Seychelles Adventure: Takamaka Rum Factory

Hmmm, a Rum factory? Of course we're going! We actually had a nice tour of the place - very small - and then got to taste some of their rum. Unfortunately the restaurant wasn't open for lunch as it was a really beautiful setting and would have been nice to hang out there for a bit and enjoy.

This is the waiting area for the tour. A cute little house with a fancy sitting room.

They grind all the sugar cane by hand. It hardly looks like enough for the operations, but it's a small outfit.

This is the raw sugar cane juice before getting filtered and distilled.

Distilling

They store the rum in French oak barrels like this one.

Takamaka makes 5 varieties (and we got to taste them all!)

 

Out behind the 'factory' they have a large garden with a bunch of different herbs and spices and a historic ruin (can't remember what the ruin was - a house I suppose).

The forgotten ruin . . . literally.

 

And this guy is a fruit that has lots of good healing properties but smells absolutely vile! Kind of like gorgonzola cheese left out in the sun.  Even our guide wasn't willing to touch it with her bare hands for fear they would smell the rest of the day!

Seychelles Adventure: Island Tour

We decided to start our adventure with an island tour - in part to get our bearings and to get some local flavor. We signed up for a tour with Discovery Agri Tour based on ratings from Trip Advisor. While not exactly what we expected, we did have a great day exploring some of the lesser known parts of the island and learning tons about the flora and fauna.

This is a skink - very tiny, cute little thing that looks a bit like a lizard. I think the name is cool.

I wish I could name all the beaches in these photos, but despite our guide's constant quizzing, I don't remember. In hindsight, I should have asked Brad to guest-blog as he probably remembers them all! :)

Yep, they really are that beautiful. And half the day was cloudy so that makes the photos even more impressive.

A trip to the local market - now that's fresh fish!!

 

Okay, this guy, not so cute, but pretty impressive. from leg to leg, he's about the span of your palm. We were told he isn't poisonous.

Seychelles Adventure: Indian shops and getting lost

Last December, we spent 5 days in the gorgeous Seychelles with our best friends. It was hot, steamy and oh so green (especially coming from the sandbox!).

We arrived and picked up our rental car - a small, boxy thing that barely fit the four of us and our luggage. Confident we could navigate the small island, we set off in search of lunch, a sim card for the phone and our villa.

Shortly after leaving the airport, we found a little area of  town with some shops so pulled in to see if we could find a sim card. We were told to go to the "Indian shops" and they will have one.

Indian shops? What exactly does that mean? We looked for a group of shops named "Indian" but of course found nothing of the sort. Eventually, we figured out that these were little corner shops owned by Indians. Well, we found one, but they didn't have the right size sim card so no luck there. We did eventually visit the local Telecom office and get set up. Only to find out that internet service was down . . . across the ENTIRE island! We just laughed.

The other funny moment was as we were driving around, we saw "a bus station?". We all speculated on what the terminal looking building was until one of us finally realized it was the airport!! We had made a complete circle and were right back where we started. Things were not looking good!

But we did find some lunch and eventually our villa, which was gorgeous and overlooking the beach. Settled at last, we broke out the cards for a game of 500.

Memory Lane

We've been thinking a lot about family lately for a number of different reasons so thought I'd pull out some photos of their Abu Dhabi Adventures. Enjoy.

This set is from our first family visit in February 2012.

This is the second group to visit in January 2013.

The Carpet Souk: Three Years Later

They say the more things change, the more they stay the same and we found that to be true when we decided to buy a couple of additional carpets for our new place. We had so much fun the first time we visited the carpet souk that we decided to go back again. Figuring now that we knew how it worked, we could get an even better bargain.

The difference this time is that we wanted some Arabian style rugs, which we knew varied a lot in quality and price. We also knew we didn't know enough about Persian, Iranian or Turkish carpets to know if we were getting a good deal. So, like we always do, we set a budget in our minds and off we went to do the best we could.

Just like the first time, the minute we drove up, the carpet sellers started in. Beckoning us into the stores "just look madam" "very good carpet madam" "very good quality". From our trip 3 years ago (almost to the day) we knew that the shops all had about the same types of carpets so we picked one at random, settled in and started to explain what we were looking for.

They chased around and unrolled carpet after carpet, while we pointed out what we liked and what we didn't. Eventually, we settled on 2 larger rugs and then the bargaining began. It was as fun and entertaining as the first go around and to hear them talk, we bargained them out of their livelihood. In reality, we probably still paid too much, but we were all happy enough with the price.

As we started to wrap things up (and as a final negotiating tactic) we pulled out the photo below and explained that we had been here 3 years ago. Did they know if this man still had a shop here?

"Of course, madam! He is my father." And off they went to track him down so we could say hello . . . and we did get a few dirham more off the price for being such loyal customers. ;)