Let me preface this post by saying that I wish we’d had more time in Mauritius. Due to SAS behavior on past voyages, the length of our stay in Port Louis has been shortened from 4 days to 2. Suffice it to say that SASers generally treat Mauritius like Spring Break and have an unflattering reputation on the island. Some people said they experienced SAS backlash and were treated poorly by locals, but I personally had an incredible time and wasn’t met with any hostility.

Also, thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, especially everyone who sent me birthday cards in South Africa! I haven’t gotten any mail all semester and it meant a lot to me to come back to the ship and find such a huge pile of colorful envelopes. They made me feel loved and I love you, too. Thank you!

Mauritius: Day One

We docked in Mauritius on a rainy morning. I was up early enough to watch as pulled into the harbor, which provided a great visual as we sailed in and the small island with its mountainous profile became increasingly visible through the early morning drizzle and fog.

I was signed up for an FDP led by my oceanography professor, Dan Abel, on the first day in port. Our group left immediately after we cleared customs and as we walked down the gangway, we were greeted by local men and women in traditional dress playing drums and dancing. It was a fun way to greet the morning.

One of the first things I learned about Mauritius was that the rush hour traffic is horrendous. The island itself is tiny, but the traffic and the mountains make getting anywhere take longer than you’d expect. Sometime we were simply not moving.

We took a bus to a local Marine Research Facility for a lecture on sustainable fisheries and a quick tour of their labs. The lecture, while informative, was pretty boring.  The tour was more interesting, but once they drove us across the island to Blue Bay the day really got rolling.

From Blue Bay, we hopped in a couple of glass bottom boats that would take of to a private island for lunch and snorkeling. In the boat, we slowly explored the reef below us. Compared the to bleached, starving reefs in Hawaii, Mauritius is exploding with color and vibrant marine life. I was in a boat with Doc Abel, so he was identifying most of the fish we saw, which was cool. I even saw a cuddle fish, which made Emily mad because she’s obsessed with cuddle fish and she missed it.

The island was gorgeous, absolutely tropic paradise. We got off the boats and were greeted with a delicious buffet lunch on the beach. After lunch we went snorkeling in two different shifts. I was in the first shift. They gave us fins, masks and snorkels and took us a bit off shore to swim around. It was beautiful! Steph even found an octopus lurking in a small hole in the reef. He wasn’t too happy to see us, but Emily and I hung out and watched him for a while. Overall, the coral was healthier and the marine life was more diverse than any other reef I’ve seen on this trip.

After our snorkeling adventure, the second shift of people got to go out and I sat on the beach. It was so wonderful to sit and watch people wind boarding and snorkeling and playing volleyball (though that was difficult because of all the coral in the sand). The experience made me reflect on just how incredibly lucky I am.

We eventually made it back to the ship where I showered and walked to the waterfront to grab dinner with friends. We stayed at dinner for ages, just talking and laughing. I got a local beer called Phoenix, which was pretty good. After dinner we went to a casino next to the restaurant; it was shaped like a pirate ship. I spent the Mauritian equivalent of $3 and lost it all, but it was a lot of fun. Yensi, on the other hand, used one token and walked away with about $10 hahaha.


Mauritius: Day Two

Early the second morning, Emily and I hopped in a cab to get across the island to make our scuba diving reservation. Our driver was an old Muslim man who talked to us about the Mauritian people; he was an interesting guy. One of the most incredible things about Mauritius is that when the Dutch landed in the 1500s, there were no native people. They did manage to drive the Dodo birds to extinction, but there was no local human population to decimate. Over the course of hundreds of years, slavery and immigration resulted in the Mauritian population being very diverse in skin tone, religion, customs, etc and THEY ALL LIVE IN PEACE. It’s wonderful. Our driver said, “yes, I am Muslim at home and a Muslim in my heart, but I have Hindu friends and Christian friends. Islam is right for me, but it might not be right for everyone and I respect that.” The two national languages are French (Creole) and English, which made it much easier to communicate.

Anyways, we pulled up to the resort in Flick n Flack where we were supposed to meet the dive master and were immediately in awe of the five star resort we pulled up to. Holy crap, it was amazing! We took a bunch of pictures as we walked through the resort to the beach. Mauritius is a European getaway, for sure, especially the French. It’s complicated and expensive for Americans to get to Mauritius and the Europeans like it that way haha.

Anyways, our dive was incredible! We were in a group with German, French and South African people staying at the resort. We saw two octopi sliding around who, like the last octopus, didn’t seem too happy to see us. I wish I had an underwater camera because I can’t even describe they gorgeous fish and lilac color clumps of coral we saw. It was wonderful and the visibility was spectacular.

After the dive, we hurried back to the ship because I had to leave for an SOS Children’s Village in Beau Basin at 3PM. We rushed to buy postcards and got back to the ship with 15 minutes to spare.

We had a small group going to the Children’s Village, which was nice. We did get gridlocked in traffic due to an overturned semi on the road. We were worried for a while that we wouldn’t be able to get there and back before on ship time, but we eventually made it through.

The kids who live at the Children’s Village are between the ages of 2 and 18, older if they’re going to college and need a home base. They’re not orphans and are not up for adoption. They’re children who have been removed by court order from the care of their parents. Once removed, they are placed in homes with six or seven other kids and one “mother” where they grow up. They attend local public schools and the organization, which exists all over the world, does its best to make sure the kids feel like they’re a part of a normal family.

Midhun and I spent the first thirty or forty minutes slowly gaining the trust of two shy little boys, three-year-old Antz (I don’t know how to spell his name, but it sounded like this) and his four-year-old brother Milos. They didn’t talk much, but eventually the Mr. Potatohead that Midhun brough along lured them over to us. Antz, the livelier of the two, played with my camera while Milos plopped in Midhun’s lap. The kids LOVE playing with cameras and seeing themselves on the screen.

After a while, we took Antz and Milos over to the other kids where suddenly we were mobbed by a group of boys and girls of all ages. Going into this experience, I just wanted to hang out and cuddle some little kids. What I wish I had realized earlier is that it’s not the littlest kids that needed me the most; it was the older girls. The ten, eleven and twelve year old girls wanted nothing more than to hold my hang and play with my camera, learn hand games and do cartwheels. They wanted a hug and a friend and someone to write to. A big sister. Most of the kids only spoke Creole and a tiny bit of English, but the emotions translated. We were supposed to leave by 5 to make it back by on ship time, but the ship was nice enough to let us stay 30 extra minutes because we’d gotten there late. It was tough to say goodbye and my arms ached for days from holding so many kids for so long. Definitely worth it.

I’ll try to catch up with South Africa before we get to Ghana on the 11th, but I can’t promise anything. South Africa is going to take up many, many pages.


Love,

Molly