Rhymes with delicious

Mauritius: (or as my taxi driver informed me: MORE-EE-CEE-US):

We lost a day refueling before leaving Cape Town so we’d been traveling something like an average of 20/25 knots so we wouldn’t be late for Mauritius. We only had one day in port too so we were moving pretty quickly to try and make up for lost time; we arrived around 8 am (though for future students who might be reading this we never seem to get off the boat before 10am at the very earliest –plan accordingly!) But it wasn’t so bad because we had an extended on-ship time of 8pm so we could get more time on the island. Let me begin by saying what I saw of real Mauritius was very, very cool. Think an uninhabited island paradise made up of African, Indian, and Chinese previous slaves who speak French and are Hindu. Pretty awesome, huh? They listen to music called Seggae that has African and Latin drum beats, lyrics in Hindi and French, chopped and sped up to reggae. It’s amazing. We (Monica, Caroline, Rocky, and I) walked from the port to the downtown part of Port Louis (Don’t waste your money on a taxi; it’s only about a 15/20 minute walk or a 2 min. and $2 taxi) and wandered a bit. It’s so beautiful with big lush mountains framing the port and very, very interesting looking people. Hindu temples all over the place and women in saris, it’s very strange. Everyone just kind of wanted to relax after being on the ship for another 4 day stretch so we looked for a bank (Barclay’s rules! They’re in so many countries and no atm fees for Bank of America cardholders!) and met up with a crazy blonde afro kid named Tyler who goes to JMU.

 

I’d briefly met him once before at pub night but really didn’t know much about him, he said he was looking to find an atm and spend the day at the beach, which was pretty much what our plan was so we invited him to spend the day with us since he was on his own. He stopped by a liquor store within the first hour there and bought a bottle of gin –which should have seemed weird but at the time I didn’t think about it…We find a nice taxi driver who for 6 dollars each said he’d drive us to a cool public beach 30 minutes away that a bank worker recommended to us. We piled into the tiny car, 4 of us in the back seat, and Tyler in the front, and we headed to the beach. I took lots of gorgeous photos despite the crush, don’t worry. We get to the beach and it’s insanely hot out –like uncomfortably hot out. And full of incredibly old and wrinkly French tourists in way too scantily-clad bikinis and banana hammocks. Don’t worry –I got photos of them too.

 

We went to a beach bar and had some local Phoenix beer, which wikitravel told me is consistently rated as one of the best beers in the world; I don’t know about the world but it was pretty good. Some of the girls had the cocktail specials which were nuclear looking green and yellow banana/pineapple drinks which were pretty good too. We also ate chicken croquettes –SO DELICIOUS. Fried, breaded, tastefully greasy, chicken balls with garlic chili dipping sauce. They had such cool fusion dishes (and I mean real fusion, not weird shit like Korean/Southern cuisine but like Indian/Malay/Chinese/French food that all actually compliment each other perfectly.) Food like curried crab stew with eggplant and rice noodles. Food like banana flambé with Mauritian molasses and shredded coconut. I even managed to only spend 20 dollars all day though we hung out with some kids who had a much harder time ($50 to the same beach, and over $200 for essentially the same food and a couple shots. Insane.) So we’re spending all day on the beach and I’m getting antsy to go back to town because I’d heard there’s a big Chinatown and market nearby the ship and I can only spend so long on the beach trying not to tan anymore than my burnt body already is…Meanwhile Tyler is getting more and more drunk. By himself. And it’s not pretty. He’s all over the place and trying to speak French (aka whisper/yelling English in a French accent) and once we’re finally back in the car to get back to port Louis our driver says it’s 5pm and most stuff in town is closed. Tyler is all in our poor taxi driver’s face yelling, “WERE YOU BORN IN MAURITIUS? DO YOU LIVE THERE?!”and we’re telling Tyler to be quiet and he keeps slurring, “Non, youuu shoosh.”

 

Our driver takes us to a big mall/grocery store so we can buy some snacks with the last of our Mauritian money and while I’m inside buying a tortoise for my dad the driver comes in and brings us back to the car where everyone is embarrassed, though no one is surprised to find, Tyler, with his shirt off, his pants unbuttoned, laying on top of the taxi smoking a cigarette and mumbling. We get back to the ship kind of early and Tyler keeps telling us he wants to go to bars, meanwhile we’re all salty and sticky and ready to take showers and eat an early special barbeque the staff made for the night, so we leave him at the ship. I felt kind of bad about it since we’re supposed to all be “sober sailors”(SAS’version of DD’s) for one another and never leave someone drunk and alone considering how many accidents and deaths have occurred from it. However, I heard today, someone found him past out naked in front of a water taxi right before we had to be on the ship, and I was really, really glad to have not been involved. Gross.

 

Anyways that was about it for our short stop in Mauritius. I didn’t even get a sticker for my water bottle since it barely felt like I was there at all, and a lot of what I did end up seeing was so touristy. However, I’d love to go back someday if for no other reason than it is outstandingly beautiful. I’ll post up photos soon, I promise.

 

Next up, THE SEA OLYMPICS!!!