TravelStream™ news feed for member gmonvoisin on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/gmonvoisin en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:36:35 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1142108940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1142108940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1142108940/tpod.html Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:36:35 -0500 The adventures of a wacky family on a 3-month journey to Mauritus, South Africa and London.

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Ottawa, Canada

Today we are leaving the Great White North, as Canada is sometimes referred to, and embarking on a three month adventure. I look forward to seeing all my family who I have not seen for 30 years! All the kids are packed and ready to go. As for Melissa and I, that is another story... Well, we made it off without any incident or delay.
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Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

We are now back home safe and sound. We can't wait to do it again!
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London, United Kingdom

On our way back home to Canada. We took the opportunity to stop in London for a few days and see the sites. See our Album.
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Trou D'eau Douce, Mauritius

Shortly before our departure from Mauritius, we went to an art gallery and restaurant named Le Maniglier in Trou d'Eau Douce. It is located on the grounds of a an old Sugar mill, with the old stone mill now converted in a gallery and restaurant.

Maniglier is the last surviving student of Matisse. Her original work hang on every wall of the gallery and some are for sale and not at a budget price...

The old stone building, the sugar estate surrounded by sugar cane fields make this an idyllic setting. The service at the restaurant was fantastic with three staff members constantly catering to our needs. The food was extremely expensive even by north American (Canadian) standards but it is worth every penny. Don't look for this place in a tourist brochure as they do not advertise widely. As a matter of fact, you must call ahead and book an appointment.

This was definitely one the highlights of our trip... See the photos and judge for yourself!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1148314380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1148314380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1148314380/tpod.html Mon, 22 May 2006 13:57:20 -0400 The adventures of a wacky family on a 3-month journey to Mauritus, South Africa and London.

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Trou d'Eau Douce, Mauritius

It did not take us very long to settle into the rhythm of life in Trou d'Eau Douce. Translated literally, the name of the village means "sweet water hole". It is where the river meets the ocean; the fresh water meets the salt water. The spot is actually about 200 meters from our house. Local women gather there everyday to do laundry on the rocks. We like Trou d'Eau Douce because it has maintained the charm of the old Mauritius. Life is very relaxed here, the people are friendly, traffic is light and there is always a party after sunset.

As for us, we love it here. We are getting to know the people and the village fairly well. We even pay the local rate for a cab, not the tourist rate which is often up to 10 times the price. To know what we have been up to, check our the accompanying album and the descriptions for each photo.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1147279860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1147279860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1147279860/tpod.html Wed, 10 May 2006 14:54:52 -0400 The adventures of a wacky family on a 3-month journey to Mauritus, South Africa and London.

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Village of Trou d'Eau Douce, Mauritius

It has been 2 weeks since we've returned from South Africa and we have settled in nicely in a very comfortable house in the village of Trou D'Eau Douce (TDD), a pretty little fishing village on the East side of Mauritius.

We have found this stone cottage overlooking the ocean by chance. We had come to TDD shortly after we arrived in Mauritius to look for a place. We basically went into stores and restaurants and walked up to people and asked them about rentals in the area. We saw everything from the shabby to the gaudy. While we really liked the feel of the village, we did not like any of the places we saw. Then we drove by this house and it caught our attention with its brightly coloured shutters and gates and a huge mango tree in the front yard. There was no sign of anything indicating if it was for rent; it looked like a private residence. Melissa wondered that it was for rent and I suggested than she go ask. She opened the gate and knocked at the door. A lady answered the door and indicated that house belonged to her friend and was not sure if she rented it. She gave us the owner's coordinates and I subsequently called her and arranged to meet with her. Things worked out and we have the house for the month of May.

The house is fully equipped including the services of a cleaning staff and a gardener. The backyard is nicely landscaped and has a pool and overlooks the ocean. We are directly above the fisherman's landing. All the bedrooms have a view of the ocean and have a door leading directly into the backyard. One of our daily rituals is sitting on the back wall and watching the fisherment arriving with their catch of the day. If something catches or eye, I run down to the pier and buy fish directly from the fishermen. We have fresh fish for dinner at least twice a week. I have even learned how to scale, gut and filet fish!

We are really enjoying our time here. It is a very laid-back and relaxed place. The people are really nice and friendly. There are no other tourists staying in the village as most of the hotels are about 5 kms down the coast. Although, we do see them everyday being herded onto the shuttle to Ile aux Cerfs, an island just a short boat ride away which has some great beaches. We recently went to Ile aux Cerfs to check it out for ourselves (see photos).
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1142494140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1142494140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1142494140/tpod.html Sun, 07 May 2006 07:28:03 -0400 The adventures of a wacky family on a 3-month journey to Mauritus, South Africa and London.

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Pereybère Beach, Mauritius

Hey there! We're finally here. For the most part, our journey to Mauritius was pleasant and uneventful, except for the long boring 8 hour layover in London. The service on Air Mauritius was awesome! Amelie, our 6mth old, is a great traveler, no fuss at all and she got the most sleep out of all of us in the private little cot!

As we broke through the clouds before landing, I could already tell the country has changed a lot since I left it 30 years ago. While there was still some green, lush vegetation, I observed some very densely populated areas.

After landing, as we made our way on the tarmac to the terminal, I was quite surprised by the humidity, I don't remember it being that humid here. The temperature was in the high 20's Celcius. We made it through customs without incident, although I was told I could have gone through the "citizen" check-in which would have been a lot faster.

My aunt picked us up at the airport, on the drive to her place (my old home), I immediately noticed how the road have improved. There is now a highway that traverses the entire island.
I was also surprised by the amount of traffic. The other thing that hit me was that I did not recognize anything at all!

Once I arrived in my home town, I was totally baffled by the urban intensification, there are houses built one on top of another and when there isn't enough space, they build upwards! My quiet street, which once had quaint homes with large yards, has about five times the number of houses on it. Had someone drop me there on my own, I would have been totally lost. I did not recognize a thing, not even my family's property! There certainly has not been any urban planning behind this housing boom, this is not "sustainable" development. The other thing is the traffic; lots of cars, very narrow roads, no shoulder or sidewalks and people driving all over the roads; some very cool car though, I am loving the Peugeots and Citroens. I have not picked up my rental bike yet for fear of killing getting run over.

We spent the first few days at my aunt's place. We visited the capital city of Port Louis on Tuesday, a busy and bustling place. We visited a museum, toured China town and had ice cream at the harbour front. I will include some photos on my next post. We are now at Perebert beach in north Mauritius, we will be here for a week. I will tell you more in my next post. It is now time to hit the beach!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1146156480/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1146156480/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1146156480/tpod.html Fri, 05 May 2006 13:32:15 -0400 The adventures of a wacky family on a 3-month journey to Mauritus, South Africa and London.

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Stellenbosch, South Africa

For our final two days, we drove down to the wine country - Stellenbosch. There are over 125 wineries there. This was the part of the trip, Melissa and I were really looking forward to. We made the drive down to Stellenbosch without any problem. However, we did get lost trying to find our first winery... we ended up in a shanty town just minutes out of town, just another reminder that SA is has a long way to go to bridge the gap between the rich and poor.
We finally got on the right track and made it to our first winery, Delaire - The Winery in the Sky. It is one of the bigger wineries in the region and what a beautiful place it was (see photos). We tasked four wines, 3 whites and one cabernet. I will not get into details but they all were quite good. We then drove to another winery, Le Pommier for an excellent lunch. The following day we did five more wineries, had another great lunch in a vineyard. That night we had reservation in at a French restaurant in the very pretty town of Franschoek (sp?), not only was the restaurant nice, the food was amazing and cheap; we would have easily paid two to three times as much for a comparable restaurant in North America.
Well, this was a great ending to our South African journey. However, we had to be up at 4am that night to catch the plane back to Mauritius!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1146069600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1146069600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1146069600/tpod.html Thu, 04 May 2006 23:40:57 -0400 The adventures of a wacky family on a 3-month journey to Mauritus, South Africa and London.

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Simonstad, South Africa

We took a trip by down the coast from Cape Town to Simonstad. It was a very picturesque drive with the tracks going right along the ocean for a good part of it. We had lunch in Simonstad and toured around. We then booked a private sight-seeing with one of the locals - an older British man with a rickety old van.
We drove to Cape of Good Hope National Park. It was another beautiful scenic drive with the ocean at one side and mountains on the other. Our first stop was visit of the light house at Cape Point. We chose to do the steep hike to the light house by foot and it was well the view (see photos). After Cape Point, we drove down to the Cape of Good Hope for some photos. Wow! Is the ocean ever fierce down there!! Many ships have found their demise on those rocks.
On our way back to Simonstad, we stopped at the beach just outside of town to see the colony of African Penguins. There were hundreds of them! The girls really enjoyed it. We watched the sunset with the penguins then boarded the train back to Cape Town.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1145870280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1145870280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/gmonvoisin/mauritius-sa/1145870280/tpod.html Wed, 03 May 2006 15:45:05 -0400 The adventures of a wacky family on a 3-month journey to Mauritus, South Africa and London.

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Kruger National Park, South Africa

We arrived in Johannesburg in South Africa on April 18th. We stayed overnight at an inn just outside J'burg and rented a car in the early morning to make the long drive to Kruger National Park.

It took us about 7 hours to make it to the gate of the park. While the drive was long, the roads in SA are wide and in very good conditions. The drive also gave us the opportunity to see parts of the country that you would not normally see. Once we checked in at the gate, we had another 3hr drive to get to our camp; maximum speed in the park is 50 kph. Kruger is huge; it is 300 kms long by 80kms wide (plans are actually underway to expand the park).

We had booked a cottage in the northern more remote park of the park in a Bushveld Camp. These cottages have more than the basic amenities, i.e., electricity, hot water, full bathrooms, etc. However, there was no grocery store, gas station, bank and not even a vending machine. You had to make sure you were well prepared and stocked. All the cottages had outdoor kitchens (although covered) and a BBQ (see photos).

The drive from the gate to the cottage was spectacular. Within the first 10 minutes we spotted our first glimpse of wildlife, more than a glimpse actually, an elephant! He was just standing there snacking on a tree! This was the first of the dozens of elephants that we saw during our 4 days at the park. The park is experiencing an over population of elephants, there are more than 17000 of them at Kruger. As we continued on our drive to the cottage we saw a giraffe, steenboks, waterbucks, impalas and many exotic birds. After an exciting drive, we finally made it to our camp, Bateleur, just before the gate closed at 6pm.

During our 4 days in the park, we saw many species of animals, 18 in all, including elephants, giraffes, wilderbeasts, hippos, crocodiles, buffaloes, baboons, etc. We also saw many species of birds including eagles, vultures, bateleurs and not to mention some amazing sunsets in the jungle. We even caught a quick glimpse of some lions. See the photos for yourselves. I also brought my still camera with a 300mm zoom and took about 7 rolls of 36 shots which I hope will produce some memorable shots. I will be adding photos to this entry for the next few days, make sure you come back and visit.
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