We fly from Campi Ya Kanzi to Zanzibar, now part of Tanzania, via Mombassa. After the bush, it feels good to be back to civilization in cospmopolitan Stone Town, Zanzibar’s old town.
Zanzibar is the archetypical “Spice Island”. Controlled over its 2000 year history by native tribes, Persians, Arabs, Portuguese, Germans, the British, it gained its independence from Britain in 1963 and subsequently merged with Tanganyika to form the Union of Tanzania.
A part of the Sultanate of Oman since the 1830’s and until 1964, Zanzibar’s tropical climate lends itself to the cultivation of all sorts of spices, which became its major source of wealth. Today, she remains the world’s largest exporter of clove.
