Zanzibar is world-renowned as “the spice island” and as such, spice tours are one of the highlight activities for many travelers who make their way here. I *love* flavorful food, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go on a spice tour myself!

I was picked up punctually at 9am and at around 9:10, settled into a taxi with another tourist, a driver, and our guide. It was about an hour drive to the spice farm, so Eva and I found a pleasant rhythm of chitchat to get us through the ride.

When we got there, we foundout that we actually were having our own private tour, so we set out into the farm immediately. We saw SO MANY things that I’m only going to be able to share a few highlights here, but I’ll say in advance, you’ve GOT to do a Spice Tour if you find yourself in Zanzibar!

These first little guys are “Green” peppers. You bite into them and you DEFINITELY feel the pepper-quality. This was the very first thing we tasted, and we about cried.

This grass is pretty common, so I’m sure you guessed what it is already – lemongrass! We were able to rub this on our wrists and ankles not only for the scent, but for its natural mosquito-repellent qualities.

This next beauty is pretty common, but it was so tasty I had to share – passionfruit!

Gigantic, prickly and green… before coming to Tanzania I had NO idea what this was, or if it was even edible! Jackfruit is one of the largest fruits in existence, and it’s pretty sweet, if you can get past the syrupy goo that comes out when you first cut into it.

These little beans are exactly that—but they’re not your run of the mill beans, they’re VANILLA BEANS. Yep, I was joyfully surprised as well to see that they grow just like any other bean.

Next is one of the PRETTIEST things we saw, and I can’t for the life of me recall its name…but if you look at that beautiful, swirling red center, that’s what MACE is made out of! It’s one of the highest concentrations of pepper growing wild.

This pretty orange pod houses incredibly fragile pouches which contain…tamarind! Used for nothing really except color, we had a good time mashing the pods and adding temporary color to our hennas.

We then walked into an area full of “bruised” trees – it looked like their bark had been peeled away and then allowed to grow back, which was exactly the case. These trees are the bearers of CINNAMON and when harvested properly, the trees will heal and produce the spice for many years.

As we perused a few more spices and their plant origins, we were filled up the leaf baskets we had been handed at the start of our tour. We ended up with something of our own natural “spice bouquet,” so to speak.

Our guide and his assistants also continually adorned us with natural jewelry, which we couldn’t say no to either…

After our tour through the farm, we were treated to a vegetarian lunch cooked out in the bush, which was a delicious curry made with many of the spices we had picked that day in the farm.

We also, of course, posed for full body photos with our floral adornments.

After the spice tour, we hopped back in the taxi and I assumed we were heading back to town.

I was so wrong.

Apparently this was a full day tour!

Next up was Coral Cavern Mangapwani – I was completely unprepared.

DO NOT WEAR FLIPFLOPS ON YOUR SPICE TOUR.

Coral Cavern Mangapwani is an old, completely unlit cavern, that is exactly what it sounds like – it’s a cave made of coral! It begins seemingly inland in an innocuous area, but it leads out onto the most beautiful beach… but you’d never know it from the inside!

When you come out, you’d also never imagine that there’s a huge underground world beneath this dark spot in the rocks…

Finally, we arrived at the most gorgeous, almost completely empty beach.

I just had to throw a little Theta Nu…

Since, again, I didn’t know we were going to the beach, I didn’t have a towel or a suit, I didn’t end up going swimming. However, I *did* discover these awesome coral deposits, and I made my own adventure out of them…

I debated climbing them, tried, and failed #flipflopproblems…

So I ended up settling for learning how to use the auto-timer to take my own jumping pictures.

Alllllll in all, NOT A BAD DAY!