Mauritius and Update

Don't forget to check out the rest of my South Africa Post before you read about my time in Mauritius.  Sorry I have been so behind on my postings but my work on the ship keeps piling up.  I have been in India as well as Singapore now and I will arrive in Vietnam in the morning so I have some catching up to do.  Thanks for reading and I am working on my stories from India and Singapore which were both fantastic.  I hope you all have been enjoying my pictures as well.

There is not really much I can say about Mauritius besides it is a beautiful island that reminded me a bit of home and it is also an example of a success story in the African continent even though it is sort of off by itself.  Its economy is largely sugar based like Hawaii was and a large part of its population is Indian because they were imported for labor after slavery was outlawed.  They were colonized by the French as well as the British but they are now independent.  Oh and the main city is named after me!  Just kidding but it is named Port Louis which is probably remanence of the French.  I didn’t really get to see the city because it was surprisingly hard to get to from the ship and we wanted to go somewhere to snorkel and relax.  We ended up getting a cab to the northern part of the island, a little passed a place called Grand Bay which is one of the popular tourist destinations.  We hadn’t made any hotel reservations but we didn’t really want to go back to the ship so we sort of looked around until we found a nice little hotel on the water called the Hibiscus.

Once we checked in we got our hands on some snorkels and swam around right in front of the hotel and saw some cool fish.  The water was a bit cold but it was still really enjoyable.  One of my friends had never been snorkeling before and the other is a bio major who is really enthusiastic about sea life so it was fun to explore the reef together.  After that we just relaxed and napped on the beach for the rest of the day which was just fantastic.  Then we had a delicious three course meal at the hotel which was included in our stay.  The first course was a marlin fish salad which was light and tasty.  Than came the asparagus soup which was surprisingly delicious as well and made me think of my mom who despises asparagus.  It was so good in fact that I ate some of my friends as well.  By that time I was pretty full but than the main course came, beef stroganoff with noodles.  Tasty as well but I was too full to finish it.  I could have passed out right after dinner but my friends wanted to go and see if there was any sort of night life around where we were staying.  We walked out of our hotel and on to the street and there was literally no one out and about.  We walked toward where we had seen some restaurants and stuff earlier but didn’t find much.  We eventually sat down in a little restaurant where we got something to drink and then to our surprise we were entertained by some local dancers.  It was a very cool form of dance that we had never seen before and they were all dressed up in what I assumed was the local performance garb.  They did a couple of dances which we enjoyed very much and than we headed back to our hotel for the night.

The next mourning we packed up to to back to the ship but we stopped at a beautiful beach right next to the hotel for a swim and some delicious food before we headed back to the ship.  It wasn’t home but it sure felt a little like I was back in Hawaii.  I really wasn’t looking forward to getting back on the ship and going to class everyday but I was excited that India was right around the corner.