Spice tour, taste, discoveries

 Every day, we sign up for new activities since the hotel offers them every day. The advantage of the price comes from the number of registered participants. As soon as I saw the tour in a spice plantation, my eyes lit up. I love spices, there’s nothing to do about it, I have the impression that it’s as if… you put spice in your life.

The spice tour consists of a fruit tasting, discovery of the fruit trees and spice trees of the region, a walk in the forest and to top it all off, a beautiful sunset at Nungwi beach. We have not seen it yet, since we are on the side of its rising. A small hour drive to find ourselves at the edge of a forest. We are greeted by a multilingual guide and his companions. We are installed on benches in front of a mountain of “exotic” fruits.

The tasting begins: red bananas, mini bananas, green oranges, jackfruit, mangoes, papayas, green mandarins, pineapples, passion fruit and so on. Full of fruits and vitamins, the tour begins.

I realize that since I travel so much, I can no longer eat fruit in my country. I find that even apples and pears have lost their taste. But when I find myself in countries like this, just the sweet smell of the fruit makes me salivate. I revel in every bite, every cut, knowing that when I return, I won’t eat any more until my next trip.

We can imagine a strenuous walk through the forest with the leaden heat. But in the end, under these trees, freshness is felt. These farms were born when Zanzibar was a strategic island on the spice route.

The visit is punctuated with fragrant riddles, which is very convivial and allows us to test our knowledge. Guessing which spice it is simply by looking at its tree, at worst if we don’t find it, it’s by smell that we guess.

We have all wondered at one time or another, pensively looking at our plate, what the tree or plant looks like from which, among other things, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove and even lemongrass come from. How they are grown, how do we get to that. We find out from which tree the cinnamon is cut and how it is made to roll up. We discover the fruit that contains the nutmeg nuts with a scarlet red skin. The pepper of the island, one of the best in the world. The different types of peppers such as the hoho pepper.

We walk almost 2 hours in this forest, a pleasant and enchanting walk, a mixture of sweet scents and bird songs.

After this discovery, we sit on benches, we receive hats woven with plant leaves and decorated with hibiscus. We listen to the intriguing song of a coconut tree climber that sets the mood.

We are back in our van, heading to a beach in the North-West of the island for a lunch in a Mocco Beach resto-bar and lazing on deckchairs until sunset.

This day ends on a beautiful note!