Sailing around the World ( presently in Mauritius )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Thu 21 Oct 2010 05:30
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TUESDAY 19th
OCTOBER 2010
06.00hrs Aileen up and off to Mass
again,
Its another beautifull day in Paradise again, and
we spent some time planning our day and decided we would do the Tea
trail.
08.00hrs The diesel truck arrived, An
interesting here, there is no fuel berth at the harbour , or in fact for yachts
any where in Port Louis,
so we were lucky that the W, ARC were able to
organise a truck to come to the marina, otherwise it was going to be delivery by
jerry cans,
We took on board 650L of fuel , which just about
topped up the tank.
Skipper took the last of his tablets and did the
blog, while A did a quick trip around the town, Neil had a day off from his
diving course
but decided to stay around locally while the rest
of us went off on the Tea trail ..
10.300hrs We left port Louis and drove to The
Colonial house of the original owners of the tea plantation , which we were
about to visit.
The house , made mostly from local timber and
pieces from wrecked sailing ships , was interesting in that it had very steep
pitches on the roof,
something the skipper is very keen on. A
Paris type roof,, They reminded us of the roofs on " Watergold " in
Douglas , Cork, A building which was
designed by skipper. The
residence was called " Domaine Des Aubineaux" and was located near
Curepipe towards the south of the Island.
We spent 1.5hrs there and enjoyed all the
photographs, the antique furniture, and the history of the place which our guide
gave us.
We then drove some 20 km to " Bois Cheri " where
the Tea plantation and the Factory where located.
We started our visit with a tour of the factory
while it was still operating, The whole place looked like something from another
era, and the machenary
was definatly the original stuff, except it now had
diesel engines driving it all.
The Tea plant was originally introduced to
Mauritius around the mid 1600's by a Priest and it flourished in the climate
here.
They export only about 25% of what they produce,
the rest is comsumed domestically.
Most of the tea leaves are still picked by hand,
and then brought to the factory where they are put on warm air beds for 24
hours, this removes about 30% of the moisture and from there thr leaves are
chopped up and sent over a slow conveyor belt to ferment,
Eventually it is all packed in bags, most of
it loose, and the remainer in tea bags,
Talking of tea bags, When they first hit the market
in ireland, my father and all his generation were convinced that tea bags were
filled
with the dust swept up from the floors after the
real tea was packed into their bags, thats true,...................... the
reality is very different, The
tea bags are filled with tea made from the youngest
tea leaves picked by hand from the top of the tea plant and carefully
matured
in the factory..
The whole operation and rattling iron conveyor
belts reminded skipper of the Bottling Plant belonging to Cork Distelleries in
Morrisons Island, Cork
where his father was manager, and the lines of
girls sitting at the conveyor belt examining the whiskey in the bottles for any
forign objects which may have found a way into the whiskey bottle. I can
still smell the Whiskey !
Later, after an interesting tour, we drove 1.7km to
their restaurant and tea tasting rooms at the top of the hill, this overlooked a
large lake and was surrounded with acres and acres of tea plants, and also had a
great view down to the sea.
We tasted all the different tea blends, from "
Black Tea" to " Green Tea" to " Jasmine Tea " to Vinella Tea, and Mixed Berry
Tea ,
All very different and interesting, Of
course, the medicinal benifits of drinking tea was explained in great detail. so
we sipped down
gallons of the stuff.
When we were tead out, we left the plantation and
headed north again to the boat in Port Louis.
19.00hrs , we slipped over to the Hotel for dinner
and some drinks,
The dinner was excellent and all five of us enjoyed
the evning, hosted by Terry in honour of Colette's birthday.
Following a few night caps on board the boat later,
we all headed for ther scratchers, zzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZZZZ
zzzzzzzzz
Thats it for for now,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (
Skipper )
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