Sure Travel Journey 6.1 Summer 2020 | Page 10

W anderlust JOZANI FOREST, ZANZIBAR GO HERE WITH SURE TRAVEL: Mango Airlines flies three times a week from Johannesburg to Zanzibar, putting the magic of Jozani Forest in easy reach. Ask your Sure Travel consultant for great packages from our partners World Leisure Holidays, The Holiday Factory and Thompsons Tours. Contact your nearest Sure Travel agency to book, or visit www.suretravel.co.za for more details / call 0861 47 48 49 for a quote. 06 // // MAKE 10 MAKE MEMORIES MEMORIES FOR FOR LIFE LIFE A wooden boardwalk snakes through mangroves, medicinal plants and evergreen thickets, beckoning even the youngest of adventurers into Jozani Forest with its symphony of wildlife calls. This forest is home to the red colobus monkey, a peculiar-looking primate with untamed white bedhead, distinctive pink nose and stubbed thumbs. It’s one of the rarest monkey species on Earth, found only on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. Years ago, its numbers dwindled to around 2 000, but conservation efforts have seen this figure grow in recent years. Just 38km from Stone Town, this proposed World Heritage Site is a biodiversity hotspot. The 50km-square Jozani Chwaka National Park – Zanzibar’s only national park – was established as a protected area in the 1960s and offers sightings of Sykes’ monkeys, Ader’s duiker, elephant shrews, shy suni antelopes and more than 100 species of butterfly, including some as large as the adult human hand. Make sure your little adventurers keep their eyes peeled: they may be lucky enough to spot the legendary Zanzibar leopard, or “Chui”, reportedly last seen in 2003. Even if you don’t spot a leopard, there’s plenty to captivate the old and the young; simply follow the lead of a trained park ranger, who will guide you along the mahogany-lined nature trail with tales of folklore, medicinal cures and animal behaviour.