping post, to determine how strong the slaves were. A missionary from Britain decided to build a church on something horrible to cleanse it of its previous life. Next door is St Monica’s hostel, run by Christian women, which has a café area. The food was brilliantly cheap – I had chicken stew/curry with rice and a slightly spicy tomato sauce. I was glad to find a traditional place to get lunch as most places are closed during Ramadan. I was sitting with other Tanzanians and teens in Massai dress who seemed to find me fascinating!

After that I wandered around the busy local market, being the only mazungu (white person), which was an experience! Got happily lost in the winding streets too, on the way back to the hotel.

The spice tour organised through the hotel was great. There were about 20 of us and we were taken to a privately owned spice plantation. Our guide took us around showing us the native spice trees, and then cutting bits down to show us the nut or leaf or fruit. I didn’t really like this – at least one spice tours a day roughly every day of the week equals a lot of growing fruit and branches being cut down for our sake. I wondered if it was just there for show! One of the assistants climbed the cinnamon tree and was just peeling bits of the fragrant bark off. Poor tree!

They made us a little leaf ‘cup’ to store bits in, so I have examples of all the different leaves and things. It was interesting to learn that mace is made from the red stuff around a nutmeg!

Me with Rambutan - it's like Lychee! :) 

We had lunch in a lovely hut with a ‘spice market’ at one end (two long tables filled with spices). I could have bought hundreds of spices but seeing as it’s the very start of my two months I held off. Lunch was a lovely vegetable coconut curry with pilau rice and chapatti which did not go to waste! The toilet was great – it was a little woven spiral out of some kind of palm/ coconut leaf with a porcelain long drop toilet in the middle and a bucket of water.

I also did a half-day trip to Prison Island, a place originally built to house slaves but during British reign was used as a quarantine for people trying to come over into Tanzania and Zanzibar who had tropical diseases. On the island there was a giant tortoise sanctuary as well, and you were allowed to walk around and touch them which was nice. After this we were taken snorkelling just off of the island. Our captain picked a really great place to see all different kinds of coral and fish. 

I had dinner at the Forodhani Gardens a couple of times. There was a café there with free wifi which was very unusual but very great! The food stalls were busy – most of them were repeats of the same things and the sellers would walk in your way while you wandered around, insisting to tell you exactly what everything was even though you knew it already from the other stalls! My favourite was ‘Mr Nutella’ who made these really great Zanzibar pizzas (basically a crepe made from thin dough) with nutella, peanut butter and banana inside! I also had various skewers of fish, falafel and the most solid and inedible corn on the cob of my life. How disappointing!

Mmmmmm squid....

Stone town is a really interesting place, you just have to get used to the constant hassling and occasionally being hissed at by the locals for not stopping at their stalls.