Mauritius: Port Louis

Becca and I thought we’d get up early and watch the sunrise as we pulled into Port Louis, so we got up at 0600 for the 0615 sunrise. There was no sunrise. The seas had been rougher the past few days and were even rougher that morning. We came up to the 7^th deck to see and we could barely see the land as it was hazy and there were rain clouds all around. It got lighter, but there was no sun and it looked like it was not going to be a nice day in Mauritius. Fails.

We went back to bed and waited to be woken up by the loud speaker announcing immigration. Tania, Nic, and I went up and got breakfast right before it closed. Then I showered and got ready and we had to go through immigration. It was all pretty quick. We had a diplomatic briefing for 15 minutes, it was all pretty useless, but the man was from the US Embassy and essentially told us to stay out of trouble. Some American had been caught trafficking drugs there, that can be punishable by hanging. He has been in jail for 2 years awaiting his court date and it’s coming up. We were told he’ll probably be convicted and could spend up to 60 years in prison, but will most likely only get 30. He just tried to scare us into staying out of trouble. More on this later.

I ended up using a trip that Tania had bought but wasn’t going to use. I went with Abel to a marine science facility in Albion. They were all going to spend the day finding a place to stay for the night and then hanging out at the beach. I wasn’t going to stay over with them since I had to be up early to dive and meet people on the ship. So I decided I didn’t want to waste the day looking for a house or hotel when I wasn’t even going to stay there. Plus a bunch of my friends were doing this, so I figured I’d go with them.

It had stopped raining around breakfast time but picked up again just in time to get off the ship. Wonderful. It was about an hour and a half ride to the marine science research facility.

Mauritius is a small island, about 45 km across and 55 km long, but there are only a few major roads, so traffic is miserable. It felt like forever to get there. We listened to the director give a presentation about all of the projects they’re working on around the island. They have a ton of different sites for aquaculture projects in the future, but the funding wasn’t totally there. This entire facility was funded and given to Mauritius by Japan. Their main efforts are in conservation and preservation. This seems important as the entire island is surrounded by coral reef. It’s one of the only islands to be completely encircled by reef.

After the presentation we were given a brief tour of their aquaculture facility. It was pretty basic with one small room. They had a few round tanks outside with sea cucumbers that were spilling over and seemed somewhat overgrown. Inside they had fish larva. I’m not sure what kind. They also had a small viewing museum area inside. They had a bunch of ornamental fish like mollies, guppies, and goldfish and some shrimp.

Then we got back on the bus and headed for Il Deux Coco, an uninhabited island on the other side of the island. The sun had come out while we were inside, but we were greeted by more clouds as soon as we stepped back onto the bus. It took about another hour and a half to get to Il Deux Coco. It down poured for most of the ride so we weren’t too optimistic about going out on a boat and eventually snorkeling. But it cleared up almost as soon as we went down the small road between plots of sugarcane. Sugarcane fields are literally everywhere once you get out of the city.

We split up into two groups and got onto two glass bottom boats. I’d never been on one before, so for me this was awesome. The driver took us out over the coral in the bay. It was incredible. A good amount was alive, I was impressed. There was all different types and we saw a bunch of different fish I’d never seen before except maybe in pictures. We saw an anemone with 2 clown fish! I’ve never seen a clown fish in the wild. That made my day.

Oh, for those of you who may not know where Mauritius is (I had no idea before this trip, I hadn’t even heard of it), it’s to the east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

So these were my first experiences with coral and fish in the Indian Ocean. I was so stoked. We drove around the bay for awhile. Some of the coral was overgrown and some was covered in algae, but it was still incredible. We didn’t see too many fish, but I think that was mainly because of the boat.

We got to the island and were greeted by hotel staff. Apparently it’s owned by a resort and we were getting a meal out of this. There were umbrellas, chairs, tables, and a bar. I was a little disappointed by this, I thought we were going to an island where there’d be nobody at all, not just no residents. Lame.

But the food was incredible. We had salad and lamb and BBQ chicken. There was also a ton of fish, but I don’t eat fish. Dessert was fried bananas and fruits. Delicious.

Once lunch was over we got back into the boat and went snorkeling in the middle of the bay. I could have spent forever out there. I’m not usually a huge fan of snorkeling, I’d rather dive, but this was incredible. The fish were so different than the Atlantic fish I’m used to seeing. These ones are way more colorful with crazy stripes and bars and rings. There were some reef fish that are also found in the Atlantic as well.

While free diving I found an octopus chilling in a hole and we spent a while looking at that trying to get it to come out. I was wishing I’d looked at a book of Indian fish before I’d gotten in the water so I could identify them. We got to swim around and snorkel for awhile before the boat took us back to the island. On the island Tyler, Isaac, and I walked around the beach and looked at shells and crabs. We found a mole crab, it looked like an albino cockroach. It was crazy looking and it would burrow down every time we put it back down on the sand. It was the perfect temperature out and the sun was shining.

We collected up all of our stuff and got back on the glass bottom boat to check out the coral a little more before heading back to the main land to leave. We saw some barracudas and jacks. More reef fish.

The bus ride took about an hour and a half to get back to Port Louis. It rained again almost as soon as we got onto the bus.

Mauritius is gorgeous. It’s unlike any island I’ve ever been to. The mountains that exist here are incredible, way different than Hawaii’s volcanoes or the hilly islands of USVI’s and BVI’s. These mountains are so angular and jagged. The island is so green and the waters are so blue. It’s incredible. The people are a mix of Indian, French, British, and African. Most people seemed to speak English easily, but the newspapers and news were in French and everyone seemed to speak French and Creole with one another. Apparently Creole French is the main language of the island.

This island is one of the most inaccessible places to get to from the United States. You have to fly to South Africa or France or England or Egypt for a flight there. We were told it’s about 24 hours of flying from the United States to get there and it’s incredible expensive to fly there. It’s more of a European vacation destination. You could definitely see that, too, there were a bunch of European tourists.

Port Louis is also beautiful. The buildings are right on the water and the city itself isn’t too big.

I got back on the ship and showered and got ready to go out with Victor, Bea, Vanessa, Molly, and Emily. We walked into town. It was right after sunset, but we had a big enough group that the 30 minute walk wasn’t bad. It saved us money and with a group that big you’re safe. Plus we had Victor to protect us. We walked to the waterfront to get some dinner and drinks. We ended up going to Shooters. I think we’ve encountered several bars named Shooters in our travels. It was a sports bar and grill. I was dying for some American food. I got some chicken fingers with Emily for an appetizer and some chicken fajitas for dinner. We tried the beer of the island, Phoenix. It was pretty good. We also got the most delicious brownie dessert. We were all starving, so the food was amazing.

A bunch of other SASers made their way there, too. We were planning on just chilling there for the night and going back to the ship at a reasonable hour so we could get some sleep before diving the next day. A ton of people from the ship were staying at either Grand Bay up in the northern part of the island or Flicken Flac down in the southern part of the island. We had to keep reminding ourselves that the diving would be awesome and it was worth it to not party that night.

We spent a few hours just chilling at Shooters with everyone. MTV was playing on the big screen up front, this was some of the first real TV I’d watched in awhile. It was all music videos and they were mostly music we hadn’t heard before, so it was strange. We keep thinking about all the music we’re missing out on while we’re abroad.

Even though it was a Tuesday the manager tried to turn it into a party. They knew that SAS was in town and they knew how much we party. They told us they usually only have DJs on the weekends, but they had one tonight. Unfortunately there weren’t too many of us there and we were just chilling. The crew showed up, too. Apparently they’d been barhopping all night. We talked with some of them for awhile. I love the crew, they’re awesome. I’d seen my cabin steward earlier in the night. They told us how upset they were that we couldn’t all hang out on the ship. It sucks. About half of them are around our age, it would be so awesome if we could interact more with them. It was good to hear that they wanted to spend more time with us. They also said that they weren’t supposed to talk with us all too much on the ship in the dining halls as the SAS administration seems to always think the worst of them when they see us interacting. Sorry, we’d rather be friends with them than have them be servants to us. Thank you SAS administration yet again for ripping apart a community.

Anyways, after we left Shooters we went to the casino across the way. It was built as a pirate ship. We played on the slot machines and other games. We lost all our rupees, but we’d only gambled a few to begin with. Victor and Emily played blackjack while Bea, Molly, and I played around downstairs. We ended up staying there for awhile. It wasn’t too busy, but it was really fun. I love being able to walk into bars and casinos in all these countries without being carded at all. I know that I’m legally old enough now even at home, but it’s still strange to not be carded.

We got a cab back to the ship and were back by 0030. Plenty of time to sleep and rest up for our big day of diving the next day. There were actually a fair amount of people sleeping on the ship. I was actually happy to not spend $130 staying at a hotel with everyone else.