October 14 and 15 2010 / Port Louis, Mauritius

So I think I’ll write about Mauritius in one fell swoop, as our stay here was only two days.  For some reason I had thought that Mauritius was part of Madagascar, so you can imagine my surprise when I looked at the SAS map, saw that we were cruising right on past Madagascar, and were headed instead to a tiny little pinprick of an island—Mauritius, which rhymes with delicious, I have discovered.

We arrived in port early in the morning and when I looked out my cabin window, I flashed back briefly to Cape Town—there were gigantic mountains stretching across, creating a perimeter around the town.  These mountains were not ordinary mountains—they were extremely tall and spindly, not like normal mountains that gradually come to a peak.  They were pretty cool.  Anyway, Lorelei, Julie, Bryan and I went out into port—we had to take a water taxi from the quay out into the main touristy waterfront area, which wasn’t very impressive because we’d just come from Cape Town, but it was a pretty nice little mall with some tourist shops and stuff in there.  Lots of dodo bird things—the dodo bird lived on Mauritius, you know.  Julie got this really cool sandblasted rum bottle that had vanilla rum inside, as well as vanilla beans/leaves/orange rinds and other things inside the alcohol.  It was a really pretty bottle, as it had a little dodo silhouette and everything.   

We walked into the city to find an ATM, and it reminded me a lot of the sketchier parts of San Francisco—high buildings, but construction going on in the streets, hole in the wall Chinese restaurants, and people just kind of loitering around.  We pulled out some money at a Barclays and lost Brian to Jared’s group, who was going to be climbing some kind of mountain.  We, on the other hand, had just packed for the beach, as we weren’t sure what we were going to do now that we didn’t have a scuba plan.  First, however, I had priorities.  Hobby World was the store James had directed me to so that I could find DnD dice (you heard me) and it was only a couple of blocks away.  Unfortunately it was all dyes, not die, so that was out, though they did point us to a lovely sketchy restaurant where a woman was cooking in a few huge pots.  Seeing us looking at them, she lifted the lid of one of them.  There were mountains of different dumplings inside.  I didn’t know what any of them were, but I got noodles with dumplings on top and a Fanta soda for 60 rupee, which is like 2 USD, and it was delicious.  I think some were tofu, some was chicken, some was beef?  I’m glad I don’t ask these kinds of questions.  I didn’t get sick so that’s all that matters. 

We wandered around and found a liquor store and got really excited over finding Mauritian rum.  Lorelei bought a bottle of the “cheaper” kind.  In doing the math it was a 4 USD bottle of rum, which should have been the sign of bad things to come, but we were just excited to be buying it so cheaply (and something that was “authentic!”) that we did so anyway.  We then got a taxi to the North to a place called “Grand Baie” where we’d heard the best beaches were.  Upon getting out of the cab, Lorelei booked it across the street to were a man beckoned us over with scuba pamphlets.  He said that we could get certified and one dive for eighty bucks—um, SOLD.

We drove to this little place that was a little while away, only about five minutes or so, and put on our wetsuits.  There was another SAS group there as well.  They told us how to use the equipment—I learned how to clear my goggles without going up out of the water, and how to breathe normally, and so forth.  The other SAS group was for some reason really belligerent about not wanting to practice anything because they didn’t want to get wet or something.  It was like, ugh.  Come on. 

So we figured we were going to go to a pool or something to practice because that’s how stuff is done in the States, but nope!  He was pretty much like “this is how you breathe… okay let’s go!” and we headed out to a speedboat type of deal.  The water was the most beautiful color blue, and we drove out into the ocean for a while until we couldn’t see the bottom anymore.  Then the experienced divers went first.  As they went, we asked if we could jump in—they said sure!  So we leapt into the water with our goggles and sometimes with our fins, looking at the fish down below us and just swimming around joyfully.  At one point there was an entire swarm of striped fish below us! I kept trying to dive down, but the Indian Ocean is so salty I kept getting launched back up to the surface again.  I have never known an ocean to be so salty, it’s actually pretty incredible. 

Then finally we were ready to do our own dive!  We got a little closer to the shore, as we were only going to be diving five to seven meters down.  First we put on metal belts to weigh us down, and then we put on our tanks.  They are SO HEAVY.  I wasn’t even able to stand up when they’d finished harnessing me while I was sitting.  The guy who was helping me was really confused as to how I wasn’t scared at all, just grinning goofily.  I flipped backwards into the water, joining Julie and Lorelei.

Our objective was to “climb” down this rope that stretched diagonally from the boat to the ocean floor.  Every time we reached a knot, we were supposed to clear our ears.  I scaled it like a pro, while Lorelei and Julie progressed a little more slowly.  At one point Julie sank to the bottom and cut herself on some coral, even, but I felt completely at ease and at peace in the water.  I could just hear the sound of my own breathing and bubbles.  All around were different kinds of fish—parrot fish, striped fish, and angel fish especially, and mountains of coral reefs.  For all that it was cool, I felt really bad looking at the coral reefs—most of them were clearly dying.  I took great pains to be careful around them and to not touch anything.  One of my favorite things to see were giant clams—they were everywhere, and were probably the size of my forearm.  They would clamp shut as I swam by, and that was the only time I wanted to intensely touch something.  I WANTED TO BE THAT TRAPPED UNDERWATER DIVER.  As I was exploring on my own (as I am wont to do) I found a spiny lionfish hiding in some coral.  I grabbed Julie to show her, as she was the nearest by.  I also saw this bright black and red sea slug.  IT WAS ALL SO COOL.   I think the best part of it was just the experience of being down there in this underwater universe, and being able to be part of that.

We were down there for a half hour or so and then came up.  Back at the cabin we paid and Lorelei New Yorked her way into getting one of the guys to put the underwater pictures AND  video onto her computer flash stick for free, so I even have some scuba pictures to bring back!  We were not certified, as we expected, because there was no way that kind of thing could count as being certified.  At that point it was growing dim, so we decided to grab some sodas (delicious pear sodas are found everywhere except the USA) and sit on a grassy knoll next to the beach and watch the sun set.  We had said that the night would be “my night” for getting ridiculous, but it turned out that it was Julie’s turn as she drank her vanilla rum.  Meanwhile, the rubbing alcohol we had purchased was so bad I could hardly have more than a couple of drinks. 

As Julie frolicked in the sand looking for shells, a young man holding a beer came up to us and said that “you know it’s illegal to steal our Mauritian treasures off the beach.”  Being as that we actually have those laws in California I believed him, but he was just kidding and introduced himself as Clifton.  We talked with him for a while and he seemed really nice.  We went with him to a Chinese restaurant and he talked about his job working for Honda, and because he apparently was making such big money, I halfway expected him to pay for the meal—not so.  Oh well, it was still good.  After dinner I started getting irritated though.  He kept bringing up the  fact that he smoked marijuana over and over again and kept trying to pressure everyone, especially Julie and I, into smoking with him.  Being as that I was entirely not interested, I kept saying no, and he STILL kept asking.  It was really peer-pressurey and weird, and finally Lorelei and I realized that we hadn’t been drinking in a long while and he was probably trying to get us to keep drinking or getting further intoxicated.  SO WE BEGAN TO PLAN OUR ESCAPE. 

We went back to the beach where there were these tiny glow-in-the-dark blue speckles washing up on the shore.  Apparently it might have been a kind of coral, but we kept frolicking around looking for them and ignoring this guy who kept trying to bring up weed.  Far away we could hear a Hindu ceremony of some kind taking place, so we decided to walk over there.  On the way, we ran into another group of SASers, and decided to ditch this guy by showing them these little coral specks on the beach, and perhaps he would realize we weren’t worth the effort of a big group and go away.  And he did indeed say he “had to go” about two seconds later.  Good riddance and go away. 

We decided to go night swimming, so we walked over to our favorite beach near the place we’d scubaed and hopped into the water.  It was awesome getting to know our new friends and just being comfortable and having nice, intelligent conversation.  This might have been a mistake though,  because when I got out I realized that I had no jacket, no towel, and no way to keep warm.  I did my best in covering up as we walked to a place called the Banana Club, which lots of SASers were at.  Lorelei, Julie and I realized that between all of us we probably didn’t even have enough money to get a cab back to the ship, so we decided to leave.  A cab driver took pity on us when he realized that we weren’t going to raise our price over 750 rupees.  He gave us his card at the end of the night—his name was Rashid. 

It was around midnight by that point, and I was thoroughly exhausted.  I went to bed without setting my alarm, intent on sleeping until whenever I wanted as I would just have a leisurely day wanting around port the next day.  THIS WAS NOT SO.  Lorelei knocked on my door around 9am, upset—her trip’s time had been changed, so she’d missed the bus.  She still, however, wanted  to do everything, so I told her I would come on her adventure.  We called up Rashid, our driver from last night, and asked him if he could do one of his “South Island” tours that was listed on his resume card thing.  He agreed and we bartered it down, and then we were off.

We should have expected something wasn’t right went we got to our first “destination”—a duty free discount store that he told us he got “points” if we were to buy anything.  Then it was a diamond factory.  Then it was a wood-carvings place.  He kept taking us to all these places that we didn’t want to go to, undoubtedly because he got commissions from the places.  When we came back in, we demanded that we go to lunch and then from then on we JUST wanted to go to places we wanted to go to.  We told him we wanted to pay no more than ten dollars for food, and he said “we would get sick” if we went anywhere other than this big, fancy Indian restaurant.  When we refused to stay (the entrees were like twenty bucks a plate!), the owner came out and we actually bartered for our lunches at this fancy place—got it down to ten dollars for a set meal (“drinks included?” I said at the last minute, to which they hurriedly agreed).  Later, we noticed that our cabbie had vanished to grab food at one of these places that he had told us “we would get sick from.”  The food was okay though, we were just feeling stressed out that we’d gone to all these places that we didn’t want to go to, were clearly being taken advantage of, and we had to be back by six anyway.

After lunch, however, it was really the last of our commission places.  We went to the crater lake area, which had been a volcano, and admired the view of the mountains.  It was so cool, as it had clearly been a volcano but now had trees and life and it was just really neat.  Then we went to see Black River Gorge, which was really beautiful and you could see a waterfall in the distance.  Lorelei and I tried sugarcane water, which actually made my stomach hurt, though this was probably a combination of the twisty mountain roads.  Then we were off to the Earth of Seven Colors and a waterfall.  The waterfall was really neat, as it stretched out across a big gorge and we could see why the Black River was named Black—the volcanic rock literally made the river look black.  The Earth of Seven Colors was kind of a tourist trap—it was a small group of sand dunes that had different colors (looked like only four to me) due to the combination of the volcanic elements in the rock.  There were also some Galapagos turtles nearby, and they all looked really  sad.  :(

By then we were kind of freaking out because while our driver had told us that “we would get back by 5” it became “we’ll try to get back by 5 or 5:30” and then it was “well, if we don’t hit any traffic we’ll get back as soon as we can.”  So I was freaking out because I didn’t want to get dock time because of this stupid cabbie taking us to all these dumb commission places.  On the way back we did talk about divorce and how in the Muslim religion you can have up to four wives.  I told him I wanted four husbands, and when he looked scandalized I asked him why couldn’t I have four husbands?  He didn’t give me a satisfactory answer and was really weirded out.  STEPHANIE M, MAKING PEOPLE UNCOMFORTABLE SINCE 1990

We got back at 5:30, and when we sprinted over to the ship we saw that there was a HUGE HUGE HUGE line.  FRICKKKKK.  We panicked, stressed, and luckily I swiped in at 5:57—the closest I’ve ever gotten to being late, and hopefully I will never cut it so close ever again.  Dinner was BBQ, and because Ellie’s cellphone wasn’t working, I bought three phone cards to call mom and dad, Cassy, and James. 

Mom and Dad flew into London (they left that day) and I think are travelling to Amsterdam today (the 19TH).  I’m very happy that they’re enjoying themselves through travel and aren’t having their money sucked away by me.  I talked to Cassy awhile about school, her new beau (who is apparently really conservative… BARF), and her study abroad options (I would love her to study in South Africa because of how incredible it is, but it’s just so dangerous there—conflicted!), and talked to James about how things are going at Chapman and at The Burrow.  It was wonderful to hear everyone’s voices again… I really do miss all you guys so much and I can’t wait to give you all hugs again. 

As we left Africa, I spent some time thinking about how much this country has meant to me.  Africa has really been a huge culture shock to me and each country has taught me something different about people, nature, or societies.  It’s been an incredible learning experience.  And because I know that someone will ask:  [South Africa > Morocco > Mauritius > Ghana]  in terms of enjoyment.  I can’t rank them in terms of meaning to me because I’ve learned so much in each place—Ghana, for example, probably blew my mind more than anywhere else because I finally really understood what widespread poverty is, as well as the amazing ability of the human spirit. 
Thanks, Mama Africa.  It’s been a blast seeing where humankind has come from and connecting with a wonderful group of people, so different than what I’m used to but so welcoming.  And now?  Off to Asia, the mother of religion.