Made on the Island: The Local Products We Actually Brought Home From Rodrigues
From a citronella body cream made by hand to honey that doesn't taste like anything we'd had before, here are the local products from Rodrigues that earned a spot in our backpack.
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6/17/20262 min temps de lecture
We didn't come to Rodrigues looking for souvenirs. If anything, we've gotten pretty good at avoiding them — two backpacks and three months on the road don't leave much room for fridge magnets nobody needs.
But a few things here changed our mind. Not because they were marketed well — most of them aren't marketed at all — but because they're actually made here, by people who live a five-minute walk from where you buy them. That's a different kind of souvenir.
This is a running list. We're adding to it as we find more, so if you're reading this before a trip, check back — there might be a fourth or fifth product by the time you land.
Bee Coco Cream Citronelle: The Body Cream We Didn't Expect to Love
No factory, no big brand, no packaging designed by an agency. Just a small local production making a citronella body and hair cream that actually works — and smells like it was made by someone who cares whether it works, not just whether it sells.
Citronella is everywhere on this island for a reason — the mosquitoes take their job seriously — so a cream that doubles as skincare and natural repellent makes more sense here than it would anywhere else. It's the kind of product that's useful first and a souvenir second, which might be exactly why it works as both.
Miel Victoria: The Best Honey We've Had on This Trip
We've tried a lot of honey in a lot of places. Miel Victoria is local honey from local hives, and it's not close — this is genuinely some of the best we've tasted anywhere, anytime.
They also make honey candies, which didn't survive the day in our backpack. Not exaggerating — we ate them before getting back to where we were staying. That's not a great endorsement for portion control, but it's a very good one for the candies.
This is the kind of product you can't really get anywhere else, because it depends entirely on what's growing on this specific island, pollinated by bees that have never seen anywhere but here.
Zil Tropikal: The Shop in Port Mathurin That Makes Everything In-House
You have to actually wander around Port Mathurin to find this one — it's not the kind of shop that shows up first when you search for things to do. Zil Tropikal makes t-shirts and small gadgets right there, designed and produced locally instead of shipped in from somewhere else with "Rodrigues" printed on it as an afterthought.
Follow them at @zil.tropikal if you want a preview before you go — though honestly, the shop itself is worth the wander even without one.
Why We Bothered Writing About This
We have a rule for souvenirs now, mostly learned the hard way after years of buying things we didn't need: skip whatever's mass-produced and look for what's actually made where you are. Rodrigues makes that rule easy to follow, because most of what's mass-produced doesn't even bother making the trip out here — what you find is mostly the real thing, by default.
None of these products are going to show up in a duty-free shop. That's the whole point.
More to come as we find more — this is very much a living list. If you've found a local product on Rodrigues that deserves a spot here, tell us.