Delicious Mauritius

"Mauritius was made first, and then heaven; and that heaven was copied after Mauritius."  -  Mark Twain, who visited Mauritius in his life.  I've come across this quote a number of times while researching the island and I love it.  I've also read that it is completely out of context.  Oh well.  It still gets the point across.

I've heard Mauritius referred to as Europe's Hawaii, and I can see the similarities - a lengthy plane ride away, tropical beaches, a well-developed tourist industry. I haven't been to Hawaii (yet!), but I think that may be insulting to Mauritius.  It was absolutely beautiful, and I'm already trying to figure out a way to get back there someday.

Mauritius is a tiny island off the east coast of Madagascar.  It was a colony of the Dutch, then the French and then the British before becoming independent in the late 1960s.  The diplomat who gave the diplomatic briefing talked about it as a model for Africa, and an example of a country that has done things "the right way."  There is a huge sugar cane export on the island, and the tourist industry was intentionally built to be geared at wealthy European/South African tourists.  The other defining aspect of Mauritius is its diversity: it is a melting pot of religion and ethnicity.  Its people are African, Indian, Malay, and Chinese; major religions include Hindu, Christianity, and Islam; most people speak at least 3 languages - Creole, French, and then English as a third language although it is the official language.

Anyway, that's Mauritius.

We arrived early and helped out with customs and immigration.  Coming into port it looked a bit like Cape Town with the mountains close to the shore.  After our diplomatic briefing, we packed up and grabbed a minibus cab up to the North part of the island to a beach called Pereybere.  Our villa was a 5 minute walk from the beach and it also had a pool 4 feet from our front door.  We dumped all of our stuff in the villa and then headed to the beach, which was gorgeous and quiet.  Actually, a bunch of us had to buy beach towels first because we didn't have any.  We paid European tourist prices, for sure.  But then we laid around the beach for awhile and swam in the relatively warm Indian Ocean (after shark diving in the Atlantic, it felt like bath water). 

We grabbed lunch at a nearby cafe and laughed as Chris ordered the American sandwich and was presented with a GIANT baguette stuffed with 2 chicken sausages, salad, and either potatoes or cheese.  We're pretty sure nobody had ordered it before and the waiter went back to the kitchen and said "SOMEONE ACTUALLY ORDERED THE AMERICAN SANDWICH! What should we do?!" 

After lunch we decided to rent a glass bottom boat for an hour and go snorkeling off the coral reef just offshore.  I don't think I've ever been in a glass bottom boat, but it was pretty cool.  The water was so clear, you could see all the way down.  Just driving out to our snorkeling spot we saw a ton of beautiful fish and a lot of coral.  It's pretty sad - much of the reef has died because of climate change. 

We threw down our anchor and hopped in!  I had never been snorkeling, so Jodi showed me the way.  It takes a few swallows of salt water to get the hang of it, but I got it pretty quickly and swam along the reef and chased some fish.  I saw tons of fish, and I wish I knew the names of them...  but there were a bunch of the circular, flat yellow ones, and some of the blue & black striped ones, and then a few turquoise/purple ones.  You know.  THOSE fish.  Jodi was really happy with the snorkeling, which says a lot because she has snorkeled off of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.  I'm looking forward to going again in Hawaii.

We got back to the beach and hung out for awhile longer, trying to get the last few minutes of sunshine.  After the beach, some of us grabbed a cab to a supermarket to buy some breakfast items, some drinks, and some snacks.  Then we went to dinner at a really nice restaurant on the beach.  I had the prawn and chicken curry, which was very good.  I also had the Phoenix beer, the favorite local beer.  The bottles even say "Phoenix - the Famous beer of Mauritius." 

Our second day was somewhat similar - we left the villa and went to the beach for a few hours.  While we had seen only a couple SAS students the day before, we ran into a bunch of SAS people the second day.  Many of them were friends of ours, so that was fun.  We didn't stay all day because we wanted to get a taste of Port Louis before returning to the ship.  While we had paid about $11 per person for the cab ride TO the beach the day before, we decided to take the public bus back to Port Louis for 30 rupees - $1.  While waiting for the bus, a man hopped off his motorbike to come and say hello.  He shook each of ours about 7 times and collected seeds from a nearby tree to feed his daughter's parrot.  He spoke 6 languages and was very happy that we had come from the US.  He kept saying "long flight" and I kept saying "we're in a ship" but I think maybe he didn't know that word (I also have trouble remembering vocab in my 6th language).  He was fun to talk to.  The bus hadn't arrived, but a man in a minibus pulled over and was an off-duty minibus driver.  A lot of cabs had tried to get our business at the bus stop and we had turned them down.  He asked us how much we wanted to pay and we said "30 rupees" and he said "how about 100 each?" (like $3 US) and we accepted.  So we had a super cheap cab ride back to Port Louis.

It was overwhelming to get back into a city, especially since we hadn't seen any of it the day before (the city center is either a 7 minute water taxi ride or 40 minute walk from the pier). He dropped us at the post office which was perfect.  Mauritius was the first country to issue a postage stamp and they have a whole postal museum (didn't get a chance to go in).  We walked around a bit and headed into the street market, which was overwhelming when carrying a big backpack.  Ugh.  We took a water taxi back to the ship and there was a welcome back bbq.  There was a bit of craziness at on-ship time - a lot of people got "dock time" which means that they will be delayed getting off of the ship in India because they were late. 

So we're back and on our way to India.  It's time to gear up for the Sea Olympics, so think "Yellow" because that's my sea.  I think there's a pep rally coming up in a few days, so we'll see how my Sea Captains pull it together. 

Happy Weekend to you all!