The main thing you notice when driving around Mauritius is that, as far as the eye can see, the landscape is densely green. A green jungle filled with lots and lots of sugar cane using up about eighty five percent of arable land on the island. Left, right, front and back, there they are, with white flowery feather-like tops dancing in the wind. It is winter and there can be a lot of wind. Can be…whoo-oosh! The flowers are beautiful and only appear at this time of the year because they’re ready to be harvested. Yep, that’s nature for you. You struggle to grow up, then just when you all sweet and pretty, you get the chop. Sugar cane is actually a type of grass, just fatter and juicier. The island is known for its sugar industry, and also for its rum. That’s where we tumbled in, right into the rum door…uhm…many rum doors 😝 but more about that later. Below left, sugar cane by day and right by sunset.

At first we wanted to learn more about this delicious plant, so we visited the Sugar Museum in Pamplemousses, called the “L’Aventure du Sucre”. This is definitely a MUST DO MUST SEE. There’s a guided tour where you will learn about the history of the island, hear interesting details about the sugar industry and get to nipple on a few rums. Jumping for joy…oops! There’s also a restaurant to ease those hunger pangs. Before the tour we took a walk around the grounds (pics below) and then had some lunch where we chose to eat the Mauritian food on offer. It was very tasty.

The tour, as mentioned, was very interesting. Amazing is also that nothing of the plant is thrown away. They use every bit of it, for juice, sugar, fertilizer, rum, bio ethanol and the fibres, the so called “bagasse” are burnt to generate at least sixty percent of the electricity needed to power up the whole island. Here you can also taste some of the many varieties of sugar produced (see glass bottles). Don’t mind the pink cow…

A rum tasting can be done after the tour as an optional event for an extra price. All the rums and liqueurs on offer for the tasting including those for sale are made by the Grays Distilling Ltd distillery and marketed under the brand name “New Grove”. We would have liked to do a distillery tour but it was not possible from their side. The tasting includes only rums from the standard range with very little poured into a small glass. The more exclusive single and double cask bottlings are not offered and cannot be purchased at the shop either. Other than rum and liqueurs there are also sugar goodies, souvenirs, textiles and some arts and crafts that can be bought if you wish.

We also loved the paintings on the walls on some of their buildings.

We ended off our day with a “not-really-there” sunset at our resort that was still pretty, and lots of dancing afterwards. Yep, we did the twist again 🎶