Ruyton XI Towns

Surely one of the most exotic sounding places in the world yet until a few years ago barely known to any but intrepid back packers and 'Old Colonials'. Our link with Zanzibar stems from Yoland being one of the latter, having lived there as a child . Now we have friends there and are involved in raising funds for the hospital

A small island situated 25 miles off the east coast of Africa, with its name unchanged for a thousand years, Zanzibar and her sister island of Pemba are now part of Tanzania. This beautiful island is 50 miles long and 25 wide and set in the blue blue Indian ocean. The west side is green and fertile - described by Richard Burton in his inimitable way as "no trace of mountain or crag, but all was voluptuous with gentle swellings, with the rounded contours of the girl-negress, and the brown-red tintage of its warm skin showed through the gauzy attire of green". The more remote east side of the island, having less rain, is more scrubby and the white beaches are lined with coconut and swaying casurina trees.

Zanzibar and Pemba have more to offer than sunbathing and scuba diving for as the capital of the Indian ocean for hundreds of years, this has been the stopping off place for ships en route to India and far east as well as a centre of the slave and ivory trade. So much so that in 1832 the Sultan of Oman moved his capital here - the weather being so much more clement. In the 19th century, expeditions to the interior were manned, equipped and left from the island; the British slave rescue fleet operated out of the old arab town. In 1871 H M Stanley embarked on his search for Livingstone and 3 years later left with 680 men and women to cross the African continent.

A walk through the cool narrow streets of the old Stone Town, with its tiny shops and lethal bicycle riders negotiating the obstructions of playing children, shoppers and ambling tourists, feels more like a souk in any other part of the Arab diaspora, yet take a spice tour into the countryside and it is very definitely Africa at its most lush and green - not for nothing is this beautiful place known as the Spice Island of the Indian Ocean.