Spice Farm Tour with Swahili Lunch, Zanzibar

The spice farms of central Zanzibar

Zanzibar's spice farms cluster in the fertile centre of the island around Kizimbani, Kidichi and Dole, about half an hour from Stone Town. Cloves were planted here in the early nineteenth century under the Omani sultans and for a long time the island supplied a large share of the world's crop; today the farms grow a mixed garden of spices, fruit and medicinal plants under coconut palms. A Zanzibar spice tour is the classic way to understand why the island was so valuable.

Your guide walks you from plant to plant, cutting bark and leaves for you to smell and guess: cinnamon, whose bark and root smell different, nutmeg wrapped in red mace, vanilla orchids, black pepper vines, cardamom, turmeric, ginger, lemongrass and the lipstick tree. Fresh fruit is cut open along the way, and a farmer usually climbs a coconut palm to fetch drinking coconuts. Allow about an hour and a half on the farm.

The spice merchant

After the farm the tour stops at a spice merchant, the next step in the chain between the plantation and the kitchen. Here you see how cloves, cinnamon and pepper are dried, sorted by grade and packed, and how blends such as the Zanzibar pilau mix or masala tea spice are put together. It is a good place to ask about how spices are stored and used at home.

If you want to buy, this is the moment: the spices are fresh, and you can have them vacuum-packed for the flight. The stop is short, around twenty minutes, before the drive to the coast for the meal. Questions about spice tours in Zanzibar often ask whether the farm visit is enough on its own; the merchant stop and the meal are what make this tour different from a simple farm visit.

A Swahili culinary journey on the cliffs

The highlight of the tour is the meal, served at a restaurant perched on a cliff above the Indian Ocean on the island's coast. Swahili cuisine is the cooking of the East African coast: coconut, lime, chilli and the spices you have just seen in the ground, used in dishes such as pilau rice, fish in coconut sauce, octopus curry, spiced vegetables and chapati. The chef's menu takes you through several of these in turn.

The meal includes a main course and a dessert, often a coconut or spiced-fruit sweet, followed by spiced coffee or spiced tea; other drinks are paid separately. There is time to sit with the view before the drive back. Halal food is the norm throughout Zanzibar, and vegetarian plates can be arranged if you tell us when booking.

Stone Town, the starting point

The shared tour meets on Mizingani Road beside the Old Fort, the Omani-built fortress on the Stone Town seafront, next to the Forodhani Gardens and a few minutes' walk from the ferry port and most hotels in the old town. If you are staying in Stone Town it is the easiest place to find; if you are on the coast, the private option with hotel pickup saves you a taxi, or combine the tour with a day in town.

The round trip from the fort to the farm is about half an hour each way. Departures are at 9:30 am and 2:00 pm for the shared tour; the morning is cooler on the farm and the afternoon ends with the late light on the water at the restaurant. The spice farm is open all year, and the best time to visit Zanzibar's spice farms is during the drier months, although the plantations are greenest just after the rains.