Just off the Eastern coast of Africa, near Madagascar, lies that country you've never heard of: Mauritius! Mauritius is sort of like the Bahamas of Africa. Resorts, private beaches, villas, and water sports make up for the main activities on the island. No complaints here!
Day 1: We got right off the ship and took the $2 water taxi from the ship to the Waterfront of Port Louis. Mauritius is a weird combination of Africa, India and France, and their "downtown" certainly represented these three cultures' coming together. After some shopping, my friend and I took a taxi from Port Louis, which is in the West of the island, up to the North side of the island, to the beach. I can't even explain how amazing this beach was. There were maybe fifteen other people on the beach. I have had dreams, or more like heavenly fantasies, about beaches like it, and suddenly I was standing with my toes in the sand! We ran into some people from the ship and had some drinks and laid on the beach, the warm Indian Ocean water crashing around us.
My friend and I took the taxi back to ship where we met some more friends and went out to dinner. We ended up at a steakhouse where I ate a much needed hamburger. Then, we went to this fantastic sports bar! It was so perfectly decorated; things like tennis balls in the ground and basketballs for bar stools. Of course, they did not seem to know what American Major League Baseball was and certainly had no idea that it happens to be the playoffs so I didn't get to watch any of the game! Oh well, I still had a great time. How could I not, surrounded by my friends in the bar, standing on a balcony and looking out at the Explorer, docked in the harbor of an African country I literally had not heard of until weeks before we embarked?
Day 2: I got up bright and early to head to the bus for an SAS trip called Blue Safari. We headed for the Northern part of the island to... the exact beach I had been at yesterday! I was back--and so soon. Dreams do come true! ; ) After a delicious chicken sandwich with french fries inside the bun off of a lunch truck, we headed to the dock where we would enter the submarine that would take us under the sea! The pilot joked that we have seen the ocean's surface for so long now on the Explorer that now we of course wanted to see what was underneath it! Five of us got into the submarine. It was completely clear glass so we could see all around us as we descended 30m under the ocean! It was surreal, claustrophobic, exciting, and a little bit scary! As we chugged along the sea floor, I saw so many different kinds of sea life! Most excitingly, an octopus (a very rare sighting on these tours!), an eel, sea cucumbers, and a HUGE sea anenomne! It was so incredibly cool. They gave us these cheesy and awesome certificates at the end that say how far we dove under the water.
My friends and I hit the markets after we re-gained our land-legs. I loved buying souvenirs with the Dodo bird on them. (Mauritius is the only known place in the entire world where Dodos were known to have existed before their untimely extinction!) Later, my friends and I hit the town again, enjoying the great food and the Friday night live music at the sports bar! It was one of my most enjoyable nights out thus far, because I am really starting to know who I want to spend my time with in terms of my ship-friends. Ever since you called them my "ship friends," Ashley Panella, that is the term I most prefer to use!
Day 3: Today may have been one of the best days of my life! We jumped on a catamaran and sailed to an outlying island where the water was blue, the sky was blue, the WHALES that we saw barely a few yards from our boat (!!!!!!!!) were blue, and, I am red. Oh so red. So sunburned. So badly. I even have the dreaded sunglasses tan. Embarrassing. But, seriously, I laid on the catamaran, inches above the water, soaking up the sun (and a lot of it!). Then, we snorkeled! I saw blue-finned tunas, clown fish, angel fish, etc, etc. It was fun and really rekindled my love for snorkeling. I hope to be able to do a lot of it when I get home. I just love being among the sea creatures! Then, on the catamaran, we had a barbaque lunch that was SUPERB. When they brought out coffee and brownies as the dessert, I was 100% sure I had died on gone to heaven. I mean between sunbathing, BBQ chicken for lunch, snorkeling, and being in Africa, when you add in COFFEE, my god!
Mauritius is one of those places that we just don't pay enough attention to. It is incredibly diverse, filled with Indians (mostly Hindu), African people, Creoles, and many more. Mauritius is the epitome of the legacy of colonialism; the country is a strange and exciting mix of aboriginal and European and Indian. Because of its extreme distance from the US, I truly may never return to Mauritius. I would hope to come back to truly explore more. The trip was like a spring break for us voyagers, and I feel like we didn't learn enough about the country to appreciate it on any other level than as a resort island. Think about it, if you were taking a trip to China, you would do a great deal of research before you left. If you were going to the Bahamas, you might go shopping for a new bikini. But, of course, the Bahamas is an individual and intricate country, too, just like, say China! And I certainly didn't research Mauritius, and I did, in fact, buy a new bathing suit in South Africa in preparation for the beach! Hmmm... a lot for me to think about, and I better do it fast--I'll be in India in a few days!
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