Story from Auld wanderer

We're in Guadeloupe so it was no hardship to adjust to the Caribbean pace of life! So after another December morning lazing in the sun, only rousing ourselves to get some delicious freshly baked croissants, we decided we ought to do something. But what?We're in Guadeloupe, it's got multiple rum distilleries! It would be negligent not to.. So we jumped in the car and headed south. My wife was driving, I assured her if we kept going, we would find a distillery. And true enough, we soon did. We parked up. Went towards the shop and it looked like the guys who worked there were just locking up. What? In my best French, I said we would love to go on a tour of the distillery. Despite my best efforts at fluent French, one of the girls replied in impressive English that we had missed all the tours which had happened in the morning. And on top of that, the shop was closing.We must have looked crestfallen. Because the next words that were spoken were not words I had ever expected to hear on holiday in the Caribbean. They were "would you like to come to our.... ....team meeting?" Eh? I had visions of flip charts or PowerPoint presentations and was huffily about to storm off leaving them in no doubt what I thought of their offer....fortunately my wife was more perceptive and smoothly accepted the invite. Before I could protest, she was following the girls and almost immediately, I could hear music, and it got louder until we swung round a corner to find djs, a bar full of rum, a table rammed with lovely food, all in the open air. And as I think I mentioned, my lovely wife was driving! Yes, what they had called their " team meeting" was their staff Christmas party which we had fortuitously stumbled upon. Every one of the folk there made us feel so welcome. They were generous, very hospitable and we had such a joyful day. The rum helped of course but these are the kind of lucky surprises that not only revives one's faith in humanity, but helps to make travel such a delight.