Tour to the Mangroves - 18.09.2019

09.00 AM

Today we start our tour to the east of the island. Besides us, there are also 3 French people and one German participating in the tour.

We start with a jeep ride across various gravel roads. We make a short stop at a viewpoint.

After about 20 minutes, we stop at a beach.

From here, we continue by boat to a snorkeling spot. It's beautiful, but there aren't many corals.

After about an hour, we stop at a pier and receive the menu for lunch in the boat. We choose something and then continue. I've never experienced anything like this before.

We go to another beautiful small beach, where our guide advertises the amazing shower. It's actually a bucket of water from a well poured over your head. Let's just say, it's an interesting experience.

Afterwards, we drive through the mangroves. These trees grow in saltwater and it's a wonderful sight.

In the middle of the trees, we stop and walk past pineapple plants and rice fields on quite interesting wooden bridges.

Our guide Jonathan tells us a bit about the plants and shows us orange and lemon trees, lemongrass, cloves, vanilla, cinnamon, and chuchu. Chuchu is a mix of potatoes and squash and grows on a tree, pretty crazy.

The hike ends at a small restaurant, where we are served the ordered food (a 3-course menu). One thing is for sure, we're all completely full.

We return by boat. However, after about 100 meters, the engine starts to malfunction. Our guide retrieves spark plugs from the back corner of the luggage compartment and hands them to me to give them to our skipper. When I hold them in my hand, they almost slip from my hands, and everyone's face expression freezes, including mine. But everything is fine, I manage to hold on to them and give them to the skipper. That would have been a disaster if I were to blame for us floating somewhere in the middle of the sea.
After about an hour, we reach our starting point at the beach again. Franzi and I sit in the back of the jeep this time. I've definitely experienced more comfortable rides. My buttocks (which still hurts from our bike tour) hurts even more because of all the potholes :-(

05.00 PM

Back at the hotel, we're still so full that we can't imagine surviving another 3-course menu later. That's why we enjoy the sunset and the beautiful starry sky extensively today before going to dinner at eight to at least enjoy a bit of the menu. As a nightcap, we have l'exier de l'amour. Some mixture of rum, pepper, and vanilla.
It definitely packs a punch. Good night ;-)