Mauritius: Delicious or Fictitious?

Once you’re off the ship in Port Louis, Mauritius, you have two options on how to travel into downtown Port Louis. You can walk a half hour through some of the seedy weird portions of the port area, or take a water taxi for $1. Because we have no idea where we’re going, we decide that the water taxi is a brilliant idea.

The water taxi consists of a small boat with an outboard motor, a pilot, and a lot of students. They packed us in there, and I’m glad they didn’t overfill us. The water in the port area didn’t exactly look crystal clear. As we were turning to position the boat, it brought up all the silt, sand, and mud that was sitting at the bottom, so you can’t see below the surface of the water. The water taxi ride was alright. Nothing special, but it saves quite a bit of time and drops you off where you want to be in downtown.

The more I travel, the more I realize that there seems to be an endless number of ways to transport people, ranging from air-conditioned coach buses to green tin can airplanes to rickety water taxis that are slowly bailed as we traverse back and forth. I also find myself putting a lot of blind faith in a lot of people that I don’t know, hoping that they get me where I want to go safely. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

The group I was with was attempting to secure a villa for a night or two while we’re in Mauritius, and I tagged along on what I thought would be a short side excursion out of the entire day’s activities. I think we were in three travel agencies and two hours later before they figured that their plans were not going to come to its fruition. I was semi-alright with that though, because I was getting a lovely walking tour of downtown Port Louis.

When I pictured the tropical island of Mauritius and its capital Port Louis, I had a very distinct image in my head. This image did not include high-rises, urban congestion, crowded streets, and more vehicles than I thought existed on the entire island. And I was wrong with every account. I never thought Port Louis would be the bustling center that it was. And if you considered the cleanliness of everything, and Mark Twain’s quote, I was surprised. Surprised at the lack of cleanliness that I expected. Don’t get me wrong, it was clean enough to walk through fine, but it seemed to be missing that luster that I thought would exist on a tropical island. It’s almost like the early stages of becoming run-down were just put into effect. If its not careful, there’s a dangerous path it’s going to go down.

After the group gave up on getting a villa, we started our shopping expeditions. As in every port (at least that’s what it seems like), there’s always an infamous market that everyone wants to get to. I didn’t have a map, but I could tell that we were nowhere near any type of market. We were going through some weird sidestreet lined wall to wall with stalls and small shops. They only seemed to be selling a few items over and over again. Baby products were quite popular along with women’s underwear, and the other big ticket item was shoes. Those seemed to be all that we saw as we walked around the stalls.

We met up with someone else who said that they knew where the market everyone was looking for was. So we went over towards that, and we think we find it. There’s an interior section and a section that’s more outdoorsy. The outdoorsy section would be the section that wouldn’t survive the next major cyclone. We went inside first, and the entire ground level was fresh fruits and vegetables, which we were all advised against consuming. They always throw the asterisk in there that if you can peel it, you should be alright, but that never seems completely safe to me. I can’t do G-I issues, so I’m avoiding anything that can be considered an issue.
Upstairs we had what I would call our first real encounter with pushy salespeople on our trip. We knew they were coming, and didn’t know exactly know when they would appear, but we were sure that if we didn’t hit them by India, we’d hit them there. But, we found them a country early and they will do whatever they need to do to try to sell you anything. They like to follow you around after you’ve left their section, and they’re just difficult to shake off. And they also don’t like to take ‘no’ for a response.

But, as always, my goal purchase in each country is a mask. And out of the entire second floor (which they call their first floor because the rest of the world doesn’t do what Americans do, or most likely vice versa), I found one corner with masks in it. I recognized a bunch of the masks from Africa, so I asked which ones were made in Mauritius, and she pointed to two, out of about 50. I got one of the two. It’s a lovely relief to have my mask in hand from each country. It’s one more weight that has been lifted off my shoulders.

We then moved over to the outdoorsy market, and that’s where we got a whiff of what I would call ‘urban Mauritius.’ As with most smells I’ve encountered on this trip, I don’t want to know what I was smelling, all I want to know is that if I keep walking, it goes away. And it has so far. It’s never a good feeling to be away from a smell and then smell it again later. It’s like a ghost that keeps coming back around to haunt you.

After walking around in the baking sun all afternoon, we stopped at an outdoor café to have a drink before we went back to the ship. I don’t know what the black stuff floating around in my Fanta was, but I haven’t had any problems resultant from it yet. That was nice to sit down for a while and catch our breaths. It’s the getting a break in the full throttle of port that really helps to energize me and keep me going for the rest of our stays.

While we were sitting around a table much too small to hold all of us, we noticed a table of professors and staff across the patio (if you could call it a patio, it was just an extension of the sidewalk, really). Living with professors is an experience that should be incorporated into all academic communities. Knowing who they hang out with, what they eat and drink, and how they attempt to socialize (because let’s face it – professors are not the socializing elite), is absolutely fascinating in a bizarre sort of way. It’s the train wreck scenario. It’s difficult to watch, but you just can’t tear your eyes away from it.

The café where we were sitting was actually part of a smaller touristy two-level shopping center. Afterwards, we wandered into the mall, and lost everybody as some people stood near the entrance, other people went to the bathroom, and most people ventured into a multitude of different stores. I followed some people, and perused a bunch of the stores. When I shop, I’m never really looking for anything in particular (besides the mask) and especially in the souvenir places I like to make sure that if I’m going to buy something, it’s going to be worth my money, because I don’t want to come home and have it look like I have an odd assortment of snow globes and key chains that I’m never going to see or use again.

The water taxi we took back did not drop us off right next to the ship where we picked it up. The ride was a third of the distance and they dropped us off in the shady portions of the port area that I was not looking forward to walking through come the evening. But we made it back to the ship safe, which is always an added plus.

After getting back and grabbing dinner, the timing was right to call home. It’s getting increasingly difficult to figure out the timing to call home, but it’s worth the effort, I think.

So far on the voyage, I’ve made it thus far on the free internet package that I started out with. I’ve finally run out and needed to but more. But I’m one of the later people. To go through 25o internet minutes on a slow connection in about 40 days is impressive, if you ask me. Other people have gone through a thousand or two minutes so far. I don’t have that kind of money or free time to spend on the internet here. It’s expensive stuff. Besides, you really shouldn’t be spending all your time on this trip on the internet. Facebook should be the least of your worries out here.

I decided that when I was signing up for my day trips that I was going to sign up for the trips that I wanted to go on, and not necessarily the ones that other people I knew were going on. It’s an independent way of thinking, and I want to do what I want to do and not what other people want to do, if you know what I mean. However, the other side of the coin is that if you’re on a trip with nobody you know, it’s not nearly as fun, so there’s a bit of a waiting game when you’re sitting in the Union trying to see if anyone I know is coming on the trip.

The trip I was on for the evening was the Mauritian Multi-Cultural Evening, which is supposed to be a dinner and a bunch of local performances at a local restaurant. And when I use the word ‘local’ on an island of this size (which I think is the size of Washington DC) it encompasses the entire island. Sure enough, as has happened every time so far on every other trip I’ve been on, there’s people I know on it. Tonight, my friends Nate and Katie from the Boston area were going on the trip as well. Like finding a mask in port, it’s like a weight being lifted off my shoulders – to know somebody on a trip. And the further the trip goes along, the greater my odds should get just because I’ll know more people to hang out with. And as usual, there were still a small handful of drunks to join the trip and make it that much more interesting.

When we pulled up to the restaurant, which looked very nice, they had a group of women out in front dancing, effectively blocking our way in. So we stood and watched as they served us some kind of juice in champagne flutes. After they finished what I only know to call a ‘native dance’ we went in and sat down for dinner. Then we got back up once we saw that it was a buffet style meal.

It took us forever to eat our dinners, and here’s why: After everyone sat down, the now larger dance troupe came out from behind a curtain-like shield and danced. The island of Mauritius is made up of Indian, African, and Chinese influence and descendants, so there were dances from those three countries, as well as Sega, the dance of Mauritius, which is kind of like a combination of all three. They would come out and dance, and we would have to stop eating to watch and take photos. So then we would go back to our food, which was getting progressively colder, and then they would come back out to dance again. And we would have to stop eating again. It would get to the point where once they stopped dancing, we would start eating really quickly, and keep going until the next dance comes out. It was a bit of a vicious cycle.

And then, just like at every other place we’ve been to where there was dancing, they make us come out at the conclusion to dance with them. Only this time it ended differently. Instead of it ending when the dancers had enough, and the music stopping and everyone going back to their seats, the dancers went away, and the guy playing the music instantaneously turned into a DJ and started by playing US 1950s rock. That took me a little off guard once we all started doing the twist. It just seemed absurd that I was doing the twist in Mauritius. There’s something that sits oddly with me about that. Then without missing a beat, after a number of additional 50s songs, we took a brief turn into techno music from ten years ago, and then found ourselves where I thought we were heading.

There are a number of things I thought I would do on this trip, and there are a number of things I also thought I’d be doing in Mauritius. Doing the YMCA was not one of these, nonetheless the group of 20 or 30 of us were on the dance floor in the middle of a traditional Mauritian restaurant, without the local dancers, doing the YMCA. I’ve felt awkward many times in my life, far more than I could ever try to remember, and while I didn’t feel awkward doing the YMCA, I didn’t feel great. I think I realized that as this trip goes on, the more and more I realize how the rest of the world thinks they’re catering to Americans. We came for local music and flair, and they gave us what they thought we wanted, which was music we get at most parties back at home. So that parallel was a fascinating connection to make...while I was doing the YMCA.

At some point, it seemed like the music would never end, and nobody wanted to be one of the first people off the floor, because then it looks like you don’t want to dance or you’re antisocial, or something like that. I think everyone was looking for an exit or an out, and we found it when they tried to play an amped up version of “Are You Going to San Francisco?” At that point we all said that we had enough and we’re going to psychedelically slow dance to this. That’s about when we all boarded the bus and left.

But the fun didn’t end there. Amidst the ringing in my ears from the overly loud music in a confined space, people tried to start sing-a-longs on the bus on the way back to the ship. It was actually quite entertaining as people would start songs and nobody knew the words to them, and then they petered out. There was one song that we all knew well enough to get by, and we did it twice because we couldn’t find another one we knew as well as it. So, on the way back, we sang “Buttercup” twice. That’s another item to tack onto the list of things I didn’t think would ever happen: a sing-a-long of Buttercup riding on a bus in Mauritius. This trip is just chalk full of surprises and new experiences.

I wish I had gotten to bed a little earlier, because in the morning it was terribly difficult to get up. It was one of the times on the trip when I really had a tough time, and I think I can count those days on one hand still. Although, the usage of my other hand will be coming sooner rather than later. And for some reason, I was running around to get ready. I had a trip leaving and apparently it took a little longer to get ready than I thought it would.

But I was on time. I even had time for breakfast where I found out that I was apparently on the local news at night while I was waving off the ship when we pulled in. I literally walked over to the edge, waved for three or four seconds, and walked away, but my friends at breakfast say they definitely recognized me. And who am I to argue?

The name of the tour that I was on was called the Volcanic Island Tour. The name sounds much more interesting and exciting than the trip actually was, and had little to do with the actual earth science-y aspect of things, although there was some, as bad as it was.

The first place they drove us to was a giant lecture hall at the Mahatma Gandhi something or other institute. I’ve got a photo of the name of the place and all it says is Mahatma Gandhi Institute. They’re very descriptive down here in Mauritius. So they loaded us into this huge lecture hall, and some woman stood at the front on an old-fashioned overhead projector and talked about the ‘volcanic island.’ This is my kind of stuff. I should have been so interested in this stuff. I’ve never sat through a more boring lecture. I didn’t sign up for this trip to have it feel like sitting through Global, and this was worse than Global. It was awful. By the time I couldn’t take it anymore, I resorted to taking photos of myself, trying to make myself look as bored as I possibly could.

I looked around during the presentation, and I could not find one person who looked like they were even remotely paying attention. It really tells you how bad it was if I was bored to tears, just imagine how everyone else was doing. The entire presentation was on the volcanic origin of the island, and the specific events that happened through geologic time. Geologic time is interesting, but not a half hours worth of interesting. Geologic time needs to be dealt with in minute long snippets, largely because the concept of time is lost with a lot of people, and for me, it’s like learning dates in history – they’re really not all that important.

After the presentation, they brought us out into the lobby for tea. That would have been nicer on the way in, so that maybe most of us could have stayed awake. I don’t know how people give presentations looking at a bored audience. To me, that’s a sign that change needs to happen. I guess that’s a thought that’s lost on most.

On the way out, the videographer, Joe, who I roomed with on safari, pulled me over and wanted to film me for the Voyage DVD. So we walk over to, what else at the Mahatma Gandhi Institue but, a statue of Gandhi. He tells me to say what we’ve been doing and what we’re doing for the rest of the day, which they have yet to tell us. As of right now, I don’t know whether or not it will make it into the DVD, but it included my saying, “my close, personal friend Gandhi” and pointing to the statue, as well as a large group of children running through the background. I hope it makes it in. It wasn’t my best work, but it was a higher caliber than most other people’s stuff. That’s just my opinion, though. We’ll see what happens when the DVD comes out…

They next drove us off to a random crater on top of a hill. If you didn’t tell me that this used to be the crater of a volcano, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. Mauritius clearly still has a lot of lessons to learn in the tourism promotion department. Anywhere a bus drops off tourists should look like a place where tourists should be dropped off. This place looked like the top of a random hill with a hole in the middle. It was almost pretty. What did look very cool was the perspective of the rest of the island that we had. We couldn’t see the entire island, but we could make out the mountains dotting the landscape and the flat areas in between. It was a view and vantage point that I had yet to see.

On the way to the next place, we passed by what we were told was the world’s largest Shiva, who is a Hindu god. Since then, I’ve learned that to be false, and that there’s a larger Shiva in India somewhere I don’t think I’ll be going to. But for the brief moment I believed our tour guide, it was kind of cool.

The next stop was a Hindu temple. I know what you’re thinking – this is the Volcanic Island tour, not the temples and mosques tour. And you would be correct. Apparently the lake behind the temple, that is considered sacred, is the water filled crater of another volcano. Long story short, if the first stop didn’t look like it used to be a volcano, this stop was even much less so. And everyone spent their time observing and wandering around the temple. And I did too. It wasn’t like there was anything volcanic around us for me to go look at. I mean, the entire island is of volcanic origin, but I kind of expected a little something more, if you know what I mean.

The tour guide also failed to give us a time limit at the temple, so nobody knew when to meet back at the bus to leave, so we were there for what seemed like forever. I thought it felt like forever at least. At least there were monkeys across the lake to watch, and they weren’t incredibly excited at that.

Once we got back on the bus, and don’t ask me how everyone found the bus because there were six or seven buses that looked like ours, and it was not in the same spot where it dropped us off at. Some people had trouble with that. Next we drove off over hill and dale off to a giant gorge. This gorge was actually very pretty and impressive looking. That’s where the concluding photo at the end of the last blog posting was taken. There was also another monkey here. One person got right up next to it to take a photo, and when the next person walked up, the monkey became angry and swatted at their head. For anyone in the medical field, or anyone remotely competent, you know that monkeys can carry rabies, all furry mammals can carry rabies, and in these foreign countries, you need to be extra careful around them, because you’ve got a limited timeframe to get treated. And once you show symptoms, stick a fork in you, because you don’t survive rabies.

The girl that was swatted was not scratched by the monkey so she’s theoretically okay. I kept my distance from the monkey. Other people waited and then started to get closer to the monkey again, as if it had calmed down. Some people are stupid. I could tell it was going to happen well before it did – the monkey swatted again, but missed. That’s when I decided to go back to the bus because I had enough pictures of the gorge and the monkey.

The monkeys, by the way, were not indigenous to the island. They were brought over when the island was colonized a while back. The Dutch were the first, so it might have been them, but maybe not. The Dutch were the ones to kill off the entire species of the dodo bird, the only reason why you might have previously heard of the island of Mauritius. That’s its claim to fame – the dodo used to live on the island until the Dutch ate them all.

At lunch I noticed something that I would call dismaying. I’ve spent all of Mauritius covered in sunscreen and bug repellent. I had sunscreen on the back of my hands, to avoid a repeat of my incident in South Africa while river rafting, but apparently I did not put bug repellent sufficiently on the back of my hands. I know I did, but not all of the back of my hand. A mosquito found one of the parts that I missed, and I was convinced that I had malaria and was going to die. I’m not taking my malaria medicine for Mauritius because the risk is so low, but because of the genes I have in me, I was convinced that I had malaria.

But, it’s “let’s spot something from the Amazing Race” time again. This time, we go all the way back to Race 10, Leg 7. This was the only Mauritius leg the race has had, and out of an entire leg, there was only one place they went that I crossed paths with. From the balcony of our lunchtime restaurant, we could look down onto the beach and the Indian Ocean. Just out from the beach is an island shaped like a kidney, or more accurately a liver. This island was where the detour option that everyone completed was located. They say that they had to boat for two and a half miles, but they must have been coming from somewhere further on down the coast, because this island wasn’t incredibly far off the coast.

I’m not really sure what they gave us for lunch, but it was in a shell. I’m guessing that it was some kind of seafood concoction, but I’m not really sure what I ate. It was orangey and homogenous. And it was okay – I ate it all. And then I went to the bathroom to clean out the shell, to prove that I actually ate out of it, as if it were something that would be hard to believe. Out of all the things I’ve done, the thing I come back with proof of is that I ate out of a shell. Yeah, good going there Jeff.

Our next stop on our whirlwind tour is something called the Seven Colored Earth. They tell us that the soil (aka dirt) is colored seven different colors all in a small area, conveniently located in an area small enough for the tourists to walk around and gawk at. I’m convinced it’s a sham and a tourist trap. Yes, the Earth can be colored differently because of oxidized metals, but this place looked like they spray painted a bunch of dirt and then dumped it in a bunch of neat, overlapping mounds. Also, when it rains, the soil should show evidence of erosion, or being washed away, and I didn’t see any. I think they recently got a new shipment of dirt and spent a night spray painting it. I haven’t done any research on this, but I’m convinced that this is not real. We had to pay for it too. If we didn’t have to pay for it, then it would be real because it would be a park or something. There is something very fishy about this dirt, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it, whenever I have the time to get around to it.

On one side of the area, there was a children’s playground, which was rusted and falling apart, and a small area where tortoises are kept. And as we were over taking pictures of them, some guy climbed over the small rock wall and stood on one of them. Now, I’m no biologist, but I don’t think that’s okay to do to the tortoise. I was going to say something, but I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m just a silly American.

Our next stop had absolutely nothing to do with volcanoes, and at this point, I stopped trying to find the logic behind what we were doing. We went to the southwestern most beach on the island, and they gave us 20 minutes there. If you’re going to drop us off at a beach, how do you just spend 20 minutes? It’s almost not worth getting out of the bus for that. That’s how long it takes me to get all the sand off me anyway. But, I figured that based on the remainder of our itinerary on island and off, I figured this was probably my opportunity to venture into the Indian Ocean, just so that I’d be able to say that I’ve been in the Indian Ocean.

So I waded in knee-high and then looked around me and saw that there was a heck of a lot of dead coral lying around. Mauritius is nearly entirely encompassed in coral reefs, and when it dies, it has to drift somewhere, so it ends up on shore. I spent about 10 minutes walking along the shore and picking up dead coral, just kind of to pass the time. Then I looked at my watch and figured that it’s probably time to start removing the sand from my feet. That took a while, but I made it back on the bus in time, albeit with still quite a bit of sand stuck between my toes. That always makes walking fun.

The drive back, on an island of this size, took way too long. I thought you could drive anywhere on the island in a little over a half hour, but it took and hour to get back to Port Louis, so that was another myth I busted on this trip.

Back on the ship, when we’re in port, we get some local TV stations, and when I turned it on I saw that Archbishop Tutu was giving a mass somewhere in Mauritius. And I watched is sermon while I was getting ready to go out in the evening. It was surprisingly similar to the talk he gave to us on the trip. It was similar but different. I guess if you’ve got a good repertoire of material to go through, you know what works and what you like talking about. Apparently Desi has figured that out already.

We had a group of eight of us, and we went to an Indian restaurant called Namaste. I’ve never eaten Indian food, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect, no less what I would want to eat. We take the water taxi over to Port Louis and then take the short walk over to Namaste, which looks like a nice, new restaurant, which I always think to be a good sign because it theoretically means that it’s more sanitary. That’s not always the case, but it’s enough of a case to make a case for.

Anyway, I sit down and look through the menu, and there’s just an expression of puzzlement on my face. I have no idea what anything is and none of it is in English. At least I thought none of it was in English; there were actually little descriptions underneath the name of what everything was. But it only included ingredients in a list style, and at that, there was still a large number of ingredients that I have never seen before. But, I think I picked a chicken and garlic dish, so I figured you can’t go wrong with that.

In India, they don’t give you rolls of bread when you go to a restaurant, they give you something called naan. Naan is best described as bread that looks unleavened, and is on the chewy side. It’s like if matzo wasn’t cracker-like. And considering the food that we’ve had along the way on the trip, I can’t complain about it. Actually, the garlic naan that we had was one of the best parts of dinner, although I was very adamant that there was very little garlic on it. I think I was the only one at the table who didn’t think there was enough garlic on it, but maybe I just have a high garlic tolerance.

Then they brought out dinner. They came out with a tray of what looked like individual sauces or lumpy sauces for everyone’s meal. Everyone got one, and then they walked away and said enjoy your meal. Here’s a photo of what my dinner looked like when it was put down in front of me:

Yes, I ate that. Just about all of that, too. I was expecting my chicken to come on a plate and have it obvious where on the plate the chicken was located. I wasn’t all too sure which mouthfuls had chicken in them, so it was like every bite was its own adventure. Most bites were fine, but there must be some Indian spice that tastes like concentrated pine needles, because I got a taste of one of those every ten or twelve spoonfuls, and it was not pretty. There’s a reason why when you’re out in the wilderness starving that you don’t start to eat the pine trees. The ‘gloop’ was alright, and as time went on, it became less alright, but I can now say that I’ve had Indian food.

After the haggling over how to pay the bill, which happens at every meal I’m at, our group started barhopping, with me and one of the other girls in the group acting as the designated drivers, or more appropriately on this trip, the lifesavers. We were at one bar for a while, and then moved on to another one out of doors. I had a good time, even though most of it was spent trying to keep track of the three people in the group that I was assigned to. I refuse to lose someone, especially in Mauritius.

Speaking of Mauritius, I’d be surprised if they let Semester at Sea come back, based on the stuff that I hear coming in from Flic en Flac. In case you don’t remember, this is where the beachfront villas are located that a lot of people were so looking forward to. Well, there used to be villas there. I think if you can squint you can tell that some used to be villas. Apparently, the town was trashed, the villas were vandalized, there was rampant public drunken debauchery, and one of the girls on our trip was raped. That’s how bad it got there. To say that the town was destroyed is almost an understatement from some of the information that I have coming in. I don’t understand how you go into a country and then treat it like its your playground to destroy.

(Before I continue, based on information recently brought to my attention, I’d like to make something clear to all future voyagers: If you are careful and mindful of your alcohol intake, and your group of friends is as well, you will never have or be involved with what happened in Mauritius. You have nothing to worry about. If you’re uncomfortable with a situation you’re in, it is very, very easy to remove yourself from it and head back to the ship. Trust me, you’ll be fine.)

I feel bad for the people that had villas reserved on the same beach and had to put up with the people from our trip. Most of them left their villas and went into hotels, so they wouldn’t have to put up with the crap that was going on. Isn’t that disgraceful? You don’t raise children to behave like that. And I think that’s all that needs to be said about that.

I found an opening where the people I was watching were thinking about heading back to the ship, so I moseyed them over to the water taxi and was able to get my group back safe and sound. I was itching to get back because, as usual, I had an early morning departure, this time at 9, but considering that I still had to get all my gear together, and I didn’t board the ship until after 1, I was looking at my time to sleep rapidly slipping away.

Because the trip I was on was entitled ‘Hike in the Mountains & Swim Among Waterfalls’, I decided to wear a bathing suit so that I wouldn’t have to change. It should just make life easier. We hopped onto a bus and drove over to Le Pouce, the mountain we’d be climbing. Le Pouce literally means ‘the thumb’ in what I assume to be the French language. It’s called that because the top of the mountain looks like a thumb. Duh.

Le Pouce is the 3^rd highest peak on Mauritius, and is the highest one that can be climbed without the usage of additional hiking or climbing equipment. If you’d like additional information on things like elevation (2,661 feet, now you don’t have to look it up) or history (you’re on your own with that one), then you’ll have to look it up, because I know nothing about the history of the mountain, other than that it’s a national heritage site.

When the bus gets us to the base of the mountain, the company running the hike gets on the bus and tells us that it’s an easy hike, and that no matter how much bug repellent we put on, we’re going to be bit. Let’s elaborate on these comments for a moment. I later learned that there are only two types of hikes on Mauritius, those that are easy and those that are hard, with no middle ground. A hard hike is one that requires additional equipment, and an easy hike does not require additional equipment. It says nothing about how steep the hike is or how rocky the paths are, or anything of that nature. But we didn’t know that distinction on the way in, which would have, of course, been quite helpful.

The other comment that I’d like to examine is the one that says that the mosquitoes are not repelled by repellent. That just sounds like it would put the cosmos into a flurry. So I made sure that I covered all exposed areas, especially the back of my hands, which seem to be the prime area for incident. I know mosquitoes like me, so this was a battle that I was ready to commence.

The whole hike was also supposed to be two hours, which was a lie. It took 90 minutes alone to get to the top. On the way up, it was steadily uphill the entire way over terrain that was never even, and I rolled my ankles all the way up and down. I’m lucky that I must have sturdy or strong ankles because there were some people that winced after a few of my rolls and I was fine.

For half of the way up the hill, we were amidst vegetation on either side, but at some point, the vegetation disappeared and we were less than a foot or two from the edge of the cliff face. There’s no way that this was safe in any way shape or form. And the wind was whipping around the mountain at that elevation, too. I was asking myself what I was doing up there quite a number of times. I’m still not sure how I or anyone for that matter avoided falling off the side of the mountain, because all you need to do is slip once, and you’re dead. And the higher up that we went, the buggier it seemed to get, and I thought it would be the opposite because the higher we went, the windier it got. Something didn’t make sense about these mosquitoes, but I was still fending them off, and hadn’t been bit yet on the climb.

The last ten or fifteen minutes was nearly all vertical rock climb, and that wasn’t that safe either. I’d look over my shoulder at a spectacular view, and nowhere to go but up. I can’t say that I’m a big rock climber, but I’d be into it – if I had sufficient safety equipment. I trust the island of Mauritius, but I don’t want to need to put that trust into effect when they wheel me into a hospital. But we all made it to the top, safe and sound.

There were about twenty of us on the top of this mountain, and when I say top, I mean top, like the tip of the thumb, an area of about five feet by twenty feet. Very small area by any stretch of the imagination, but we sat down and rested for a while. I spent most of that time chasing bugs off the girls sitting around me, because, again, for some reason the mosquitoes were worse with the higher we went. There was no standing water, humidity, or lack of wind, so I really have no idea what was up with them, but as far as I know, my preventative measures were working.

The climb up was a good workout, but the climb down was much more difficult, especially on my knees because it’s just difficult to climb down a mountain on rocky terrain without moving at a snail’s pace. I had some good ankle rolls on the way down, and a bunch of us fell at some point or another, some spectacularly, but everyone was fine. It took a little over an hour to get back down, too.

And by now it was well into the afternoon, so once we all got back on the bus, they sent us over to the place we were going for lunch. It took me a few minutes to notice, but all of a sudden, I noticed an intense itching on both of my ankles. Upon closer inspection, the mosquitoes found small areas around my ankles where I missed the repellent, and they bit me nine times. At least that’s how many I think there were, some bites had large red splotches around them, so there could have been more than one in that area, but I put the official number at nine, which when added to the one on the back of my hand, made a nice round 10.

They served us lunch and then told us that the waterfall portion was in the back of the restaurant. I took one look at the waterfalls and saw that there wasn’t an area to go “swimming,” so I “reluctantly” declined and tried to fend off the mosquitoes, because I learned that everyone was getting eaten alive, but it was here at the restaurant, and not at the mountain. I guess they get more fierce the more standing water that’s around.

We left a little early because we’re all semi-insane about getting back to the ship before a line forms and not waiting in line for an hour, because we have better things that we could be doing than standing in line, which has become the bane of our existences in port. I’ve stood in a number of lines in my lifetime, but for some reason the lines to get back on the ship are some of the most painful, and I fail to find the logic. Probably because the reason why the line moves so slow is lost on me. But we made it back and only had to wait in line for about 20 minutes, which is a good day, and I was happy to be back on the ship, and ready to head off to our next port.

I could have gone out to dinner, but my group and I were so out of it and tired, that it really wouldn’t have been worth it, so we hung out and relaxed on the ship for the remainder of the evening. It’s been raining off and on for our entire stay in port, and there was a spectacular rainbow off the stern of the ship. You could see it from end to end. And, as always with every rainbow, there’s always a more second, yet faint rainbow, if you look closely and hard enough. I’ve got some lovely photos to make a panoramic of. You’ll see it in a few months when I have the time to put it together.

We were scheduled to leave around 11pm, so I met a few friends off the back of the top deck and watched the ship leave port. I have this false reality that it will be really pretty to see us leave port at night, but it’s consistently proved to be false. There’s just a few dottings of lights along the shore and you really can’t see much, and the photos never, never come out. But it’s fun to watch nonetheless.

Anyway, we were on the back of the ship exchanging the stories that we have about people on the ship, especially the faculty and deans, who are apparently very good actors in many circumstances. They all seem so nice, but I guess everyone has a rude side to them where they’re not exactly the nice people they put up the façade to be. But who doesn’t have bad days every now and then? I guess the deans have more frequent days that are bad than the rest of us. Oh well.

Leg 5: Port Louis, Mauritius to Chennai, India

We didn’t stay up there for incredibly long because we knew we’d be woken up early the following morning, which is scheduled as a no class day, one of the few. But now that we’re on our way out of Mauritius, let’s go back to the initial Mark Twain quote that stated that first God created Mauritius, then modeled heaven after it. I’m not sure what Mark Twain was smoking, but if you were ever wondering if Mauritius was a place that you needed to or wanted to visit, don’t worry about it, there are plenty other places you should go first before you stop by Mauritius. If you’re one of those people with a quest to hit every country on the globe, then make Mauritius a pit stop on the way to some place like South Africa or Madagascar. I haven’t been there, but it’s got to be a better island than Mauritius.

I think that a lot of this has to do with Mauritius being the act that has to follow South Africa, and regardless of any country that followed South Africa, it would have paled in comparison, but I think that Mauritius would have been stinky even if we hit it before South Africa. The views are pretty, the people are hard to understand, the food originated in other countries, the dodo isn’t here anymore, and Mark Twain was here long before it was built up apparently. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m unhappy that I went to Mauritius, I’m glad I did because we don’t go to a remote island nation like that on our itinerary, so it’s a good break of pace, but I think, if given the option between Mauritius, and another country, I probably would have picked the other.

I didn’t set my alarm, but I was woken up in the morning. They decided to make this no class day the Sea Olympics. Which I found would be a good idea, if they started it after 10 as opposed to the wake up announcement we got at 8:20. No class days are my opportunity to catch up on sleep and prepare myself for the coming time until the next no class day. The sleeping I’m doing today will allow me to be awake in India. Which I figured would be a good idea. I like to be caught up on my sleep, so this sleep is important because it will recharge me for about the next two weeks. That idea was lost to the Sea Olympics committee.

I didn’t get out of bed until 10:30, so I missed the tug-of-war. I can’t say that I was upset about that. It’s really not all that exciting to watch people pull a rope. But there were other intermittent events going on all day between the ten seas on board. I was in the Red Sea, and as a show of solidarity, our RD passed out Santa hats to all of us.

I watched some of the events, but not all of them because some of them are boring, like the orange pass, and some are just wrong, like slippery Twister. I have a midterm for my art class the next day, so I spent the day preparing for that. I have to put my classes before my extracurricular stuff, only when I feel like it though. This semester that’s more of a suggestion than it is carved in stone.

Because most of the events involved some degree of physical activity, I signed up for the one that didn’t have it – the trivia challenge. That event was later in the afternoon, so I had most of the day to catch up on my art, should that be a part of the trivia challenge. It wasn’t but I had that going for me all day.

Each of the seas had a group of four people, and the rules to play the trivia challenge boggled the minds of all of us. Every question, the person in the chair would rotate. If that person knew the answer and was correct, they received three points, however if they were wrong, we lost a point, and we were not allowed to not answer. If the person in the seat did not know the answer, they could consult their group behind them, and then if they were correct, you would receive two points, but lose two points if they did not know. And the sea with the most points at the conclusion would win. Have you got all that? Because that’s the clear way to explain it, and we didn’t get that version.

Generally trivia competitions have a very wide array of material ranging from pop culture to history and music, but this competition seemed to focus on a number of trick questions that nobody knew. They asked us what US capital city is at the highest elevation. Everyone answered Denver, and it’s Santa Fe (or maybe Phoenix, I don’t remember which one.) But it was bizarre questions that nobody knows anyway. Nobody knows the town where Casey at the Bat takes place. I don’t even remember that one now.

I’ve been talking up this competition for the past week with someone else in the game, so I had my pride on the line, and I beat LeeAnne’s team by a point. So I was thrilled about that, and we placed in second overall because one team cheated, I think. Otherwise I’m pretty sure that we won fair and square. So I’m glad that I could help out my team for the day.

One of the events they had to reconfigure was the synchronized swimming, which couldn’t happen in the pool because the water was too rough today. I think it’s still left over from the cyclone that’s still leaving the area. It should be over at Madagascar by now. But that made the basketball tournament very interesting, because on a moving vessel, that can’t be easy. I don’t even think basketball is easy in a stationary gymnasium. We won basketball though.

Then came a really interesting and completely different game. As a take off from Simon Says they did Dean Mike Says. Dean Mike has obviously never been the leader of Simon Says before. He was having a rough go of things and at some points told them to run for a few minutes to tire them out and then spin around in place to try to disorient them. That didn’t really work. But after about twenty minutes, he got rid of about 30 people, and someone finally won.

Then, later in the evening came the big final event, the lip-synching competition. This was basically a parade of raunchy twentysomethings almost lip-synching to music nobody cares about. Some of them were on the vulgar side and some of them were really, really boring and made me feel like I was wasting my time. And then one or two of them were quite good. My Red Sea didn’t win, and we didn’t win the entire Sea Olympics. But we came in fourth out of ten, which I think is quite respectable. Supposedly, the finishing position on Sea Olympics determines the order of leaving the ship once we dock in San Diego.

So I shouldn’t have to wait too long to get off the ship in San Diego, and hopefully you won’t have to wait too much longer to hear more about my trip. Here’s a brief what’s happened that you’ll read about in the next few months: India, Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Vietnam, and Mom just came out today. I don’t know when I’ll get around to all that stuff, but trust me when I tell you that I’m trying. I’m only a couple weeks back, but I’ve got good notes. Check back in a week, and there should be something new. That’s what I hope anyway.