Mauritius was WONDERFUL!

I really really loved Mauritius. For those of you that do not know - Mauritius is an Island in between India and Africa. It is right of the east coast of Madagascar. Mauritius itself is only about 35 miles long but it has the most cultural diversity I have ever seen. You can go into a restaurant and see a Christian African women speaking french eating an India Dosa at a restaurant that serves Mauritius, French, Indian, African, and American food.
We docked in Port Louis, the biggest city of Mauritius. The city is on the west coast more than south. The first day 13 friends of mine and I took a van to Blue Bay because Thomas’s mom booked a hostel there and it was super cheap. Blue bay is in the south east corner of the island. That day, we got settled at the hostel and headed for the beach. On the way, Sarah, Tolan, Michael, Carson, and I stopped for some lunch. I had seen signs for pizza and sandwiches and they had made me crave american food. But, I know that my group was trying to eat some Mauritian food. Luckily, the restaurants have such an array of food that we were able to find a place that suited all of our taste buds. I had a chicken sandwich and fries - yum. Afterwards, we hopped on a bus and headed to the beach. Well, like you have learned in my past blogs, nothing ever goes completely smoothly. Our bus the broke down. It didn’t end up being that big of a deal, we just hopped on the next one about fifteen minutes later. When we finally got to the beach we met up with the rest of our group. Someone had approached us about snorkeling so we took their offer. We all hopped on a boat and went to the lagoon to snorkel. The fish were beautiful and the coral was sick. It was kind of an overcast day with a little rain but that didn’t ruin our day at all.
After snorkeling we headed back to the hostel to get cleaned up and such. There was free wifi so i got to skype with my rents. That made me really really happy and I think it made my marm and dad real happy too.
That night the town we were in was pretty dead. After all, it was a tuesday night. We had heard that there was a restaurant near us that had live music so we decided to check that out. We found it by asking another restaurant for directions and having them randomly call a free shuttle for us. It was super nice. There was live music and good food. I got a scrumptious hawaiian pizza. We were there for a while and then Carson, Michael, Tolan, Sarah, and I decided to call it a night because we had plans to get up early in the morning. The two couples and I shared a bedroom. Tolan, Sarah, and I even shared a bed haha. Fifth wheel is always fun :). They were chill about it though so it was all good.
The next morning we woke up around 6 because we had arranged with our Hostel ‘mom’ to take us around the island. The 6 of us squeezed into her little car because it was cheaper than getting a van.
Our first stop was at a hiking trail. We thought the trail took us to waterfalls but we never really found them. We did find about 6 inches of mud for about 40 feet though. We laughed about it and had a good time. Our hike was only about an hour long but we saw a bunch of frogs.
Next stop was the actual waterfalls. They were so pretty. First, we saw them from like high up and then decided to work our way down to them. We found our way and were able to climb on the top of the waterfalls and work our way down a little bit. They were so relaxing and fun. I really love waterfalls.
Third stop way at the red river gorge or something. It was just a really really nice view of the island. We were kind of on a tight schedule so we pulled a hiroshima and got out, took pictures, and went on our way. (I say ‘pull a hiroshima’ because in Japan max, lele, ryan, and I took a train to hiroshima, took a picture, and hopped back on the train)
Right by the gorge were the seven colored earth sand dunes. Overrated. I thought by seven color they meant like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, etc. But, apparently what they meant was mocha-brown, chocolate-brown, cappuccino-brown, etc. There were some hue turtles there though. They were pretty cool looking but a little ugly.
Next, we were headed for the beach. Tolan’s uncle lived in Mauritius and had recommend a beach called La Monde. It was easily the most beautiful beach I have ever seen in my life. The water was like bright bright bright blue and the sand was super white. We only had about an hour and a half there but we wished we had a week and a half. We got some food there. I had a burger and fries - it hit the spottttttt. Then, we just relaxed in the water because it was like 90 degrees outside.
We decided to ourselves some time at the end of the day to shop in Port Louis because we had heard good things. We left the beach at 2:30. We were told it takes an our to get back to Port Louis. We had to be back on the ship by 6 p.m. but that really means by 5 p.m. so that we are not late. Well, around 4:45 we realize that we are cutting it too close for comfort. There had been a traffic accident right outside Port Louis that had backed up traffic for miles and miles. We really had no idea what to do at this point. If we were late getting back at the ship then we would be getting dock time. What that means is that for every 15 minutes after 6 we are getting back on the ship that is 3 hours we have to stay on the ship at the next port. SO shitty if that happens. At this point traffic was bumper to bumper and we were about 4 or so miles away from the port. We decided to get out and walk since it seemed faster than driving. We walked for about twenty minutes and realized that traffic had started moving, it was still slow but now seemed faster than walking. We weren’t really sure waht to do. A taxi went by that had 2 of our staff in it - the psychologist and her friend. We flagged them down and they had one spot left so I hopped in there. My friends hopped in another taxi. For some reason i felt like if I showed up to the ship late with the psychologist it would look better than showing up with my friends. Long story short our taxi driver missed the turn for the port so we had to go out of our way and blah blah blah we got back to the ship around 5:20 and there was line to get through security that was like 30 feet long. We assumed we were screwed but, security luckily went fast and we got on the ship around 5:30. My friend’s taxi did not miss the turn so they were already on the ship by the time we pulled up to it. Thats karma for me bailing on them. oh well, it worked out.
Okay so I don’t even know if this story is going to make sense at all but it was really really funny at the time so I figure I will give it a try. A few days before Mauritius I had read on Wikitravel.com about the waterfalls. Wiki described them as ‘awkward to get to’ which my friends and I found really strange. We were all talking about like what could possibly be awkward about getting to waterfalls. We were like ‘why couldn’t they say difficult or confusing or even like misleading?” So, the night before we went to the waterfalls we were joking about it like ‘is everyone ready for this awkward walk to the waterfalls?’ We started discussing what could possibly make a walk awkward and we were like ‘maybe you walk through a nude beach on the way...thats awkward’ or ‘maybe you run into your ex-girlfriends like “uhh can’t go left [shreeek] thats awkward”. It was just really funny all together. We obviously joked about this for like a solid hour and completely killed it but it was entertaining for sure. So like I said, when we went looking for the waterfalls, that we didn’t find, the only awkward thing about the walk was that it was a really deep muddy path. Soo I don’t know what awkward situations we missed out on by not continuing all the way there.

I don’t really feel like proofreading this entry so if there are typos and such just ignore them. Currently, we are on our way to South Africa. The water is a little more rough than it has been in the past which is a bummer. Apparently around the cape of hope it is suppose to get really rough.

P.S. I LOVE EMAILS so email me :) jgpolitz@semesteratsea.net