Mauritius

• Wjphilip's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Port Louis

Trip Start Jan 24, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End May 14, 2007 Next
Entry

  Port Louis, Mauritius
Friday, March 16, 2007

'm sitting on my bed amazed because I have the next four hours where I
have NOTHING to do...an odd occurrence. We recently left, Mauritius home
of the bird formerly known as the Dodo. I have decided that the Dodo
got the short end of the stick, evolutionarily speaking. It was stupid
and slow, not a good combo. It is EVERYWHERE on the island: Dodo pens,
Dodo towels, Dodo underwear. It would be like us putting a ... I can't
find something to compare the Dodo to, because everything I think of
has some capability to survive. It's like God put the Dodo on earth and
everyone had a pool to see how long it was going to survive. Oh Dodo...Oh
and to make matters worse apparently it tasted good too. I'm chuckling
inside at the poor Dodo's plight.

Coming into Mauritius we hit a hurricane so we arrived at 12:00 instead
of 6:00. Most of us just slept in, which was really nice. Usually when
we get a day to sleep in on the ship, they plan something at 9:00 so
that you get up early anyway. When you leave the ship there's a
Molasses plant next door. We all were like what's that smell? Until we
saw the big building with MOLASSES written on it. To get to the city
you either have to walk a half hour through a shady part of town or
take a water taxi. The water taxi made so much money off of us. We
headed straight for a restaurant. Due to the amount of rocking we'd
experienced, the Indian Ocean is really rocky, most of us hadn't eaten
more than toast and cereal for three days. It was such a good meal.

We went to the market next. There's the food market and the craft
market. Mostly guys run after you and yell: "Princess! Try my air
conditioned pants!" which are really pants that are made of really
light cloth. They also have "magic boxes" which you can't open unless
you move a hidden wooden plate first. And as I said before, there are
Dodos on everything. The trick is to look at stuff and look away really
quick. If the vendors see you looking at their stuff they pounce. My
friend Dan was my fake boyfriend and was great when the guy was showing
me how to put on air conditioned pants. The scariest part of the
experience was when a cockroach crawled out of the floor and scurried
across my foot. I made the mistake of looking down. However I didn't
scream, something I'm very proud of. I almost peed my pants though. It
wasn't nearly as bad as walking on the dock at night. It was kinda
funny because everyone was looking down at the ground and then all of a
sudden you'd hear a girl scream. Everyone would be doing what we called
the cockroach dance, lifting their feet way high up in the air and
jumping around all over the place. I'm sure we killed more cockroaches
that way.

We all went out for Chinese that night. It was very close to what we
have at home but everything's a little milder. They made up for it with
this sauce that they put on the table. IT WAS SO HOT! I'm pretty sure
there was some wasabi in it. And because we are mature adults we
continued in daring each other to put more and more sauce on our food.
I had this wonderful Peking duck (sorry Maren) it was incredible, I
only hope it's as good in China. Then we headed out. The most popular
drink in Mauritius is called Sambuca (Sam-buk-O), it's blue and they
light it on fire, we have to drink it out of a straw.

The next day we went to the beach in Grand Baie (Grand Bay). Mauritius
is kind of like Puerta Vallarta for Europe and Africa. So there are
tons of resorts there. We spent the day playing on the beaches and then
went out to a disco that night. It was called the Buddha disco,
probably because they have a giant Buddha in the middle of the dance
floor.

Our last day there a few of us went and saw all of the churches,
temples, and Chinese pagodas in Port Louis. Mauritius was ruled by so
many different countries and had so much influence from Africa and
India that they have three major religions. The temple was very cool.
It was so many different colors and there was so much detail. We had to
take off our shoes (luckily I was wearing miss matched socks). They
have a big temple that we weren't allowed to go in, that has all of the
different gods and goddesses in it. They all have a different number of
eyes and arms. They also house a few peacocks there. A guard took us
around and showed us which rooms we could and couldn't go into. He also
liked to show us which things to take a picture. He usually wouldn't
move on until we had indeed taken a picture. There wasn't anyone at the
Chinese Pagoda, however it was very pretty. It was on this hill that
was so green and the Pagoda and its courtyard were all red and white. I
wish I could read Chinese because there was writing all over the place.
We went through the market again and then we all went down to have a
beer and wait until the ship was ready to leave. On the way back we
passed a McDonald's and we stopped to check out the menu. It was really
interesting because they had a whole menu devoted to vegetarians,
everything was separately categorized about whether it was chicken and
beef. Kinda cool.

Mauritius was really an interesting experience, but in this port I was
really just excited to relax a little bit. We all try and see so much
stuff when we're in port that it gets a little stressful sometimes. A
lot of people rented villas and just hung out there and partied. But
most of us were upset because most of the people who rented villas
ended up causing a lot of damage or getting hurt. The students are
organizing a meeting to talk to everyone about how not to exemplify the
American stereotype. Unfortunately some people came on this trip, not
to learn about other cultures but to see the best 5 star hotels in
every port. Hopefully we'll be able to make some people think about
their actions.

Print this entry Share Port Louis hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry