Mauritius

PORT LOUIS, Mauritius – “You gather the idea that Mauritius was made first, and then heaven, and that heaven was copied after Mauritius.” Some guy named Mark Twain said that once so you could imagine I was pretty excited to at least spend a day in Mauritius. As your read previously, our stop there had been cancelled. Somehow someway I was able to step foot on the island of Mauritius. No I didn’t break any rules or get kicked off the ship.

To be honest the entire time I was not completely convinced we wouldn’t make it on the island at all. So I may have actually created it in my thinking. The day we were supposed to be in Mauritius renamed Non-Mauritius Day, Mar. 6, we had the day off on the ship and pretty much everyone in the community tried to cram on the back decks to lie out in the sun. They tried to make the day a little exciting by letting us sleep in, having a dance party the night before, and a barbeque for dinner with very good ribs. While out in the mid afternoon Indian Ocean sun, that was when an announcement came over the PA telling us they had found a way to let us come on shore the next day from 8 a.m. to noon. So just four hours but at least it was something. I would have been more upset looking at the island as we refueled last night and knowing that we wouldn’t be able to get off the ship.

            Everyone was really excited to get off today so we all woke up early and made it through immigration before 7 a.m. letting us have an extra hour. My first impression of the island was that I loved the smell. It smells a lot like Hawaii as when you step outside you immediately smell all the flowers from the island. With four hours there really isn’t much you can do obviously. So I don’t have much to say about the island and what I did. I had originally scheduled to do a catamaran day trip with a group of people from the trip but that was scratched. I pretty much just walked around Port Louis and checked out the city. It’s surprisingly a big city for an island. A lot of people from the ship chose to hit the bars in the early morning so it was fun watching them come back to the ship at noon. What else is there to do in a city that you only have hours in?

            All I know is that it’s not fair that we only had four hours in Mauritius. I really wished we had more time but I’m grateful for the people at Semester at Sea for making the fours hours ashore happen for us. So we are back out in the Indian Ocean still scheduled for an on time arrival in Cochin, India on Monday.