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Other entries in Chennai

Mauritius

Sorry, Whatever Happened in Mauritius, Stays in Mauritius.

Just kidding.

     Mark Twain once wrote, "You'd think that Mauritius was first created, and then Eden was based off of Mauritius." I couldn't think of a better way to describe it. I floated into paradise on the M.V. Explorer the morning of October 9th, 2005 with no plans and no worries. After breakfast and a nap (I guess that's what you would call when you wake up, eat breakfast, go back to sleep and then get ready) I found my friends to decide what to do with our time on the island. There was a hospitality desk on the ship so we decided to go down and see what they had to offer us. I can only describe the Pursar's square (aka the Meeting Point) that morning as complete chaos. Students were everywhere; some waiting in line to have money exchanged, some waiting to get off the ship, and some crowding around my friends and I at the hospitality desk. Without knowing much more about the island than the minimal information we got from the internet and our cultural pre-port, we were pretty much open to whatever experience was going to be tossed our way. Lindsay and Amy worked out the details with the hospitality desk, and in no time at all I found myself charging a 2 nights stay for a hotel in Grand Baie, an area on the northern coast of the island, to my credit card. It took approximately 10 minutes to pack. Not really a lot needed when you are staying on a tropical island: towel, knee-length skirt (tradition on the island), sunscreen, bug spray, couple of "wife beaters", and toiletries. Since the gangway was on the second deck, everyone met in my room on the third deck to depart; everyone being myself, Lindsay, Drea, Carri, Amy, and Ted. The port itself was very pretty, especially the area near the waterfront. We paid a dollar for the 2 minute water taxi ride from the ship's dock to the mainland of the island and then headed off to find a bus to Grand Baie. We actually paid more for the 2 minute water taxi ride than the 30 minute bus ride to Grand Baie. Or should I say, what should have been a 30 minute bus ride. Being the naïve travelers we are, we weren't sure exactly where to get off, so we got off at the wrong place and ended up having to walk to another bus stop and taking another bus to our hotel. The bus was crowded, and in the aisle position of our 3-person seat, it felt nice to have the wind blowing with the windows down. We arrived at our hotel La Fleur Soleil in the afternoon. As Mauritius is an island of both French and English speakers, it was nice to have Drea with us and her ten years of the French language under her belt. Drea and I shared a double room and Lindsay, Carri, Ted and Amy shared a 4-person "apartment." The rooms were nice: clean, every room had a large balcony, and everything smelled of fresh mango. The people working there were nice as well; we made friends with the young security guard who even came to our door at 6am as promised one morning to make sure Drea was awake for her early morning bus ride. Like I said, the people were really nice. As Americans make up only about 2% of the Mauritian tourist industry, we were the first Americans some of these people had ever spoken to. We were eager to go the beach, but the hunger pains in our stomach and the overcast skies hinted that lunch might be a better idea. So we had an inexpensive lunch at a restaurant called Spurs up the street that silenced the growling of our stomachs. Ready for the beach come rain or shine, Lindsay, Drea, Carri, and I walked across the street to the beach at the bay. (Amy and Ted took a walk.) It seemed inappropriate to strip down to our swimsuits, as none of the locals were swimming or dressed in anything less than their daytime attire. So we sat on our beach towels in the sand in our modest skirts, tank tops, and watched a man fish. It seems simple enough, but it was enough to entertain us for a few hours. You don't know how nice it is just to be on solid ground sometimes not rocking back and forth on waves. Any land time is precious. I know in a few months I'll be reading this and thinking "I'd give anything to be back on that ship," but for now, it's nice to have some time where you can just stand still. We strolled up the beach to a restaurant on the water and made 8pm reservations for dinner. It started to rain as we left the restaurant, so we walked the block up to our hotel and decided to just relax. I can't even remember what we did in those 3 hours or so at the hotel, suffice to say it wasn't productive. I think we played 20 Questions or something. Ted took a nap. To our dismay, we were there when other Semester at Sea kids checked into the hotel. Not that we hate everyone, it was just the objective to get away from everyone for a hot minute; kind of hard to do, though, when there are over 600 students on an island the size of Rhode Island. So we invited the SAS hotel "intruders" Adam and Crystal to dinner with us at the Café de la Plage. Our table was on the terrace that overlooked the water and dark evening sky. The boats looked beautiful in the bay like something you'd play with in the bathtub as a child. A dog laid in the same position in the sand below us the entire time we were at dinner; stray dogs are everywhere in Mauritius. I think if I was ever reincarnated as an animal, I'd want to be a Mauritian dog because they have the life. Anyways, back to dinner. We all went with the thought that we were going to have the lobster, but they only had 2 lobsters left, and I didn't want it THAT badly. So I decided to have the grilled calamari (not the fried appetizer stuff you get at T.G.I. Fridays). It was delicious, especially with the vegetables that it came with. I don't even know what they were, except that they were green and grown locally on the island. I can't remember what else came with the meal; I think a salad and some sort of potato. Our waiter brought us all free cocktails with our meal as well. I didn't drink mine because there were gritty chunks of pineapple in it, and I don't like drinking anything that's chunky. But the drink was served in a cool Dodo bird statue. Did I mention that the entire island revolves around the dodo bird? Not really, but the islanders definitely hold onto their legendary extinct bird as a national claim-to-fame, as Mauritius was the only place the dodo ever lived. You can find everything from dodo drinking mugs to underwear on the island; I settled for a dodo magnet with a bottle opener on the bottom of it. After my grilled squid, I had the chocolate mousse for dessert. It was so good I had to have everyone at the table try some, and they were all in accord. Our waiter was nice and patient with us and even came to hang out with us later that night at the... Banana Club. We'll just label the Banana Club now as "our" nighttime spot, even though on the first night what seemed like over 100 SAS students had found their way to this side of the island and into this bar. We had gone to the Banana Club for a drink before dinner (forgot to mention that), so the 6 of us already knew all the bartenders by name and were able to joke around with them later by the time the American-Student-Invasion took over. I befriended one young bartender in particular named Johnny and he actually came with his cousin on his night off to hang out with my friends and I the following night at the Banana Club. The next morning Drea left ridiculously early to catch a bus back to Port Louis because she had a Semester at Sea trip planned for the day. After breakfast, Carri and I decided to take a walk around town. We went into all of the shops and wandered up the block and up a street to the "Super U": the Mauritian equivalent to a Super Walmart. The place had everything: food, clothes, toys, smaller shops. We even saw my bartender Johnny. At first I wasn't even sure it was him so I just kept walking, but then he came up and introduced us to his cousin and confirmed plans to hang out that night. Mauritians are so friendly. We had only planned to be gone for a short time, but when Carri and I noticed that we had been gone for over an hour, we thought we should head back. Everyone back at the hotel was ready to go to the beach, so we grabbed our beach towels and took a bus a few minutes down the coast to a different beach. Going to a beach a little out of the way was a good idea because we didn't see one single Semester at Sea student the entire time we were there. I think the best way to describe the beach is both rustic and beautiful. Like a scene from the Leonardo DiCaprio movie, "the Beach" we walked through trees to the sand. It was unlike any beach I've ever been to: the water was clear, but not warm and crystal clear like the Bahamas; there weren't people right next to you like on the beaches in Florida or the East coast. In fact, there were hardly any people there except for a few locals and people getting on and off a water taxi called the Glass Bottom. There weren't any waves because the coral reefs further out got all of the action first. Even though the sun came and went for the better part of the afternoon, we were happy. This was our paradise. We stayed at the beach for most of the day, taking turns getting in and out of the water. I was probably in the water the most even though I was afraid of stepping on a poisonous stone fish (they lay on the sand and look like rocks until you step on one.) Just before we were about to leave, a local named Darman came up to us on the beach and started talking to us. At first I think he was just trying to "sell us" on his tour agency activities, but then he started just talking to us and gave us a ride home in his canary yellow 87 Nissan. He invited us to his canary yellow house later that night for a cookout, but we never went. And I'm glad we didn't. He seemed sketchy, and all the bartenders at the bar later that night confirmed my suspicions. By the time we got back from the beach it was almost time for Drea to return from her SAS practica. When she came back we all went to dinner at Spurs (the restaurant we had lunch the first day) and had a nice dinner. I had the smallest chicken wing appetizer known to man, but the dinner was good. We ended our evening at the Banana Café once more, hanging out with our local friends and making a few new ones, and a good time was had by all. Ted left us that night. I didn't even realize it until the next morning because I was in the other room, but apparently one of the SAS girls at the Banana Café wanted to go back to port and he didn't want her to go alone, so he checked out and left with her. So the girls and I spent the day at our leisure: after breakfast we went to the Indian market for an hour. That was an experience. I kept thinking the whole time we were there, "Oh my God, what am I going to do when we actually go to India? This is horrible." It was hot and there were people everywhere and it was really bugging me. I bought a long skirt, just because I figured I should have something to wear in India. Oh, and I bought an alarm clock because I need one and they sold out in the store on the ship. But I hate the alarm clock I bought because it ticks really loudly and I'm actually not really fond of the skirt. Not the most flattering thing I could wear. I'm too short for such long skirts. Anyways, after the Indian market Hell, we went to the beach since it was sunny and it was our last opportunity to get sun on solid ground for a while. I made the mistake of whistling a dog over to my beach blanket—I thought it would ignore me like the 800 other dogs that had ignored me the past couple days. But this dog was super friendly and super cute and decided it needed to be so close to me that it was laying on both my blanket and my hand with its jaw on the back of my hand looking up at me as if saying, "love me." I guess the attention this dog was getting sent out a signal to all the mutts on the island because another dog came over and started licking me and rubbing itself on my hair as I tried to shield my face as I was laughing. And this would all have been fine except this dog had a wicked case of mange. Even though I immediately jumped in the ocean, I felt dirty the rest of the day. After my interaction with the street dogs, we walked up to the grocery store for lunch and snacks to bring back on the ship. Like I've said before, grocery shopping is always fun in other countries. Lindsay and I went on a quest for the Choc-Kit cookies, but to our dismay they were nowhere to be found. Like pack mules labeled "we're tourists," we carried our grocery bags in hand with our packs on our backs and went to the bus stop to go back to port. We took the Express bus this time which was only 2 Rupees more and was SO much nicer than the ghetto bus we took to get there. I slept the half-hour ride home. So that was Mauritius. For not knowing ahead of time that the country even existed, I had a really good time. I plan someday to return, but there is still so much world to see.

Tomorrow (the 19th) I'll be in India! I'll try to call when I get to New Delhi so I don't have to wake you up at 2am when I arrive in Chennai, but if my phone doesn't work: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD. I'll try to find you something really cool in India for a birthday present. I love you and I miss you and know that I'll be thinking about you. Love, Nat

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