Mauritius - tourists, not travellers

  Le Palmar Beach, Mauritius
Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Tuesday 16th May 2006 Sydney-Mauritius
Up at 4.45am, after both having had not a lot of sleep. Flight leaves at 7.40am, and is via Melbourne, where we have a one and a half hour stop. Total flying time is 15 hours, with a 6-hour time change. Both manage to get a bit of sleep on flight, partly due to the fact that the movie choice is terrible, and Dianne' s sound system only works in one ear, and that crackles.
Arrive in Mauritius at 4.30pm, and out to run the gauntlet of the taxi-drivers, as there are no public buses to our destination, Le Palmar Beach Resort, on the East Coast. We've booked our accommodation in advance through Air Mauritius Holidays. It's a three-star resort, and is A$368 for two nights, with breakfast and dinner included. Anyone reading this who knows us, will at this stage be thinking that we've made a typing error, but no, the Pryor's are attempting to go upmarket for a while!
When we read our actual booking carefully, we see that is shows our hotel as being at Wolmar, which we find is on the West Coast, and the phone number they've given us is also a West Coast number. Check our Lonely Planet guide, and also see the phone number for our hotel is different to that we've been given. Would normally have been more worried than we were, because the girls in the Air Mauritius office in Sydney had been so inefficient to date, just assumed this was another of their errors, which it was.
When we've satisfied ourselves that there are no cheap alternatives, start to negotiate with the taxi drivers. Finally get an offer of 1200 rupees (about A$55), which we consider is outlandish. We'd looked at staying at Blue Bay, which we know is quite near the airport (we stayed there when we were last here, seventeen years ago), but decided on Le Palmar as it was not much further on the map, and was in an area we hadn't previously stayed. When we protest to the taxi-driver, he tells us it is 60kms away, and takes an hour, which we believe is just another tall story to get a customer (this ruse is used all over the world to trick unwary travellers - more often than not, the destination is just a few kms away). He gives us his mobile phone, and says to ring our hotel and ask them what the charge is. Firstly we try the phone number shown on our booking form, but there is no answer. We then try the phone number shown in our trusty Lonely Planet, and they confirm our booking (on the East Coast as we expected), and told us the taxi charge is 1400 rupees. We then accept his 1200 rupee offer, and head off towards Mahebourg, with the light just starting to fade.
The road hugs the coastline most of the way, which accounts for the long road distance for about 20 km as the crow flies. The road is narrow, with a lot of pedestrian and cycle traffic, so the taxi seems to be speeding at only 60 k.ph. The greenery is quite tropical, with sugar cane to the roadside, and trees overhanging, and it is pretty gloomy along the road, but not enough so to need headlights until it is quite dark.
The villages along the way are typical 3rd world Asian - unfinished concrete structures, roadside shops with roller-shutter doors, parks around Banyan trees, Hindu temples. The driver points out the town names, and local points of interest, but his English is only fair, and his French accent very difficult to understand. The coastline is quite pretty, with a very wide lagoon, and waves breaking on the reef edge out on the horizon. There are a lot of fishing boats, mainly all wooden, narrow, rounded shape, with high sides. There are a number of boats out sailing, with small lateen rigs, in bright colours. There are a lot of intersections in the road closer to the hotel, and we are glad we are not driving ourselves.
At the hotel, the driver gives us his card, and offers to pick us up for the return journey, at a discounted price of Rs 1000, but we take his card without committing.
At the hotel, we endure the excessive politeness of the staff while we book in, have our complimentary fruit drink, and are shown around the complex, and to our room. The bags arrive shortly after (there was no way they would let us take them, although we pointed out we could wheel them with no problems). We manage to receive them without feeling the need to tip.
It was now after 7pm, and dinner was being served, but, to avoid unseemly haste, and to let our airline food settle, we checked out the hotel facilities and the beach. We're surprised just how nice the hotel and setting are. The hotel is three star, and was very reasonably priced, so we were expecting our normal down-at-heels place, whereas everything is very nice. There is a central pool, with a bar at one end, and restaurant tables along one side.


There is a double storey building either side, with a path through a tropical area in the middle. This leads down to the beach, where the sun lounges and thatched sunshades are set up.

The beach is quite attractive, but the water is pretty shallow apart from high tide. Front up for an excellent set course meal, with drinks extra. In spite of valiant attempts to stay up, we were asleep by 9, to be woken at 10 by some very ordinary loud singing from the entertainment combo, just across the pool from our room. We managed to sleep through till 7am, with a number of jet-lag related wakeful periods
Wed 17 May Le Palmar-Mauritius
Go for quite a long walk along the beach,


both to the left, and then the right. Quite a few fancy resorts in both directions. Walk back along the road, where there is quite a different scene. The locals are out in the market gardens working.

Having worked up an appetite, have a great breakfast, which has everything, from pancakes, eggs, omellettes, bacon, cold cuts, fresh tropical fruit, pastries, cereals etc etc. Afterwards, down to beach to check out the non-motorised water craft, which are included in the room rate. Want to take out a kayak, but told we can't till 11am, as the tide is too low. At first we thought this may have just been an excuse (we've been to Club Med before, where there was always an excuse as to why you couldn't use the equipment). In the meantime, Dianne goes for a snorkel outside the roped-off swimming area, but there's nothing to see. At 11am we're back down to get a double-kayak, with our snorkelling gear. We had plans to do what we did in French Polynesia, which was to hop in the water and tow the kayak if the area looked good for snorkelling, but we're told we can't snorkel with the kayak, which turns out to be good advice, as the water's a bit choppy, and not terribly deep, and it would have been hard to do. As it is, we kayak a fair way out and along the lagoon. Use our masks like a glass-bottomed boat - not a lot of fish life, but some coral near the edge of the reef.
Back for a rest, and lunch of cheese and bikkies we had with us.
Back to beach at 2pm for the free snorkel on the glass-bottomed boat. Takes us fair way down, and out near the reef, and near where there is a channel going out through the reef(would have been too far for us to swim out to). Some quite good coral, and quite a few fish. Back at hotel, have a swim in the pool, doing a few lengths.

Dianne has put on 7 kgs since we returned from our trip last year, which she is hoping to lose this trip, by a combination of eating less, and exercising more.
Before dark, walk to Belle Mare, the town a couple of kms to the north, passing some fancy resorts on the way. The town isn't very interesting at all - just some small shops, catering to tourists. Back to our hotel for another good dinner - smorgasbord this time. Once again, asleep by 9pm local time. However as there is a 6-hour time change, we think it is 3am. Sleep through the bad singing this night.