Day 1 in Mauritius, day 65 of my voyage
Before I start writing about my days, here are 6 things you should probably know about Mauritius before you visit:
1.) Hotels are nazi’s when it comes to how many people you have staying in your room.
2.) Sleeping on the beach can be quite an experience if you have nothing but a towel to sleep under.
3.) Sugar cane rum beats any rum you have ever tasted and goes great with Coke.
4.) Traffic is ridiculous in Mauritius, and a 20 minute drive can take up to an hour and a half.
5.) Taxi drivers may not have their licenses.
6.) No matter how much bug spray with deet you have on, if you go in the jungle in the morning, you will get attacked and bitten by forces of bugs
Ok, so now that you know these six tips, I will give you the story behind these findings…
I woke up so excited because we were in MAURITIUS! It is a teeny tiny island off the coast of Madagascar that was purportedly one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I could not wait to see some of it. We planned a very busy two days in Mauritius, and I was excited to start my day. My SAS trip to the adventure park and beach left around 9:30, and we were headed to the adventure park first. There was a big group of us that all went together, and it was so much fun. There were two different courses, one easy one and one not so easy one. The easy one consisted of 7 bridges to cross that were a number of different heights above the ground. We all had harnesses on an had to attach or cable every time we went across, and it was really fun. The second course, on the other hand was ridiculously difficult. There were planks spaced out about 6 or 7 feet apart, and you had to get from one to the other by swinging on these ropes that were above the planks. There was a net made out of ropes to go across, there were logs to jump across, a short zipline, and a tightrope. It was incredibly physically demanding, and I was exhausted after. Not to mention that we had to do all of this while being attacked by swarms of mosquitoes. They were relentless, and you could look down and see big clumps of them on your legs at one time. We were constantly swatting at our legs and dancing trying to get them off of us, and it made things slightly miserable. By the end of our adventure, we were covered in mud and bug bites, and we were so happy to have lunch and head to the beach to cool off and relax. We had curried chicken and rice for lunch, then we were off to the beach of Flic en Flac. We got to the beach and laid out, swam a little bit, and saw a couple of SASers. A lot of people rented villas on the beach for the night, so there were people all along the beach. After relaxing for about an hour, we hopped back on our buses and headed back to the ship.
After getting back to the ship, I threw my muddy tennis shoes in a garbage bag, then took a cold shower. We ate dinner on the ship, and once dinner was over and everyone was back from their trips, 11 of us hopped in a van/cab to head out to Blue Bay, where our hotel was and where our catamaran was leaving from. Upon arriving at the hotel around 9:30, we put our stuff in the rooms that three of the people had already checked into earlier in the day. We grabbed our sugar cane rum and headed down to the beach to hang out and have a good time. We hung out there for hours, playing music and singing, running around on the beach and in the water, and finally everyone was ready to go back to the hotel for a good nights sleep. Some of the girls had gone in already, so one room had 4 girls in it and the other room had 1 girl in it. Which meant that 9 of us still had to get in. Well, hotel security wouldn’t let any of us in. We stood there and talked to them for a while, and we knew there was no way we were sleeping in the hotel rooms. When I finally asked if I could just go upstairs and get my backpack, they wouldn’t let me, or any of us go in. Graham was able to go in because the room was under his name, and Brittany went with him as his plus one. Alli had gone in earlier when security wasn’t around, so she was also in the room. The guard finally allowed Shauna to go upstairs to get a backpack, and Graham ended up letting her sleep there and he came with the 6 of us that were stuck outside. The security guards told us we could sleep on the lounge chairs that were on the hotel’s private beach, so that is what we did.
We all set up our lounge chairs relatively close to one another and tried to fall asleep. I fished a towel out of the backpack Graham had brought down to use as a blanket, and while it helped, it was still cold. One thing I do have to say is that the stars were absolutely beautiful, and you could see the milky way and the southern cross, and so many other stars that I never seem to see at home. Eventually, the wind started to pick up and it got cold, so I managed to tuck my entire body under the towel to keep the wind out. Graham took one of the lounge chair cushions and propped it up to block the wind and tucked himself inside his shirt. All of us were laughing at what a story that night would make, and we were right. I slept intermittently throughout the night, but it definitely wasn’t the best night of sleep I’ve ever had.
Day 2 in Mauritius, day 66 of my voyage
Waking up at 6 to a little bit of light on the horizon was not something I planned on doing, but the sunrise that followed made it totally worth it. It was absolutely beautiful, and it was wonderful to see it from our lounge chairs we were sleeping on. We were all still tired from the restless night’s sleep, but once we were awake, there was no going back to sleep. We gathered up some leftover stuff from the beach (two of the boys lost their iPods the night before but we managed to find them) and went to the rooms that all of our stuff was in. Four of us used the breakfast vouchers and had breakfast in the restaurant while the others were getting ready, and we smuggled out some croissants and baguettes for the others to eat.
Once everyone was ready, we all hopped in our taxis and headed over to the jetty that our catamaran was leaving from. By the time everyone arrived, there were 18 of us getting on the catamaran that day. At first we thought we were the only group that was going, but a bunch of about 6 or 8 French people with a little boy pulled up right after we hopped on. We were all pretty worried about a 4 year old boy being on a catamaran around a bunch of college kids under the influence of alcohol, but his parents didn’t seem too worried at all.
We set sail and were told that it was a 3 hour ride to the island we were traveling to, then we would get about an hour total for two other parts of that area. The first three hours were a blast; we all relaxed, sat in the sun, had some drinks, sang songs with the French people, danced with the French people, and just generally had a good time. Once we got to the island, we didn’t actually go ashore but kind of sat in the middle of the water. We had the option of snorkeling for about 20 minutes or parasailing. My friend Bruck has a cast on his arm, so he can’t snorkel, and so I offered to parasail with him. It ended up being about 25 bucks a person, which is way cheaper than parasailing in Hawaii. We were in the air for a few minutes and it was absolutely gorgeous. I didn’t bring my camera with me because I didn’t want to break it for whatever reason, but one of our friends got some good pictures from down below.
After the parasailing adventure, we ate lunch (BBQ chicken!) and then got to go to another part of the island and do some shopping and swimming for 45 minutes. The water was a great temperature for swimming, and it was great to relax and cool off for a bit. We got back on our catamaran and headed back to where we started, another 2 hours away. By this point, basically everyone on the catamaran was somewhere within the range of slightly tipsy to drunk (with the exception of the 4 year old and our driver). Those French people can party hard! We hit shore around 4 and booked it to our taxis to make it back to the ship. Our drivers told us it would be about an hour ride with traffic, which still left us an hour to get to the ship. We got into Port Louis around 5:10, and our driver still seemed to have no idea where he was going. He stopped and asked a security guard how to get to our port, and we discovered that we had to turn around in rush hour traffic. Our driver goes up to an intersection, hooks a u-turn and we see a solid block of cars sitting in front of us. But that wasn’t the best part of this little adventure. A couple seconds later, a cop pulls up behind us on a motorcycle, our driver pulls over, and the cop walks up to the window. He asks our driver for his papers, then proceeds to count how many of us were in the van. Apparently, our driver didn’t have a license to be driving that many people or something, so we all got out of the car, didn’t pay him, and left him to deal with the cop. We began running down the streets of Mauritius, and we could see our ship at the dock a little ways away. We asked a cop how to get there and he pointed to a water taxi, which we all ran to and hopped in. We told the guy to go, and he wouldn’t leave until he had any amount of money, so that took another 3 minutes. This was the slowest water taxi ever, and we arrived at the ship 20 minutes before on ship time, but we still had to wait in the massive line behind all of the people. We made it on the ship with about 11 minutes to spare, and man, were we happy. I was surprised to find out that only 2 people ended up getting dock time, and all the people that were in the line behind us made it one the ship.
I really liked Mauritius. There is a blend of cultures, and we didn’t stand out quite like we did in other countries. English is the official language of the country, even though it isn’t used too often. Creole is used for everyday conversation, French is used for mass media, and English is used in politics. The only bad thing was the fact that the reputation of SAS wasn’t so hot on the island before we got there. And I wish we could have had just one more night in Mauritius to do a little bit more, as everything felt very rushed and I feel as though I didn’t get much of a feeling for the island. Mauritius would be a beautiful place for a vacation home, yet I definitely would not want to live on that tiny of an island.
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