As well as being a popular tourist destination for Europeans and Middle Easterners, Zanzibar is now well known as a "spice island", exporting a good number of different spices. Stuff like cloves, cinnamon, cardamom and ginger gets shipped off to the rest of us. I took a tour of a spice farm one day for the experience, I guess. It was mostly walking through the woods with a guide who would cut this leaf off and crush it in his hands, or scrape that bark onto his knife, or squeeze another flower between his fingers for us to smell or taste. It was funny that as we walked through this forest it seemed like any other forest in Africa or back home that I've ever been in. But almost everything we passed was edible and useful for producing spices. I don't have any pictures of the spice tour because the light was't good that day for good pictures, and because I've become a bit of a picture snob. I should have taken some shots just for the heck it, to have something to post. I did that a couple times on this trip so you'll just have to use your imagination for some of the stuff I talk about on this one.
The people who live on the island are mostly Muslim. They live very peaceably with the portion of the population that is not Muslim, with mutual tolerance for each other's beliefs. So it's a really relaxing, calm place to be with relatively low levels of crime. The main city on the island is called Stone Town, I think because of the way they built stone fortresses and other buildings with the natural stone there in the past. Nowadays the history of some of the old architecture is interesting to some degree but Stone Town's still a typical relatively-prosperous African town. There are very nice areas and very rundown areas. You can stay in really clean and upscale hotels or you can stay in cheaper, more basic accommodation. There are safe areas and, at night, there are places that aren't so safe.
So I spent most of my time in Zanzibar on the northern portion of the island in an area called Nungwi. Nungwi is much less developed than Stone Town and has a much more relaxed feel. There are several bungalow-type places to stay and, on the recommendation of a friend, I chose one called Jambo Brothers (or Union Beach, depending on who you ask). From my front door you can throw a rock into the surf. There was a restaurant at Jambo Brothers where I ate several times and the food was outstanding every time. I ate seafood for almost every meal in Zanzi and it was never out of the ocean for more than 24 hours before it landed on my plate. I've never had seafood that fresh.
It was just under two weeks of ultimate relaxation and rest. I went alone and hoped to meet up with a couple of my friends who happened to be going too.
However, I spent most of my time there on my own, reading "Catch 22" (an old classic that I HIGHLY recommend) and hanging out with various people I met along the way. The one day I did spend with the people I already knew from Sudan was only by coincidence. I had heard about this fantastic snorkeling reef near an island off the northwest coast of Zanzibar called Mnemba Atol. Almost every day you could go snorkeling there for about $20, which included lunch of fruit, bread and seafood. I went to Mnemba once and decided to go back the next day because it was so cool. So when I climbed out of the water onto the boat that second day, all my friends were already on it! They'd been picked up at another bungalow-type resort just south of Nungwi because they'd heard about Mnemba too. 
We all went snorkeling that day and had a great time. I ate the freshest seafood I've ever had on one of those snorkeling trips. One of the small crew of this rickety little wooden boat trailed a fishing line behind us the whole way back from the island and happened to catch a Snapper. So he quickly lit the rickety charcoal grill they had stuffed under one of the rickety bench seats, cleaned the fish over the rickety side of the boat, wrapped in tin foil with some spices and we were eating Snapper 30 minutes after this guy pulled it from the water. Is that as fresh as it gets? Yeah, I guess so. After returning from Nungwi to Stone Town the day before my flight to Nairobi, I took a trip to the most well-known slave cave.
After slavery was officially abolished somehow by the British in the late 1800's, it continued underground, literally and figuratively. The slave smugglers would gather slaves in remote caves and hidden places, to be picked up by ships in secrecy bound for the Middle East. So to descend into this abandoned cave was to be surrounded by the most tangible kind of reminder of the wrongs that have taken place throughout history. It's unfortunate that equally appalling things still happen all over the world. Check out www.justiceandjubilee.org to learn about some stuff a few friends of mine back home are involved in to battle modern day slavery. So to be in a slave cave was...well...it was what it was. Definitely a "must" on a trip to Zanzibar.
The only real problem I ran in to while on my trip to Zanzibar is that there was no electricity whatsoever. Accommodation was cheap, food was cheap, travel was cheap and easy, but there was no electricity. 
There normally is. But for some reason, it was all down and if you had lights or a fan at night it was because the place you stayed had a generator. In Nungwi I got my room for real cheap so, predictably, they didn't run a generator. But coming out of Sudan, Zanzibar really wasn't too bad without the live wires. I'll go back again some time in the not-too-distant future but I'll make sure they have hot outlets before I do. You can get SCUBA certified there in four days for about 350 bucks so I'll probably do that next time I make it out that way.OK, I love you guys and I miss all of you from home that happen to see this (I miss all the others too, but you especially). Here's a pic of me after getting back to Yei, since I failed to get any on the island.
