Hi there my Hivean friends and followers!
As promised several times in my previous posts about Zanzibar, I ´m excited to finally take you to the one and only national park of this extraordinary Tanzanian archipelago, the famous Jozani National Park. Located in the southern half of the Unguja Island, the park is officially called the Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park (as you can see in the picture below depicting the welcome sign at the entrance gate) but it´s usually refer to just as "Jozani".
Occupying an area of just some 50 sq km (19 sq mi), the park must be one of the smallest national parks that I have ever visited but the place is literally packed with incredibly rich and diverse nature so I totally enjoyed every single minute that we got to spend there. Right after entering the park, you will find yourself surrounded by this amazingly dense, lush and green tropical vegetation.
I don´t remember everything that our guide told us but I know that even though the park is so small, there are actually hundreds of different species of plants and trees to be found there, many of which are used in the traditional Swahili medicine. Some of the species are also endemic, which means that they only live on this island and nowhere else.
Literally just a few meters into the park tour, we started to find the first little curious inhabitants of the forest...
I wish we could stay longer as I would love to explore the park thoroughly and find as many of its creatures as possible but unfortunately, our time there was quite limited so the guide wasted no time and took us to meet the most famous animal of the park, an iconic monkey species known as the Zanzibar Red Colobus. As the name of this adorable furry creature suggests, it´s an endemic species too.
The monkeys are pretty small with adults weighing just around 10 kg (22 lb) on average and from what I observed, they spend most of their time in the tree canopies, feeding on tropical fruits, seeds, shoots and leaves. As you can see below, they have this super cool "haircut" :) It was not so difficult to take even these close up pictures of them as they are obviously used to the human presence. There was a lot of people trying to photograph the monkeys but I didn´t have to worry about the furry fellas´ comfort as whenever they felt disturbed by the people, they would just climb up higher on the trees, out of the reach of the cameras :)
It was a really nice and special experience to be able to hang out with the monkeys for a while, watch them playing and doing their things in their natural environment but we had to carry on. After that, out tour continued in a very different kind of environment. The mangrove forests are a part of the national park too.
We already knew the mangroves from our travels around Central America and we used to see them very often when we lived in Mexico so these were not new to us but the mangroves are such amazing trees / shrubs that I could observe them for hours every time I see some :) I´m pretty sure I wrote a whole post about mangroves and how important they are for nature but I cannot find it.
In Mexico, mangrove forests like these were often home to crocodiles. As far as I know, there are no crocs on Zanzibar but I´m sure these places are extremely rich in fauna as well. Actually, that reminds me another thing about the park that should be mentioned here. In the past, the Jozani National Park used to be home to the elusive Zanzibar Leopard and while the guides like to say that this magnificent beast may still live there, I´m pretty sure it´s not true. The leopard hasn´t been seen for more than 20 years so most official wildlife organizations actually consider the animal to be extinct. It´s really sad and I would love to believe the rumours but considering the tiny size of the park and the crowds of visitors walking around the forest every day, it´s literally impossible that the leopards would be living there without been seen for so long. But I don´t want to wrap up this post in this melancholic way. It really is an amazing place that every nature would enjoy so much and I cannot recommend it highly enough ;)
So that´s it for today, thanks for your attention guys. I still have a few more posts about Zanzibar to make for you though so stay tuned. Until then... Hakuna Matata! :)
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