Mauritius

Mauritius started off a little bit different than the other ports that we have been to thus far due to our late arrival (because of rough waters) to the island. And let me just shout out how fun filled rough waters are! Oh boy! Because we didn’t even pull in to Mauritius until around noon, I did not get up at a ridiculous hour to follow my usual pattern of watching the sunrise. When we finally did get off the ship, we did our typical wandering around town to check everything out. What we found out about Mauritius was that there really wasn’t much to it. The most exciting thing, I felt, about Mauritius, was that it was home to the once great Dodo bird (now extinct because the Portuguese ate them all). They also grow lots of sugarcane and have nice beaches and good Chinese and Indian food, but that is basically it. Not really sure what to do with ourselves because we couldn’t see any real Dodos, we decided to take a public bus to the botanical gardens. I love public transportation. This had the potential to be the most chaotic experience ever. The bus station, with probably around 100 buses was in Port Louis, where we were. So we found a bus, with the help of some locals, that would take us where we needed to go. The drive to the botanical gardens took about an hour providing us with a little scenic tour of Mauritius. Once we arrived at the botanical gardens we climbed trees, frolicked in the gardens, and saw ginormous Lilly pads. No joke, they were huge. This was pretty cool, except I got eaten alive for the second time on this trip by lots of bugs. My legs look like I have chickenpox. Yay! Oh, and one more thing. I almost forgot to tell you about our French friends. So, our ship was docked right next to a French marine ship in Mauritius. A ship full of French marines docked next to a ship 2/3 full of American women. Interesting…They spoke French and we spoke English. We tried to communicate with them because we wanted to tour their ship (I don’t know, something about battleships are pretty exciting), but this really didn’t work out so well. However, it did provide for a good time. They made it clear that it was “forbidden” to come on their ship, and when they tried to get on our ship, we made it clear that our ship was “forbidden” as well. After this “conversation” we asked if we could take pictures with them, which was quite exhilarating. One of the marines was fully dressed in his uniform, looking rather snazzy. When I took a picture with him he took off his really sweet hat with a funny little palm on top and placed it on my head. Then he and I posed, looking rather mischievous, creating a dang good photograph. Wohoo for French Marines. They were fun. That is pretty much all for Mauritius. Off to India…and I couldn’t be more excited!