Rhotacism: can you say your r’s properly?; Yo ho ho – get thee to a rummery, go; The Residence Mauritius
A rhumerie is of course a place where rum is made. And the reason I wanted to start this post with Chamerel Rhumerie is that it was probably the highlight of our visit to the Indian Ocean island state of Mauritius.
Try saying “Chamerel Rhumerie” five times, as fast as you can. Tough, eh? And it would be even tougher if you suffered as I do from rhotacism, a speech impediment that makes it difficult to pronounce the letter “r”. Weirdly, in my case it’s just the English letter “r”. The gutteral Afrikaans “r” rolls rerig lekker (really nicely) off my tongue, and my raspy French “r” borders on the héroīque.
In fact, its Frenchness as a former colony of France was a big part of why I wanted to see a bit more of Mauritius. Also because so many people I know have been there – it’s a relatively short hop across the Indian Ocean from Durban, and consquently popular with South Africans.
(My first visit was in early 2019, when our Sydney-to-Durban cruise on the Viking Sun stopped at Mauritius for just one day. Click here for that blog post.)
Now we’d booked a five-night stay: a stopover on our Air Mauritius flight from Paris to Durban. (It’s a fairly good airline, by the way, with some great deals going.)
Hie thee to a rhumerie, go!
To get to Chamerel Rhumerie – located in the southwestern part of Mauritius and a good 90-minute drive from where we were staying on the East Coast – we hired the services of Vicky and his taxi for the day. (He’d given me his card during one of my walks on Belle Mare beach, where we were staying at The Residence.)
Vicky (WhatsApp +230 5753-1939 or vickytaxi@hotmail.com operates from the Belle Mare taxi stand on the public beach side of The Residence hotel. He charged us Rs 2,500 (€68) for the whole day, with as many stops en route as we liked.
We weren’t particularly demanding clients. I’d had a hard time prising Roy away from the Rugby World Cup on the telly in our hotel suite, and he was a bit sulky.
(In case you were wondering, my Engelsman supports the Springboks.)
When it came to stops along the way, I decided not to test my husband’s patience with the famous Seven Coloured Earths geological site. Also, after living in Durban for over 25 years and for another 15 in Singapore, I cannot see him ever entering another “must see” Hindu temple.
He agreed to a quick stop at Trou aux Cerf volcano. The hole itself is not very deep, and is covered with shaggy green growth. The viewpoint site did, however, offer a bit of a view, plus an ice-cream man vending snow-freeze cones topped with a synthetic raspberry gloop that noxiously lingered on my palate for three days.
We also stopped for this view (below) over the Black River Gorge: not the crowded official “viewpoint” but another, quiet one along the road.
Overall, it was lovely to be driven for 90 minutes each way across the island, through sugar cane plantations, past fields of fruit and vegetables and through the National Park.
Curepipe – the second-largest city – looks a lot more attractive than Port Louis – probably because it’s located inland and is not a port city.
These piles of volcanic rock have been cleared for growing sugar cane– the whole island is a sugar plantation, says Vicky. Sugar is indeed big in Mauritius, and nowadays especially for the making of rum.
Yo, ho ho!
A tour of Chamerel gives an entertaining overview of the process, from the delivery of the cut cane, chopping it up and crushing it to extract its sweet juice, to fermenting it, and then distilling it in one of two ways: the long column method and the double distillation method. (Chamerel is the only rhumerie on the island that does the latter, said our guide Charlene.)
Charlene led a tour for just four of us – Roy, me and and an Italian couple called Daniel and Sara. On the way, we could choose from four marvellous rum-based cocktails: a moquito for me, an old-fashioned for Roy; and then came a tasting of 9 bottles, five being rum, and the other four liqueurs (coconut, coffee, vanilla and seven spices).
For an extra fee, we also tasted three old rums: the single malt rum aged in McCallan casks; the Cognac rum, and the XO, aged in new French oak. (They also have a ten-year-old, which comes in a crystal bottle and costs 25 000 rupees (about €620).
An astounding 500 to 600 people come through here every day for the rum tour and tasting. If you book for lunch in the Chamerel restaurant – as we did – they waive the 400-rupee (about €10) fee for the tour and the tasting.
Already with a good buzz going, there was no need for wine with lunch. Roy had the lamb shank (top), and I had the saddle of lamb stuffed with spinach (above); 750 rupees each. After that, these two little piggies snoozed all the way back to their hotel.
The Residence, Mauritius
Our Colonial Senior Garden Suite at The Residence, a magnificent resort hotel perfeclty located on Belle Mare beach, was eminently suitable for my magnificent colonial senior huband.
There’s nothing wrong with the standard rooms, however. They’re all have a terrace, they’re all at least 54 square metres in size and they’re all equally lovely.
Mauritians speak their own brand of French Creole among themselves, and standard French for business purposes. Overall, we found the staff delightful.
Breakfast is in the buffet-style Dining Room, which overlooks both the pools and the beach. I wish I was keener on breakfast, because this was a fabulous spread, and it continues until 10.30am. Being on half-board, we had most of our dinners there too, and it was all excellent.
For example, the theme on our first night was Mauritian cuisine – piles of tiny local oysters, seafood salads, kebabs grilled à la minute, the local prawn vindye curry, and a fiery and instantly addictive green chilli paste. European cuisine was featured on the last night, and I didn’t get much further than the pan-seared foie gras.
At The Bar, the local rum and tonic became my new favourite. Every night after dinner, a variety of different musicians and singers entertained us from the baby grand. The last night featured local dancers with exceptionally jiggly nether regions. (I really should have videoed them.)
Free water activities include snorkelling and glass-bottomed boat expeditions, sailing lessons, windsurfing, SUP-boarding, pedal boats and aqua-bikes. (Scuba diving is extra.)
The hotel also has a fantastic spa. I am a huge believer in the health benefits of sauna, and so, apparently, is world champion sprinter Dina Asher-Smith. One afternoon I found myself sharing the sauna with her; only a week previously, she had blistered past the opposition to win the World Champs 200m.
A couple of hundred metres up the beach is the hotel’s other restaurant, The Plantation. Serving up fine-dining à la carte, it’s housed in a colonial plantation-style dwelling. The beachfront ambience was great, but we actually preferred the food at The Dining Room.
This was where I came for a cooking lesson – local fish curry with fresh parathas – and then Roy and I got to share it for lunch.
Postscript
After five lazy days in Mauritius, both Roy and I were ready to get home to family and friends in Durban.
But here’s something interesting: a view of the seriously volcanic Réunion Island through my window. That has to go on the list! – and I hear it’s just a short flight from Mauritius.
