Before visiting Aruba, I did a lot of online sleuthing in preparation – I  especially wanted to discover the best spots to grab a bite to eat.  I was really excited when I discovered that there is an ostrich farm on Aruba!  For one thing, my husband and I had never seen an ostrich in person, and they’re pretty fascinating on their own.  Even better, the ostrich farm has a gift shop and a restaurant where they serve dishes made with ostrich meat and ostrich eggs.

If you’re not familiar with ostriches, they’re giant!  They look like giant, ambling, prehistoric birds that came straight off the set of Jurassic Park.  We opted not to go on the open-Jeep tour when I found out that they might be attracted to my glasses and would peck at them, me, and anything else shiny including jewelry.  However, we didn’t need to go on the tour, as the ostriches were perfectly happy to strut and pose for us from the other side of a chain-link fence.  And we were perfectly happy to have the fence there.

In the Savanna Lodge Bar and Restaurant at the ostrich farm, they serve a unique African-Caribbean fusion food.  We were able to sample an ostrich shoarma which is a pita sandwich filled with ostrich meat and an African spice mix.  It was delicious and the meat tasted very much like steak.

We were also lucky enough to try an ostrich omelette.  Since the ostrich is a very large bird, they lay very large eggs – so our ostrich omelette probably only used about an 1/8th or a 1/10th of an egg.  It tasted basically the same as a standard omelette made from a chicken egg, but the novelty factor was fun.

I also sampled African milk tart for dessert, which was sweet and very good.  I remember it being a bit like flan.

The gift shop even sold ostrich egg shells; unfortunately, stock was low and most had been broken by previous tourists.  It’s unlikely that we would have managed to get one home unscathed anyways, but they really are interesting conversation starters!  If you get the chance, ostrich meat and ostrich eggs are worth sampling.