Mauritius!

I'm going to squeeze all of my Mauritius blog into one. Right now I am sitting in the union waiting for the crew talent show to start. It is apparently a really big deal and a lot of fun, so I'm here 90 minutes early and even so probably 50 people beat me here. We really have nothing better to do than sit around waiting for things to start.

Starting last night we could see South Africa off of our starboard side. It is about 6 miles out and looks pretty awesome. It's odd though that we won't be there for another day and a half and we can already see land. We are apparently going to follow the coast around the southern tip of Africa going nice and slow. Hopefully the seas won't be too bad, today was better than yesterday. Some of the rockiest seas are apparently down around the Cape of Good Hope so think good thoughts!

So Mauritius. We pulled in at about 8 am, had the diplomatic briefing soon thereafter that I did not attend, and were cleared to leave by 9:15. We usually can't get off until noon or so and it was a pleasant surprise to be cleared early. We had a group of 14 of us initially and it unfortunately took a half hour to get everyone moving the right direction, but shortly before 10 we were headed off the ship to the beats of some Mauritian musicians. Eric and I arranged a minibus to take the group of us to Blue Bay, a beach area on the other side of the island, because we figured it would be too difficult to get 14 people moving toward a public bus and getting onto it. The ride cost about 7 bucks a person, not too bad at all, and we were there before noon. My mom had booked us two rooms in a hostel, Le Bamboo, to fit 8 people, but we took everyone there anyways in hopes of finding beds for all of them. After finding the hostel with no trouble at all we walked upstairs and met the lady who ran it. She was incredibly nice, spoke perfect English, and though overwhelmed my 14 Americans standing in her presence, was able to find accomodation for everyone. After spending time there drinking coffee and dropping off our stuff, we went in the direction of the bus station to get to Blue Bay. I suppose I wasn't fully clear, we weren't staying in Blue Bay, rather in Mahebourg, a city about 15 minutes away.

The walk to the bus stop was short and on the way we all found ATMs to get out some cash. I pulled out the equivalent of $100 US and told myself that I would spend no more. After paying $5 in ATM fees to take out 30-50 dollars in other countries, I decided it made more sense to pick an amount, take it out, and that's it. We found the bus and snack bar next to it where I grabbed an awesome cheese croissant and water, and took off on our way to Blue Bay. The bus cost us an entire 50 cents, I really love public transportation. We arrived in Blue Bay and immediately were in love with the atmosphere. It was an extremely quiet beach area that did not look even the slightest bit touristy. We saw no one there but local boat drivers and the ocean looked like something out of pamphlet. The first order of business was food. At this point 5 of the 14 had left us to pursue their own agenda, so the 9 remaining ones went to the one restaurant in site which seemed to be some fusion between french and italian. It was also ridiculously expensive unfortunately. Everyone ordered a pina colada, which was pretty bad I might add, at 5 dollars a drink, and even splitting a pizza with someone else ran me 7 bucks. This might not sound like much to you all in the states, but I'm used to paying like 3 dollars for a full meal. Not a big fan of spending over 10. The food was alright and took forever because they wanted us to keep ordering drinks. We finally finished after probably an hour and a half and set off for the beach to figure out something to do in the water.

Eric and Jay wanted to scuba so they went to a hotel nearby and checked on prices. It was only $75 and they had dives for uncertified people so they were both very interested. Unfortunately you had to do it in the morning so they were told to come back at 9 the next day. We ran into the 5 missing members of our group after and the 14 of us decided to go snorkeling. This was perfect because I am snorkeling's #1 fan. We paid 7 dollars a person for a 2 hour excursion, a bargain in my opinion, and hopped into our glass bottomed boat. We went out to a spot that had coral all over the place and tons of beautiful fish. It was really something right out of a brochure, textbook snorkeling as I will call it. I could have stayed out there all day it was so much fun. We tried out another spot that was a bit more wavy and we kept on drifting away from the boat, so it wasn't as fun, but still beautiful. After snorkeling, we headed back to shore and made plans to meet Tolan's group, the 5 rogue ones, for dinner back at the hostel at 7. They left us and we sat in the grass watching a soccer practice for a while. We watched the sunset over the beach which was stunning, hopefully I can get pictures up, talked with some locals for a bit, and then hopped in a cab to go back to the hostel.

We arrived at the hostel, got showered and ready, and set off in search of "Le Gran Creole" which supposedly was lively at night according to our cab driver. We made it to its sister restaurant who offered us a free shuttle to the one we wanted to be at which we took. The food at Le Gran Creole was pretty expensive but not too shabby. I found some super dinner thing which had a little bit of everything. Included in "everything" were two wild boar dishes which were quite delicious. Wild Boar is apparently very tender and melts in your mouth, not what I expected. We finished dinner and found the restaurant to not be as lively as it was billed to be so we let them drive us back to our hostel. We met up with some students from Germany and the Netherlands and headed to the beach to hang out late.

On the way to the beach we saw a sign glowing right next to the road that said "CASINO". Myself and a friend, Ben, were unable to resist ourselves and headed into what was the smallest casino I will probably ever see. It had about 15 slot machines, two tables for cards, and an automated roulette table. We sat down at roulette, I put in 100 rupees, a whopping 3 dollars and wanted to see how much fun I could have. Unfortunately I had no idea how to work the machine and found out that 100 was the minimum bet, so the fun was looking pretty short lived. I spread my rupees over 10 of the numbers at 10 a piece, and low and behold, it hit the 14 which was one of the ones I had money on. I won 360 rupees and being the smart young man I am hit cash out as fast as I could.

So now I'm stuck with this receipt for 360 rupees and wanted to try out the video machines. The only bill I had left was a 1000 rupee one, way more than I wanted to spend, but that was no big deal. I put it into a video poker machine and went to work. Fortunately you could bet 2 rupees a hand so this lasted me all kinds of time, I was down to 900 left and was in a sour mood so I of course did the logical thing and started betting the max, 20 rupees a hand. As luck would have it I was down to about 800, ready to call it quits when I hit something then "gambled" it which is basically a way of doing double or nothing on a game of chance. I did this repeatedly until by some miracle I won about 300 rupees on the hand. I again hit cash out as fast as I could and walked away. We called it a night then because they refused to let us play blackjack (probably for the best) and I walked away up something like 15 bucks. This might not sound like a lot, but I am quite proud of myself considering it represented a 15% increase in my budget and I walked away forever a winner from Mauritian gambling.

We hung out on the beach after that for a while and went back and crashed. The next morning we woke up nice and early, ate a delicious omelette and bread breakfast prepared by one of the people who worked at the hostel and checked out. I really appreciated how nice the people at the hostel were, they made our stay pleasant and were so helpful. The whole thing was ran out of their home and I'm glad we were able to help them out. We hopped on the 9:30 am bus to get back to Blue Bay and were there by 9:45. Unfortunately when they told Eric and Jay 9:00 am to scuba, they meant 9 am, so they did not get to. Instead we sat on the beach for about 2 hours as JulieAnne tried to work out wind surfing for all of us. The guy who was supposed to be bringing boards ended up in Port Louis somehow, which is where SAS was docked a solid 35 kilometers from us, so needless to say he wasn't going to make it. Instead 7 of us decided to go snorkeling again. We went to the same spots, but fortunately the fish were totally different.

Jay and I saw a huge school of bright yellow fish at the second spot which were AWESOME. There were probably more than a thousand of them and they kept on rushing the coral to try and eat it I guess. There were brown fish in the coral that would then rush out and scare the entire cloud of yellow fish away. It looked like an ocean version of the Bloods vs Crypts or Sharks vs Jets. I feel very lucky to have seen it. Feeling fully satisfied with the snorkeling I had done, I got back on the boat and we headed back in. The 5 rogue SASers from the day before had done their own thing, so the 9 of us left were now faced with the trouble of getting back to the ship at Port Louis. Four of them took a cab back and the other 5 of us took the bus back. It was about a 2 hour ride and cost all of a dollar. I really enjoy taking public busses not only because of the price but because you usually drive through cool parts of cities and see locals living everyday life. Jay met all kinds of cool people because he was sitting alone and kept getting seat buddies. I just people watched and talked to Deirdre the whole time.

We finally made it back to Port Louis at 4:15 and knew we had to head in the direction of the ship. We walked for about 20 minutes until we ran into some other SAS folks who directed us to a water taxi that apparently takes us right to the ship. We walked there, stopping only to buy souvenirs and snacks, and made it by just after 5. At this point we were getting a bit nervous, on ship time was 6 pm and if you are even a second late you give up 3 hours in the next port. The boat driver was in no hurry either, but we eventually took off and headed toward the ship. The boat literally did put us right next to it and we emerged from the dock to see a line of about 200 people waiting to get on. We had 40 minutes to make it on so I wasn't worried but some people were freaking out. As it would turn out the line would move pretty quick and we had about 10 minutes to spare. I think quite a few people ended up late though. We ate dinner on the ship and said goodbye to Mauritius, it was time to head to South Africa.

I really liked Mauritius and would recommend it to anyone who can afford the plane ticket in a heartbeat. It is very tourist friendly yet not tourist crowded. There are far more Europeans there than other Americans and it is equipped with every sort of beach and water sport activity you could ever imagine. It reminded me a lot of Hawaii just less crowded and overtouristed. Plus to get to Mauritius you apparently only need a US passport, not even a visa, so it is quite accessible. I wish we would have had another few days there, but they are not the biggest fans of Semester at Sea. Past students have left the island trashed in the past, so it is a wonder we are even allowed to stop anymore. I think our voyage did a better job.

So yeah we will be in South Africa in 2 days and I am going to visit a township, go on a safari, maybe shop and hike a bit and see a rugby game. Every blog from past voyages that I have read has raved about the country so I am looking forward to it. It is sad how fast the voyage is coming to an end though!

For anyone interested, I don't know if other parents creep on blogs like my mom does and want to see their kids names, but the people I traveled with were: Eric, Jay, JulieAnne, Deirdre, Ben, Lindsay, Jose, and Melinda, and the five who stayed at the hostel with us but weren't there the whole time were: Tolan, Sarah, Carson, Michael, and Jill. It was a fun crowd though everyone would be the first to admit that 14 is too much probably.

I don't have an enlightening quote for you, but I will leave you with one from our daily dean's memo from sometime this week.

"Mauritius was made first and then Heaven, and that Heaven was copied after Mauritius"

-Mark Twain