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Stone Town, Spice Tours, Beaches & Excursions

Zanzibar

Tony Clemens
2005-08-31 21:53:07

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Both of my traveling companions came down with a case of the Tanzania Trots while we were on Zanzibar, I blamed the yogurt which I never had but they did but the fruit juice and ice cream were very good.

Spice Tour

One of the most popular tours of the island are called spice tours. There are plenty of touts around town offering the trip. Your best bet is to book a trip with Mitu who first started the tours. Mitu suffers from malaria and is often not well enough to conduct the tours himself but he has trained many people. On the day we took the tour Mitu was the guide tour for part of the tour. Since it was a large group it was divided into two groups with the twentysomethings in one group and the 30 plus in another group. Myself and my wife were in the 30 plus group of 7 people which included two Canadian oversea development workers, another Canadian who quit his job to spend a year traveling around Africa, and two British women on a short vacation. These were the first Canadians we meet on our trip and once they found out we were also Canadians they started to ask us questions about current events in Canada. But soon the conversation turned to hockey. As one of the British women said, "Put a group of Canadians together and in less than 5 minutes they are talking about hockey." It might be a stereotype but its often true. A spice tour should cost about 8000 shillings which will include a lunch of spiced rice, fish and sauce with fresh fruit. The spice tours not only offer trips to various spice and fruit farms where you can sample the produce but also visits to some of the Arab ruins around the island including several Persian baths and they generally end with a refreshing dip at an undeveloped beach.

Beaches

The main reason most people come to Zanzibar are the beaches. The island is surrounded by them with most people preferring the beaches ...