Mauritius

Before this trip I had never heard of Mauritius, so I’m assuming a lot of the people reading this have not either. Mark Twain said “You gather the idea that Mauritius was made first and then heaven, and that heaven was copied after Mauritius”. The 720 square mile island is located in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. It has a population of 1,200,000 people. Back in 1773 83% of the island was covered in forest and today less than 2% of the island is forest. The island also used to be home to the dodo bird! So now that you have a little background let me tell you what I did with my four days there…

Day 1:

I woke up at 6:30 to watch us pull into port. I was not ready to be in a new port already, I felt like we had just left South Africa! After taking some pictures I ate breakfast and got ready for our diplomatic briefing which was suppose to be at 8am. The briefing didn’t start until about 8:50 and I was on a city orientation trip that was supposed to leave at 9am! They ended up letting us off before the briefing was over so that we could make it to our trip. The place we were docked wasn’t really near anything, you have to take a water taxi to actually get to the waterfront where the shopping was. You could see the beautiful mountains from where we were though! We walked over to where the buses were that would take us on the city orientation. We drove for about twenty minutes to a town called Pamplemousses where there is a botanical garden. We walked around the garden and saw all the different types of plants and trees and a lot of birds too. Then we walked to an area where they had giant lily pads, which was really cool! Then we walked a little further to where they had some giant tortoises. They live to be over 300 years old. I was hoping they would be roaming out in the open but they were in a fenced in area. After this we got back on our bus and drove to a Hindu temple. It was so colorful and beautiful. All the different gods were carved into it and we got to walk inside, which required removing our shoes. 52% of the island is Hindu. From here we drove up to Fort Adelaide and we had a nice view of the city of Port Louis and could even see the M.V. Explorer. From this spot we could also see the Champ de Mars which is the oldest race track in the Indian Ocean region. After this we headed back to the ship.

By this time we were all starving so we just ate lunch on the ship. I ate with some people who had already taken the water taxi to the waterfront and found out you could pay $2 US dollars to go across which was a relief because I didn’t have any Mauritian rupees and there were no ATMs near the ship. So a group of us took the taxi after lunch and went to the ATM and walked around the waterfront. We all really wanted some ice cream because the island is so hot and humid, it’s almost unbearable! The place we ended up going had the biggest sundaes I have ever seen and they were delicious. A couple of the people I was with had to be back to ship for a trip so we all headed back. I relaxed in the nice cool ship for a while when I got back and then Megan and I decided to go to the waterfront to get dinner. She had been on a trip all day and needed the atm so I showed her where that was and then we ended up going back to the same place I had gotten the ice cream for dinner. We got a cheese pizza and it was so good! It was starting to get dark at this point so we hurried back to the ship because we didn’t feel very safe being two girls out at night.

Day 2:

I didn’t have any plans for this day so I woke up at 8 and went to breakfast on the ship and sat down with these two girls. One of them was planning on going to this market by herself but invited me to come so I went and was excited because I missed the market in South Africa and everyone that went got really cool stuff. So I got ready really quick and we took the water taxi to the waterfront because that’s where the bus station was. We asked around to find out how to get a bus to Vocoas which is were our interport lecturer from Mauritius told her the market was. This was my first time taking public transit in another country so I was kind of nervous, but it ended up working out and was way cheaper than taking a taxi. The day after we left Mauritius there was a holiday for the Hindus. For the week we were there all the Hindus were making a pilgrimage to a crater lake called Grand Bassin which they believe is filled with the same water as the Ganges River in India. I’m not sure on all the details, but I know it is in honor of the God Shiva and they get a bottle of water from the lake and bring it back to the temple where they are from. When they make the pilgrimage to this lake they build these big temples that they carry to the lake so we kept passing people carrying them on our bus rides and a lot of times got stuck behind them. Some of them were really big and extravagant. So we finally got to Vocoas after an hour and found out that it’s not where the market is! Luckily we found a woman that spoke English and she got us on the right bus back to the market which we had actually passed on the way to where we were. So anyways we got there eventually and it was so cool! I got a cute shirt for just over a dollar, we couldn’t believe how cheap it was! I also got some linen pants which are really lightweight and all the locals wear them. I’m pretty sure it’s what everyone wears in India too because it is going to be miserably hot! I also got a cool purse to carry around ports that’s big and zips and you wear it across your body so it’s more secure. We somehow ended up getting pizza again for lunch but it was still super good. We also tried some different fried things from the vendors and got fresh pineapple, bother were really good. We found the bus again and headed back to the waterfront and went to the McDonalds and got McFlurrys. Then we made one last stop to buy postcards and stamps and I also got a little wooden dodo bird. After this I just stayed on the ship for dinner and studied for a geology test that I had right after we left Mauritius.

Day 3:

I didn’t have any plans for this day really either so I slept in. Around noon I went to the waterfront with my roommate Andi and Amy because they hadn’t been yet and there was suppose to be a market nearby since it was a weekday. We asked someone where the market was and made our way over to it. This market wasn’t as big or as nice as the one as I had been to. We weren’t seeing anything we liked and it was way to hot so we didn’t stay to long. We stopped at a restaurant to get a drink because it was so hot. There is this soda called Appeltizer which taste like sparkling apple cider and comes from South Africa which I love so I got one of those. We stopped by an internet café after this but the internet was so slow that it wasn’t really worth trying. After this we just went back to the ship. Andi and Amy were staying in a villa, but Amy had a trip she had to go to and then was going to go back. When Amy went on her trip and Andi and I got ready and headed to the villa by ourselves. I would say nearly half the ship or maybe more got villas on Flic and Flac beach and decided to spend all their time there and call is “Spring Break”. It took us forever to get there because the traffic in Port Louis is horrible. It is really overpopulated and doesn’t look at all like the paradise I imagined, but once you get away from Port Louis it gets a lot nicer.

Once we were there we just hung out and waited for Amy and the other people that were on the semester at sea trip to get back. Around 7 or 8 a big group of us headed to a restaurant in walking distance for dinner. The owner of the complex and his wife actually ended up coming to dinner with us and suggesting the restaurant. There was live music which was really cool and I ended up getting a Chinese dish… chicken with pineapple and it was really good. There were about 15 of us so the whole dinner process took a really long time. When we finally got out of there we went to a place called Shots were all of the Semester at Sea kids at Flic and Flac were and they actually had a sign that said private party MV explorer which was pretty funny. We stayed there for a while and then headed back to the villa because Amy and I had a trip at 9am in the morning which meant we would have to get up really early to make it back in traffic. Once we were at the villa we decided we would just catch a cab back right then instead of waiting until the morning because there weren’t really enough beds for us all to sleep in. So we called a cab and it was there in 5 minutes and we actually made it back to the ship in about 25 minutes which was amazing! It was really late and raining and there were still pilgrims walking to the lake. I went straight to bed when we got back.

Day 4:

I got up and had breakfast before I had to be on my trip at 9. I met up with Amy and we headed to the buses. The trip was called Volcanic Island and we needed it for our geology class. We first headed to the Mahatma Gandhi Institute to listen to a lecture from a Mauritian specialist. Only the first 5 minutes of her lecture were about geology and the rest was all stuff that we had heard in global studies, so I was a little disappointed. Not to mention on the bus ride and the city orientation bus ride the guides gave us a history of the island, so I would say I’m pretty much an expert at this point. After about 30 minutes we got back on the bus to head to our next stop which was Trou Aux Cerfs, a dormant volcano. It was like a big crater with lots of trees. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard when we got out so we couldn’t get great pictures and didn’t stay out for too long because we were dressed for the hot humid weather we had the previous three days.

After this we were headed to Grand Bassin where all the pilgrims were headed, so we were a little worried we wouldn’t be able to make it there. Luckily the road was open, but we had to park sort of far away and it was still raining. This wasn’t regular rain, the wind was blowing really hard, so the rain came straight at you and within 30 seconds you were completely soaked. There was a huge statue of Shiva, over 100 feet tall, that we could see from the bus and decided to walk to through the rain. There was a Hindi priest that was repeatedly singing a meditative chant and the only part I understood was “Shiva”. It was on speakers so that you could hear it everywhere. There was a large tent in front of the statue where people were gathered so we made our way in there to get out of the rain. After getting a closer look at the statue we headed back to the bus. We found out that the lake was only 5 minutes farther so we were kind of disappointed that we didn’t walk the 5 minutes to see it. Some of the students on our bus met some locals that fed them and gave them the t-shirts that all the pilgrims were wearing. At this point it was about 12:30 and we were really hungry. Everything was taking a lot longer then planned so we skipped the next leg of out trip and went straight to lunch which was a little over an hour away from where we were. I think most of the bus slept all the way there.

We pulled up to the restaurant and it was up on a mountain with a great view of the coast. Our meal started out with some bread and then everyone got this shell that was filled with some seafood thing, I think it was crab and cheese mostly. I don’t even like crab but I was so hungry that I actually ate it. Next we got a plate with chicken, salad and rice which was really good! Next was desert which was some sort of cooked banana with a scoop of ice cream which was also very good. The whole lunch process took an hour and a half and it was about 4 and we were at least an hour and half from Port Louis and our trip was suppose to get back at 5:30! We were still suppose to see a waterfall, the seven-colored earth and go to the beach. We decided to do everything but the beach and just make it back late, which was really disappointed because I hadn’t got to go to a beach yet and this meant I wouldn’t get to go to one at all.

First we went to the waterfall which was right around the corner. It was over 100 meters tall and was really beautiful, much more than I was expecting. We quickly took our pictures and got back on the bus for our next stop which was also really close. The seven colored earth is a volcanic phenomena that left this plot of land with rich mineral oxides that give different colors to the soil, it was really cool. They also had some giant tortoises on the property that we got to see, but they looked really miserable in their little confined space. After this we got back on the bus and actually made it back in an hour when our guide was guessing it would take 2 with traffic. It was close to 7 and on ship time was 9 so I just stayed on the ship after and had a light dinner because I was so full from our late lunch.

Now we are on our way to India, and I feel excited and nervous and not prepared! I have heard that just about everyone will get sick there so that’s what I am worried about, but I am going to see the Taj Mahal which I could not be more excited about! The time difference will be 13 and a half hours ahead of my home town which I think is kind of funny. We have the Sea Olympics on the 8^th, so no class which will be nice. I will be doing the scavenger hunt! Go Med Sea!!! Hehe. After India my trip will be halfway over, I can’t believe it!

Also I would really really love it if you would send me mail to the ship. This link

http://www.semesteratsea.com/voyages/spring2008/sp2008_communicatewship.html

will tell you where to send it and by what date, and I promise to send a postcard back! Also it will help if you write my cabin number 3046 next to my name if you do send something. Also thank you for all the blog comments, I love reading them and I can actually access them without using internet minutes, unless they find out and decide to block that too!