Sunday, Nov. 11

The next morning we took off on our spice tour. This I’d never done before though Priya had. A van picked us up from the hotel and we drove about 15 minutes just outside town where our tour began.

I will refrain from going into details about the tour but it turned out to be really fascinating. I’ve never really taken an interest in spices, to be honest, but it really wasn’t necessary in order to enjoy the tour. We basically walked around this foresty-looking area while this guy explained the spices and their uses. For some reason it doesn’t sound as interesting as it was.

At one point we were entertained by an expert coconut tree climber who shimmied up a tree showing off acrobatics along the way. There were no footholds cut into the tree and no ropes holding him. Pretty impressive. There were also things being fabricated from palm fronds as we walked along (a hat, ties, bags).

We finished up by purchasing some spices and headed back into Stonetown.

Since we’d had fun at Mercury’s the day before, and it was on the way, we had the driver drop us off there. We had a nice lunch and a drink before heading back to the hotel to grab our things and catch our lift back to the airport.

While waiting at the hotel for the airport shuttle, Curtis and I took advantage of the time and hopped into the pool to cool down. It was a refreshing respite from the muggy weather. However, the benefits were soon compromised in the Zanzibar airport. It was hot, no AC and a small percentage of the many available fans were operational. We eventually boarded our plane for the 15 min. flight to Dar and my family’s brief glimpse into my life there before their long flight back to the Western US.