Tour where my guides were also touring....
A raw chicken market, I have to say watching them cut it up has definitely put me off meat for a while......today was a full on tick the box I am signing up to a tour. Hang with some people.....which, for part of it I did and then the second part my tour organisers kept me company.....bit weird bringing your guides on a tour but there was something quite beautiful and welcoming of these two and fck it zero friends here!
Can't cook but will cook or try......So next dinner delights will be Swaheli based and next year's garden despite the wholly inappropriate climate will be spiced based...... Though maybe it's time to convince my brother he needs a temperature controlled greenhouse in that garden of his 🤣🤣🤣
Spice Tour and cooking lesson followed by Changa Island....... My first experience of Stone Town the historic Unesco town. Though I will be saving that for a stressful last day before I fly!
Started off with picking up two other people....yay some enforced friends for the day 🤗......Tiago and Marianna (from Porto would you believe it Fi).....and heading to the market with our two guides who doubled up as the driver Asheed and chef Lucinda.
Off to the market full of colour and abundance....how you decide which particular person who is selling the same thing, that you want to go to I will never know.
Having picked chicken and fish as part of our cooking these were our first stops
Not an ice block in sight not that they would last long and not even a sniff in the air. The prevalence of fish, squid, octopus prawns was incredible. The massive yellow fin tuna just lying on the floor blew my brain and the chunk of tuna we bought back home would be the cost of my whole day touring.
Ingredients gathered now to go pick some spices before cooking lunch.
Touring the spice farm we had a lovely guide who played 'Guess that spice' in Portuguese and English!
Cloves they are truly bonkers grow on trees and look like below until they are dried out.....
I have already forgotten half the stuff I learnt or what the hell the photos of green plants I carefully took are, but you will all be none the wiser so ha ha.....
Though I did remember this one because he said the fruit sinks like toilet but tastes like chocolate and is also found in Sri Lanka.......Durian fruit
I don't remember ever being given a toilet smelling chocolate 🤣 such child deprivation mum dad!
Anyway I have concluded that I could grow Lemongrass (I have already tried this, well thought I was, but just carefully nurtured grass) turmeric, ginger and peppercorns and once my brother has built the temperature controlled greenhouse.....(I believe if you say things enough they will happen......does of course require him reading this. Fairly sure a thumbs up on the book is just a headline reading view 😂. You have been sprung PeeWee).....I can strive to grow vanilla, cloves and avocados more successfully.
Spicy presents and some Chanel0 (that's a whole other story) purchased we wandered back to cook.
Pilau rice
Chicken pilau
Fish tandoori
Vegetable pilau
Plantain dessert
I never knew pilau rice was boiled and then baked and these little charcoal fired BBQs became an oven when you popped a lid on and covered it with coals......another mildly perilous situation with kitchen towel for oven gloves and free roaming hot coals....but it's all in the mind!
Following lunch we dropped my enforced friends back to their accommodation and headed to sea.
We got out at Stone Town beach and wow if I hadn't seen a significant part of the island I would think wow.....but here you have the collision of population, industry and a port!
We all got on the motorised Dhow.....I mean really it has taken the traditional shape from the original Dhow sailing boats buts it's their fibreglass equivalent chuck a 20hp on the back and PeeWee in Popeye you have nothing on this guy's crazy assed driving. Flat out zigzagging everywhere, creating some full excitement for the other laden filled tour boats and getting some squeals out of my guide. Finishing up with a maximum speed at the beach 180 parking manoeuvre that even I questioned how we weren't going to hit the beach and how painful my fall would be.
I had read online about people saying how the safety of these boat trips is lacking ,not a lifejacket in sight in any of my trips so far......sorry bean more mild peril. I think like the roads it's less lacking and more developing towards it and simply they are more allowed to assess their own risks. I suspect though it will be a tourist accident that changes it, where a guide over stretches themselves for their living. I however was quite happy that I could make the swim should I need to, not so sure about my tour guides though.
As we whizzed over to Prison or Changgu island......apparently a fisherman used to catch the white fish Changgu off the back of the island and when he went to market and was asked where he caught them he said off Changgu...true or not it's a nice story and one of the better ones associated with this island.
Apart from being called Prison Island it was also officially called Quarantine Island.
Depending on what you read or who you talk to this island did or didn't ever hold slaves but it very much was a place of quarantine. As Zanzibar became a strong port for trade routes and potentially transmission of disease and so it was made a 'hospital/quarantine' island. Then it was given some tortoises which are know maaaaaaaaaaassssssiffff and 192 yrs old. Wonder what species mum and dad have...
Me trying not to be hypocritical.....but they were on the path.
It is currently in a rebuild having been made a resort by the government it then became a Corona virus victim and desolate....An italian has purchased the islands and is starting g to develop/reform it. Which long term will no doubt be good especially for the tortoises which they have started off by saying you can't touch them. In the short term I understand the frustration of the locals at the change and increase in costs. However, I always struggle to understand over interaction with animals and when my guide asked me if I wanted the tortoise to stand and I said no, he said it's okay they like it it's massage, I couldn't help but want to carry them all away
Weirdly the buildings here use the trees for support.......that might have been lost in translation though!
A little swim off the island where I mainly got nibbles at by tiny crabs and back home, well to the hotel
I was fading fast....., you are fading fast reading this never mind the incremental mistakes occurring as I fade fast writing it!
Not going to lie trying to keep the one mile streak up is almost breaking me.....but I pushed myself out and always feel better for it. I also provide amusement for the locals who see me out every night give or take going up and back along the beach, sometimes they run with me, but they're never trying to sell me anything......finally.
Even better on my return I discovered it was movie night
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