Blogs from Mauritius, Africa
Mauritius Indian Ocean sunset
For a small island Mauritius punches well above its weight for two things – long, slow queues at the airport immigration counter and beautiful red Indian Ocean sunsets. Actually, Mauritius no doubt has many other beautiful and worthwhile attractions, but having come to the end of our Africa visit we decided to just enjoy the beach and the pool and leave the rest. If there is a world-renowned shopping mall, or an escalator direct to the Lost City of Atlantis, we apologise and will be back to look at it one day, but for this trip if we were 50 paces from the pool it was too far. The Sofitel, on the west coast of the island near a place rather quaintly named Flic en Flac, takes its French heritage quite seriously, and is populated mostly ... read more
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Bienvenue a vous freres, soeurs, amis et membre de notre famille. Philippe m'a installé ce blog et nous allons essayer de nous en servir ainsi vous pourrez suivre quelques une de nos pérégrinations. Apres un voyage sans histoire (ouf echappé à la grève) nous arrivons à Mahébourg. Nous passons jeudi 3 nov et vendredi à "noix de coco" sur une plage magnifique (photo 1).Etrangement il y très peu de touristes ici. Samedi 5 nov, nous logeons "chez Henri" un gars très jovial et sympathique. Nous nous livrons dès lors à une de nos occupation favorite: s'échapper en scooter (photo 2). Le soir allons à la salle à Mahebourg environ 90 procl. Dimanche 6 nov, nous partons en scooter jusqu'à Trou d'eau douce (total 100 km) tout en cherchant un logement moins cher à louer au mois, ... read more
performers in our port
FEBRUARY 27th--- Today we docked in Port Louis, Mauritius. Mauritius is a small African island off the coast of Madagascar. It is also next to an island called Reunion. While I was in Cape Town, someone told me that Mauritius was one of the most beautiful islands they had ever been to….and they were right. It was absolutely gorgeous! At pre-port they told us that Mauritius used to be home to the dodo bird before they went extinct. I was really bummed out….I wanted to see one! Anyway, we only were there for the day so were in kind of a rush to get going. Sadly we were delayed (like usual) but finally got off the ship around 9 am. A bunch of my friends and I signed up to do a catamaran to Gabriel Island. ... read more
Climing Montagne des Signaux
Mauritius is the biggest of the Mascarene Isles, Reunion and Rodrigues being the other ones. Although first discovered by the Portuguese, the Dutch were first to settle there. It became however French territory before becoming a British possession. As a consequence we have today a very unique and rather complex linguistic situation. I think Belgium could take some lessons here. The official language is English, it is mainly used for administrative purposes. French is mainly used for business while creole is really the 'local' language. As 70% of the population is from Indian origin, Indian languages are also spoken and so is Chinese by the 3% Chinese minority. We could speak English or French with any person we met, whatever his/her ethnic background, what a dream... Most of the places have French names such as 'Grande ... read more
Our Blog - Log 7 11th February 2011 Mauritius We arrived in Mauritius early morning and had an all day trip booked to take in the south of the island. We set off about 08.15hrs straight into the morning traffic. Took quite some time to get through onto the main road. On the drive out of the city there were not many memorable buildings but we did see the post office museum where the most expensive stamp in the world is held. Unfortunately we didn’t stop for this but continued to our first point of call for photos - Trou aux Cerfs crater formed from an extinct volcano. On then to a shop that makes model ships. Some are really amazing models but so expensive and impossible to travel with without worrying whether any would break. ... read more
We have now set off on world adventure take 2! There was quite a large change from our planned itinerary due to Harry breaking his leg a week before we were due to travel. Therefore instead of going to South Africa we spent a month staying with parents in Worcester and Hereford before coming straight out to Australia the day after Harry had his cast removed. We booked a new flight via Mauritius and so arranged an overnight stay there in order to break up the journey and explore a bit of the island. We had a fun day in Mauritius although it was very hot and humid which made it very difficult to get around. Harry wasn't helped by the fact that his leg was still pretty swollen but he was able to get around ... read more
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Saturday The five days between Mauritius and India were very crazy. Not only was I trying to catch up on sleep but I was also studying for midterms. On top of that I volunteered to be a sea captain for sea Olympics. I thought it would be super fun and give me a great opportunity to get involved with my sea. Little did I know it was the craziest and most hectic part of my trip so far. Some captains and sea’s were way more into it that ours. We were the Mediterranean Sea. The second day we were on the Ship we had a sea Olympic meeting. My co-captain Madi and I had to sign in. I told her to write us down because I had no idea how to spell Mediterranean. Neither did she, ... read more
Where are the Dodo's?
We stand in a queu in front of the customers, all Europeans, specially from France, but also from Spain and Italy. We do not see any Dutch between all those white faces. That is strange, because Dutch are always everywhere. Are they not interested in this Island called after Maurits van Nassau, in the beautiful beaches and landscapes here, the mediterranean atmosphere, the delicious French food mixed with a Creole kitchen or even the rarest stamp in the world, the blue Mauritius? It is the Dodo which makes the Dutch so modest and ashamed. We killed this bird 400 years ago. And the problem is all world knows it. It is the best known extinction of an animal ever. And those cruel Dutchmen killed that beautiful, poor, harmless bird, which was not aware of any danger, ... read more
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Mauritius! We were only there for a short period of time, but while we were there it was a nice. It was a great opportunity to wind down from a crazy time in South Africa and from taking our midterms. The first day we got there was hectic because we weren’t really sure how to do things. We had to go to an ATM and every semester at sea student was there it seemed like. It took forever but then we finally got cash and had a game plan on what we were doing. We were going to hike up to a waterfall then jump off. SO FUN. It was about a 30 minute car ride through the town and before we knew it we were there. We took about a 10 minute hike in, then ... read more
One attraction of the new job was the possibility of undertaking training in Mauritius, a two hour flight from Seychelles, and so it came to be. Myself and my jobshare partner were shipped off to learn the procurement and purchasing packages for the FCO and meet our fellow colleagues of the BHC in Mauritius. Mauritius is surprisingly, I think, home to a million people and has a reputation for being more built up than our fair islands. Indeed, the capital Port Louis was an hour’s drive from the airport, somewhat novel for this islander. it's bigger than it looks! Arriving at our hotel and I was disappointed that I only managed 2.5 rolls across the bed (not yet equalling the other one’s record of 3.5 at the Grosvenor in Chester) but still more than enough space ... read more
