Dawn will be our blog contributor for today.  I thing she has done a lovely job of summarizing a delightful day on Zanzibar.  Ross has also contributed one of the many pictures taken at the spice farm.  Take it away Dawn…

We woke as usual to the 5 a.m. call to prayer and then came a surprise. There was a flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder.  The skies opened to wonderful cooling heavy tropicaœrains. 

Today we met at 8:30 for our first cycling day in Zanzibar. By then the rains had stopped and we got to start our day without too much heat. We headed out of Stonetown to tour a spice farm . Cycling on the “wrong” side of the road in sometimes heavy traffic meant we had to keep our wits about us.  Today is Sunday so traffic was supposedly lighter than other days.  There were still a great number of local buses ,which are mini vans or open sided trucks with benches down each side. All were jam packed.  

The spice farm was about 14km and along the way we saw many new sights such as donkey and bovine  drawn carts and just local people living their lives.

The spice farm was not as many of us expected.  There were no manicured rows of single plant species.  Instead we were guided along meandering footpaths where a curry bush might be beside a clove tree, where ginger might be next to cardamon or pepper.  We were treated to many exotic samples to taste. along the way.  Our guides, who cycled out with us and the spice farm workers were entertaining and informative.  Towards the end of the tour we got to watch a young fellow climb a coconut tree , all the time singing Hakuna Matata (don’t worry). It was a very long way up that tree and it swayed with his weight as he neared the top.  He cut 12 coconuts and I think we were all surprised at the force with which they landed and the distance they travelled.   The coconuts were gathered up and we sat around while our guides prepared the coconuts so we each had a snack of coconut milk and flesh.  While we’d been walking the trails our guides had woven headgear for us from palm fronds.  One of us was crowned King of Spices.  Dan, you handled the honour royally!

Next came lunch of local food prepared with many of the spices we’d learned about.  Delicious.  The meal ended with many local fruits.

Our ride back was very hot. The only snag was a huge tree laying across the road which was backing up traffic in both directions.  A truck carrying a huge container had been so tall that it knocked a good part of the tree down.

All in all a very successful first cycling day.