Mauritius

MAURITIUS
Mauritius is so beautiful, it’s so much prettier than I thought it was going to be. There were mountains all in the background of the Port (Port Louis) we were docked at. Mauritius was an island owned by the French for a long time, but now it is considered part of Africa, but it doesn’t have much to do with Africa. Mauritius is really cool because there is like no poverty, and everyone gets along, There are a ton of different people on the island and everyone gets along, it’s like the perfect society. It was really nice being in a tropical vacation spot place, and you don’t walk out of your resort and see poverty everywhere (like you do in places like Dominican Republic and Mexico, and all those other places). Mauritius is the prettiest island I’ve ever been too. There are forests all over the mountains too, it is just so gorgeous. Everyone on the island speaks French, and mostly everyone knows English. We were only here for one night, so we had two full days. When we got off the ship it was raining, it was not nice out. Lindsay, Anne, Emily, and I signed up for this Adventure Park and Beach Semester at Sea day drip (my first SAS trip this whole time). We got on the buses and we drove to the southern part of the island, it took us a good hour and a half to get there. As we left Port Louis everything was so pretty. There were mountains and green everywhere. The adventure park was kind of in one of these mountains. I have pretty pictures. The adventure park was really cool, except we gotten EATEN ALIVE, oh my god, I probably had at least 100 mosquitoes bites, they were all over my legs, and we had bug spray on, good thing there’s no Malaria in Mauritius, because I would definitely have it after that. We had these harnesses on and we went through the first course, which was a bunch of bridges in the forest, they were really cool, it took us an hour or so to go through the first course. The second course was a lot more challenging, we got so muddy. They had rope nets we climbed across, there were a bunch of different rope things we climbed across to get from one thing to the next. They were really hard, I was sore after it. There was a zip line that was short at the end, but it was really fun. The ropes course was so cool, minus the muddiness and bites. Our legs were covered in mud and our shoes were just like ruined. After the course we got lunch there, which was horrible it was rice and this gross chicken I didn’t even eat it looked so gross. After lunch we took the bus more south to Flic en Flac beach, it’s like a really famous beach I guess. We stopped when we were almost there at this lookout thing looking over the beach and it was this huge aerial view of the beach and ocean, with gorgeous mountains on the side, it was the most amazing view, I cant belive im doing these things while my friends and everyone is back home in boring WI and Iowa. We got to the beach and we just relaxed on the beach, there were some other SAS kids there that had villas near there. We went swimming in the ocean for like the hour we had there, the Indian Ocean is by far my favorite ocean. It is so warm, it is so much saltier too, its funny, you can totally tell you float a lot more. After the beach we drove back to the Port (which was in middle/Northern part of the island). Lindsay and I met up with Noel and Laurel on the ship and we didn’t have any hotels booked, we just decided to wing it and go up to Grand Baie (a ton of SAS kids were going here, it was pretty much split between Flic en Flac and the other half went to Grand Baie, I’m glad we got to see both). Grand Baie was like a 25 minute cab from the ship. We were with some other girls who were going up to Grand Baie also, so we had to split up in 2 cabs, Noel, Linds, and I were in one cab. Our driver was this old man who was bad at English and driving with him was seriously scary. He seemed like he was drunk, he was going SO slow, we lost the other cab, it was so far ahead of us. People on the other side of the road were flashing their lights at us all the time, people were passing every second, and we were like yelling at the cab driver asking him to drive better or let someone else take us, but we wouldn’t do anything or respond. I’m not kidding, a bus passed us, it was awful, this was a one lane road too. We FINALLY got there, and met up with Laurel, thank god we made it. We went to these villas where the other girls were staying and we asked if they had extra room, and they did, the other girls paid $70/night so we just said we want the same price and they gave us a way bigger room it was so big, it had like a kitchen in it. The bed was a king bed, and we put four of us in it. The view was absolutely amazing. It was right on the ocean, and so gorgeous, the water is SO blue. After we got our room we went to this cute restaurant across the street from the villa. The service was so slow, it took us so long, over an hour to get our food. I got this fish currie, it was really good, but it gave me the worst diarrhea the next day(sorry). After dinner we went to Banana bar, and it was just packed with tons of SAS kids, it was really fun. After Banana bar a bunch of us went to Zanzibar next door to Banana Bar and danced for a while. We walked back to our hotel from the bar with a bunch of people, it was a really close walk. The next morning we woke up early, around 8 or so, and we went to the cutest breakfast place. The lady was so nice and she had this little place like in her house kind of. She was from Cape Town and she told us about stuff to do in Cape Town. After breakfast we went to the beach, which was so pretty, I loved the beach we were at, it was really small and the water was so blue. There was the craziest guy named “Superman” who was trying to sell us stuff, and he was ripping us off so bad, Superman was so crazy. Noel bought a ton of stuff from him it was so funny because they argued for so long about the prices. We also met some locals there, one looked like Bob Marley, they were so cute and barely spoke English. After the beach we left around 2 or so and took a cab back to the ship. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to get some food. When we got on the ship we dropped our stuff off and took a water cab to the waterfront, which was right near the ship. Water cabs are weird, we picked up random people from a fishing boat then they dropped us off at the waterfront. The water front is so cute, but it is definitely very touristy. It is a really nice area with tons of restaurants and cute little shops. We got pizza at this random restaurant and used internet because we brought our laptops with us. We had to be on the ship by 6 and it was a little after 5 so we went back the water taxi, he was really slow again and we were nervous about getting on the ship late. There was a huge line to get on the ship and if it was after 6 would have gotten dock time in the next port. We finally got on the ship with only 3 minutes left, we were so lucky, and there were a ton of kids behind us. We left later that night and set off for CAPE TOWN!