Jakey Jake

Wednesday 16th June
Today we had a tour of some of the attractions of the island including a spice tour. Frist we visited the old portugese fort which was now converted into an ampitheater where it staged shows and dinner. Then we went next door to the house of wonders, which is now a museum but was previously the house of the arab sultan, which was designed and built by the british, also later bombed by the british in the worlds shortest war. After this we went to the site of the original slave trade spot. This was a place where such incredible brutality and shocking human rights abuses took place. Slaves were cpatured from all around tanzania, malawi, kenya, zambia and others and walked in chains to dar es salaam before being shipped over to zanzibar where they were locked up in tiny rooms, 50 men in one room and 75 women and children in another, those that survived 2-3 days of no food or water were taken to the whipping tree where they were whipped and thier prices increased if they didnt cry out or their prices dropped if they did. There is now a church over the exact site of the tree. Very sad, and the arabs still havent apologised, (as the americans still havent for vietnam). After the slave tour we headed out for a spice tour. Its no wonder this was such a busy port, within a 500m walk we came across crops of just about every spice there is, as well as all the fruit i mentioned was in teh markets. We came across lemon grass, nutmeg, vanilla, pepper, coco, chilli, clove, cardiman, cinamon, tumeric, ginger and many more i cant recall the names of. After this we returned to our hotel in stone town before we set off for Nungwi on the north eastern coast. After an hour and a half we arrived at the most scenic beach i have ever laid eyes on. The water was perfectly clear and turquoise before turning into a deep blue. the sand was white and super fine. It was heaven on earth, and full fresh crayfish was only 10 dollars at the restraunt including salad. cocktails were 2-3 dollars too… The only thing was there were very few people around and i wanted to do some partying. So i resigned myself to reading another book, this time it was the da vinci code, which took two days to read and was a pretty interesting book with a lot of facts about paganism, christianity, and symbolisim weaved into an intriguing story. Didnt do a heck of a lot this evening and called it a night pretty early.