Spice tour

Zanzibar is also known as the spice island and for very good reason: its main cash crop for export is cloves.

We were picked up early in the morning to have a tour of some of the spice farms on the island. It was an interesting tour where we got to try many of the fruits and spices we came across.

Did you know that:

- The jack fruit (a large, knobbly appendage of a fruit that hangs down from trees) is the largest fruit about?
- Papaya (the fruit) can help to relieve constipation while the leaves on the papaya tree can help to block you up if you have diarrhoea?
- If you grow lemongrass close to your house it makes a fantastic mosquito repellent?
- Black pepper, white pepper and red pepper are just different stages of the seeds of the same plant and that the plant is actually a vine which is grown on acacia trees
- A single pineapple plant will only grow one pineapple each year
- Cardamom seeds taste foul if you chew them without realizing what they are
- Cinnamon sticks are actually pieces of bark off a tree