What do you do while in Bundaberg?

Enjoy an ice cold bundaberg ginger beer of course!

And what else do you do?

Visit the Bundaberg rum distillery of course!

yum yum.

everyone loves rum.

...except me

To be totally honest I don't think I've ever actually tried the stuff. I know, I know. Some would say "*GASP!!!* How dare you be a bartender in this beautiful state of Queensland and never try our local rum?!?"

Yea okay, my bad. But I've just always been a whiskey girl myself and never got around to trying it. I'll add it to my to-do list before I leave Australia.

I think seeing the distillery was a bit more of the 'just because I was here' adventure. You can't really go to the town of Bundaberg and NOT visit the BUNDABERG distillery. That would just be an outrage wouldn't it?? So I did the touristy thing, and I went. And took my photo with the giant bottle of rum. But apparently I was "doing it all wrong". Some woman who was walking by me as I was taking the photo informed of this. She said I was supposed to kiss the bottle because "it's the best stuff out there."

Uh. Yea..

Thanks.

I found out the reason behind the polar bear on the bottle though! They chose the polar bear because it implied that just a nip of bundaberg could ward off the coldest chill. (There should be some quotes in there somewhere, not my own words.)

Hooray for random facts!

Anyways, after our sort-of-tour of the distillery we popped over to the bundaberg ginger beer factory. Unfortunately we weren't allowed in to theirs, but we could pay to walk through their self guided tour about how ginger beer came about and then get samples at the end.

For those of you who know me, and for those who don't, anything that has 'free' or 'samples' in the sentence wins me over EVERY time.

Interesting information. Cute little interactive story. Extremely weird holographic movie at the end about "Doug the bug" who was actually yeast.. The good news is I learned something new today about ginger. It used to be dried, ground and sprinkled over your ale. Hence, 'ginger beer'.

Pretty nifty eh?

Anyone...?

...

Well the free samples were awesome. 16 different flavors that the company makes at the factory, and about 10 of them were delicious! A few 'diet' drinks, and a weird cola flavor which were not so. But it was nice to be able to experience all of the flavors that they offer. The samples were only about 15 ml of each, but after 16 of them, I felt like an over-carbonated balloon about ready to pop. With a full belly, and a sugar rush over taking, I walked out of the shop $7.95 broker and a six pack of bundaberg assorted drinks fuller.

The rest of the arvo was a lazy one. Spent sun baking on a gorgeous beach and throwing handfuls of wet sand at Adrien while he attempted to run away. The beaches are progressively getting warmer as we head more and more North. I can't wait to see what the beaches are like up near the Whitsundays. I might just die and go to heaven.

Tomorrow we are in for an exciting day!! We are going scuba diving tomorrow!

FINALLY!!!!

I cannot express how happy I am to finally have found a spot that can take us out. Every time we have tried so far, the weather has been crap, or the boats aren't running. Even the reason of 'no one does diving around here'.

HUMPH.

Well we finally found a shop and we are doing two shore dives tomorrow! Never done one of those but I'm excited to get back in the water and try out something new and different. :) Hopefully we will see a manta ray!

Anyways, time for this mermaid's beauty rest.

x