Mauritius was made first, and then Heaven, and that Heaven was copied after Mauritius - Mark Twain

Mauritius is a country that I had never heard of before this trip, I couldn’t even pronounce it correctly. It’s this small island that you can cross in a few hours and it was pretty amazing.

Day 1:

          We left Port Louis and grabbed a cab to the southeast section of the island where the group of us had a catamaran at sunset. We ended up at one of the fanciest hotels I’ve seen. We were allowed in to wait the 4 hours till our catamaran left around the hotel, and our cab would be waiting for us when we were done. (Cabs most places are like that. They’ll give you a card with their number on it and they’ll come and pick you up. Or wait for you with no extra cost. You also can negotiate the price. Going back to the states is going to be interesting.) While we were waiting we went swimming (the water here is the bluest I’ve seen!) and then ended up involved in a volleyball game with a group from Germany and France. The actual sunset cruise was pretty, though you couldn’t see the sunset with the clouds. I met a couple from the UK who talked to me for awhile about how small the world is today. They also told me that I must take a gap year after university to travel like their daughters did. Which I would totally be okay with. Hearing about their daughters’ travels makes me think that we should do that in our society. Because while I am studying on this trip what I’ve learned hasn’t been in the classroom at all but just in talking to people. A year of travel for travel’s sake must broaden your mind like no other. After leaving there we headed to the north part of the island where a lot of SASer’s were before making our way to the ship for the night.

Day 2:

          Today was spent heading to a beach in the north for snorkeling. Except the place we tried to get snorkeling at didn’t really offer it. So we headed to a beach where this guy with a boat took us out for about 6 dollars and we got to snorkel. It was pretty amazing there were so many fish and you look up and see the beach and the mountains. We headed in and a few of us headed off in search of food which was found about 15 minutes away in the form of a vendor. It definitely felt like being a kid back at the beach again.  This was only added to when we got back to the section of the beach we were at and found our LLC’s kids playing in the water. Which just meant we got to play with the kids and toss them in the air for another hour before we headed back into Port Louis. It was a lot of fun. From there we were dropped off near the waterfront where there was a market that we wandered. It was cool because everyone here first assumes that you’re French before moving to English. So I got to pretend I could speak French for a bit till the vendors caught on.  One of my friends had to mail a package back to her host family in India when we found that the post office was closed. One of the cab drivers started to talk to us and offered to mail it. And I honestly think he did, more so after talking to him. His name was Garnash after the Indian god, and he had a son in England who was studying to be a doctor. I think he was working on his specialty. He’s been telling his son that when he comes back to Mauritius to work he needs to give one day each month where he offer’s service free of charge to the poor. He was a really cool guy who I wasn’t sure of at first. Goes to show how things can change. From here we headed back to the ship by water taxi, but on the way we saw this rainbow over the city. It was so amazing and a great way to leave. Until we got to the ship and saw a huge line waiting to get on. Still Mauritius was great and I’m so surprised that I had never heard of it a few months ago.