A little background on Zanzibar: In 1964, when the mainland country Tanganyika became independent from British colonial rule, it also joined itself with the island of Zanzibar. Hence they created the name Tan (Tanganyika)- Zan (for Zanzibar) -ia. Some of the differences of Zanzibar and the mainland are the previous influential peoples. The mainland was colonized by German, then British, peoples and therefore is predominantly Christian. Zanzibar was colonized by Arabic peoples and therefore is predominantly Muslim.
Stone Town is the old part of the largest city, Zanzibar Town. This city had its hey-day (way back when) when the sultans of Oman had their residence here. The British allowed the sultan to continue to rule all the way until Zanzibar joined with Tanzania in the 60s. Now, the city is literally crumbling. Our tour guide took us by a building that had fallen down within the week. And the currently remaining buildings are pretty shabby looking.
Our second day in Stone Town we went out on a Spice Tour. Zanzibar's second biggest industry (behind tourism) is spices (and specifically cloves). On our tour we saw essentially every spice you can imagine in its growing form which was really neat. I (Scott) was a little surprised at how green all of the plants were that made all those brown spices (pepper, cinnamon, cloves, coffee, chocolate, etc.)
There was also a lot of fruit/plant related hijinks.
Towards the end of the tour we enjoyed a tropical fruit tasting which included eating Jack Fruit which looks like this on the tree:
In the afternoon we relaxed and ate dinner on the rooftop of our house. One cool thing here was hearing the night call-to-prayer for the cities' many mosques!
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