Mauritius – Too Little Time . . .

When we found out that we would spend three days in Mauritius, I thought that would be plenty of time. I was expecting to spend three lazy days going to internet cafes, running errands, hanging on the beach, and partying. Well, I did party and hang on the beach, but there was so much more to Mauritius than I ever imagined. And, I suspect, had we spent a week there, I would have still wished for more time.

What did I expect from Mauritius??? - - I expected an expensive, built up, wired (exact phrase given at pre-port), touristy island with a French influence. Something akin to St. Maarten? I expected three lazy days on the beach, partying with 700 SASsy kids. I expected it to be like any other island that I’ve ever visited.

What did I find??? - - A very very unique place, unlike any other I’ve been to. I would say that the prevailing culture was Indian. I have never really been around a concentrated Indian population, so this was a big culture shock for me. Technically, the national language is English, but the first language of most citizens is French.

Although I expected this to be the least cultural place that we visited, I was entirely wrong. I actually feel, and I’m sure that a lot of people would disagree with this, that this was the biggest culture shock that I’ve felt on this trip thus far. What I experienced in the other three countries that we’ve visited is looking at poverty and traditional ways of life from a distance and having to take tours to get up close. In Mauritius, every taxi drive took you through poverty stricken (maybe this is too strong of a word, but certainly run down) neighborhoods made up of shacks. Even most of the local stores and restaurants you saw as you drove through looked run down. The people you saw were wearing traditional Indian clothing. And, brightly colored, highly embellished temples dotted the landscape. I got a kick out of seeing a fifteen/twenty foot Buddha through a temple window on one cab ride. All in all, I found Mauritius to be extremely cultural and different from anywhere else I’ve been, just for virtue of soaking in the culture without actually participating much. I am absolutely stoked about India now after I’ve had this little taste of Indian culture. I CANNOT believe that we’re on our way there now!

So, what did I do???

On the first day, I got off the ship without a single plan. I spent a little time walking around the port area. There wasn’t much open since it was a Sunday. Just a few restaurants and a small market. The market was closing when we showed up, but it didn’t look like there was anything special there. It looked like a lot of cheap crap (plastic bangles, clothes, etc.) that I can probably get a lot cheaper in India. After wandering for a while, we headed out to Flick and Flack Beach. It was about a forty five minute drive away from port. When we got there, we explored the street area stopping for a drink, a little shopping, and to check out a couple places to possibly rent out for the night. After exploring the little strip mall, we went and took a long walk on the beach. We took a pretty long walk along the shore. We actually joked that that was our idea of a hike.

After a half an hour or so, we saw a place on the beach that looked like a beach bar, so we went up to explore. It turned out that it was a really fun, tropical type hotel with a bar/dining/pool area on the beach. It reminded me a lot of the hotels on the beach in Daytona Beach (spring breakesc) – not the nicest place ever, but tropical and fun, and of course right on the beach. It turned out that a lot of SAS kids were rolling in. So, me and another girl decided to book a room for that night. We ended up with a really cool little bungalow right by the pool. After that, the four of us girls who came together went and did a little shopping nearby. Then we all headed back to the ship together.

My friend Tiff and I ran onto the ship and got ourselves dolled up and packed enough stuff for the next two days. Then we took another forty five minute cab ride back to the hotel. We arrived just in time to have a drink before dinner. Dinner was included in our room price. It was a really good buffet dinner. I sat at a table with a lot of nice kids, several of which I had yet to have the pleasure of meeting.

After dinner, virtually every SAS kid staying at the place decided that they wanted to go to some house party being thrown (fill in the blank – at a crew member’s house, at a hostel, by some SASsy kids at a rented bungalow). So, about thirty kids got into separate taxis and took off. I was waiting for my turn to get in a taxi when a taxi showed up with three of my good girlfriends from the ship. One of the girls was one of the girls who had been with us when we found the hotel, so they came their purposely. They had randomly decided that they wanted to sleep on the beach and had decided to come hang with me and leave their bags in my room. So, they dropped off their bags in our room, we all had a shot, and about nine of us got into a van and went in search of this elusive house party. We had two different people with the same address, and we still didn’t find the house party. We got a nice little tour of the area though. And, it gave us a chance to pick up some CHEAP ($3) bottles of rum from a roadside stand (yes, a roadside stand, no liquor store necessary, haha).

When we got back to the hotel, we headed down to the beach and had a party with our rum. It’s a good thing that we picked up the rum too, because we drank the bar out of almost everything it had pretty early in the night. I don’t know how that always seems to happen. They’re never prepared for us at these resort/restaurant bars. I can count at least three times that I’ve been there when we’ve drank them out of their tequila on this trip.

Anyways, things got pretty crazy on the beach and before I knew it, there were naked people everywhere running into the Indian ocean. You will all be extremely disappointed to know (besides my dad) that I didn’t participate. I guess that I’m just a little too modest for that kind of thing. I just wasn’t feeling it. Instead, I did a lot of laughing and blushing and then helped all the drunk, naked people find their clothes (mom mode kicked in for the first time on this trip). I’m really sad that I’m such a wuss. I wouldn’t expect it of myself. But, the next day when I heard some of the guys giving a negative review to one of the girls’ bodies, I was really glad that I’d made the choice I did.

Anyways, after a lot of drinking and shenanigans, everyone started to drift off to bed. Everything would have ended quietly had not been for A.J. (you all remember him – he’s one of the few people who I name in this blog because he just does such silly silly things that need to be outed publicly and I can just imagine the stories he’s told about me in his blog – we always seem to randomly end up at the same places).

He stopped by my room to drop off one of the girls who was going to crash on my floor and decided that he needed to use the washroom. My initial thought was to say, “A.J., use your own washroom.” But, no, I didn’t. Well, instead of flushing the toilet, he turned some knob which caused water to rapidly shoot out of the wall and flood my entire bathroom and bedroom. He came out of the bathroom dazed and like “OMG, it’s like meet the parents style in there.” I’m half sleeping when it hits me what he’s saying. He’s just standing there with no idea what to do. So, I go in there and turn on the light (why it wasn’t on, I have no damn idea) and turn off the knob. And, here comes a voice from the bedroom (one of the girls staying on my floor). We go out there to see why she’s talking to herself and discover that not only is there an inch of water in the bathroom, but it’s also flooded the entire bedroom floor. Since three girls were supposed to sleep there, that was a big problem.

I made A.J. go find towels and clean up the mess. Of course though, the floor was still pretty wet along with a lot of our stuff and the sleeping bags that the girls were going to use. So, after a little controversy and someone throwing up in my sink that would not drain, it was finally arranged that the girls were going to go sleep in Chad and A.J.’s dry room.

Of course I couldn’t go to sleep without some drunk ass SAS boy sneaking into my bed and passing out. I didn’t even care at this point and just passed out on the other side of the bed until my roommate came back and we had to kick him out of bed physically. Good times . . . really . . .

The next day, we got up and had a nice breakfast and decided that we wouldn’t rent our room again that night and would instead check out another part of the island later in the day. So, we spent a few hours laying out on the beach and generally enjoying life. Then we got up and went on a long walk around some shops, some random streets, and walked back along the beach at sunset. By the time we got back to the hotel, we still hadn’t decided what we were doing for the night. The general consensus of the girls I was hanging with was that they were going to stay at the hotel again but sleep on the beach. That was absolutely not what I wanted to do. So, I was really happy to see a lot of other friends on our beach when we returned. It turned out that they had hung at the beach all afternoon and were heading to dinner and out to some clubs on another part of the island. So, I hopped on the bandwagon and took off with them.

Once we got back to the port area for dinner, the group of 20 decided to break into two groups to go eat. I ended up with a group of six. This kid knew of a really authentic Chinese restaurant in the Chinatown. He had been there the night before with a girl from China. I tried all kinds of crazy things that I had never had before – shark fin soup, pork fat, and duck. None of it made me gag, but I don’t think that I’d necessarily ever try any of it again. One event that did transpire during dinner was one of my guy friends jokingly betting me that I couldn’t not speak for ten minutes. Haha. Very funny. I know I talk a lot, but seriously, I don’t think it’s that bad . . . Anyways, I easily won and he ended up paying for my dinner. I think it was just an excuse for him to pay. It was actually really sweet. Especially since I actually didn’t have enough rupees on me to pay for my full share of dinner. Funny how stuff like that works out. Another one of the guys made me a paper rose out of one of the napkins. It was really really sweet. We need guys like this in Chicago.

After a death walk from Chinatown back to the ship, we had half an hour to get ready to head out to the clubs. I did the best I could with a bag of wet clothes (thanks A.J. J). I ended up at three different clubs that night. It was so fun running into all the SAS kids that I know. A highlight of the night was trying these Springbok shots. They tasted like mint chocolate-chip ice cream. One of the girls I had, had dinner with (who is coincidently from Chicago) made the best comment on this topic. She said, “if we can’t see Springboks (an animal) in Kenya, at least we can drink them in Mauritius.” It was classic.

I ended my night with a packed (probably eighteen person) free cab ride back to port. Apparently it was free because of all the money spent at the club. The whole thing was a blast and I think that I got to bed around fourish.

The next day, I had no idea what I was going to do. I really wanted to go to some waterfalls. I made a bunch of phone calls and didn’t get ahold of anyone. So, I got myself dressed and started out of the ship. Luckily, I ran into some people heading out to lunch just as I was getting off. So, I went and had lunch with them near the port. They were heading to some beaches, so I was just going to break off and go shopping after lunch. Coincidently, I ran into a friend heading to the falls just as we finished lunch. Then, we ran into two more people who wanted to go.

So, we all got into a cab and took an hour long drive to Tamarin Falls. For some reason, I thought that we’d just be dropped off by some water falls and get to swim in them. Nope, we hiked it. It was a long, hard hike, but at least we had a local guide to help us out. We couldn’t have done it alone. We ran into another group of eight SASsy kids. So, we all ended up doing the hike pretty much together. We saw probably six or seven waterfalls. We swam in the largest one and got to go up to a place about thirty feet up and jump off. Since I have huge vertigo issues, this was a very scary and fulfilling experience for me. Hitting the water hurt a little, and it was freezing cold, but I was so happy that I’d done it. I really impress myself with my adventurousness sometimes.

After the two to three hour trek up boulders, trees, and waterfalls, we returned back to port. We made a quick stop at a local liquor store. It wasn’t even large enough to hold everyone who wanted to go in at the same time. And, the rum was all on a really high shelf, so one of the kids had to stand on a table and hand the bottles down. It was actually pretty funny. Although, I’m sure this is the kind of thing that our dean would not be happy to see. Just so everyone knows, we were completely respectful and helped stimulate the economy. I’m sure the people were happy enough to have us for the full five minutes we were in their hair.

After we got back on the ship and changed, we headed back into the port area to do some last minute eating, shopping, and drinking. We went to a Chinese restaurant with the group that we hiked with and had a fabulous time. The port area is always such a blast before we have to get back on the ship because everyone is out living it up before on-ship time.

Anyways, on-ship time came and as far as I know everyone was accounted for and no one was kicked off this time. As usual, I said goodbye to Mauritius until her glimmering city lights were out of view. This time I was on the sixth deck aft and there was cake, but the feeling was still the same - an electric energy and satisfaction radiating from the past amazing days and a sad feeling at leaving my new world behind, probably never to return.

With that I will say good night.

Best wishes and love to you all!

P.S. I am so psyched and just a little nervous about getting to India. I have two midterms during this crossing. Things are going to be really intense starting with India. In between India we only have one day before we reach Myanmar. Therefore, I am trying to get myself completely together on this crossing.