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Africa » Mauritius
February 15th 2011
Published: February 15th 2011
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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. We then went to the Grand Bassin which is a sacred lake to the Hindu community. An amazingly large statue of Shiva was at the entrance. Very colourful with different statues of the Hindu gods. We both felt as though we were being very intrusive as worshippers were offering their gifts of fruit and wine along with incense to their various gods. Lovely to watch but invasive. We then went to the Black River Gorges viewpoint to take some lovely photographs of the views before going to a Mauritian restaurant for a buffet lunch. Beautiful setting with more spectacular views of the Gorges. Another drive over bumpy roads took us to the beautiful Chamarel waterfall cascading into a deep gorge before a short drive to the Coloured Earths. Here the soil’s hues of red, brown, violet, green, blue, purple and yellow never erode despite torrential downpours and adverse climatic conditions. The volcanic ashes are naturally displayed in an orderly pattern of seven colours. If you mix the ashes up they eventually sort themselves back into their colour order. We also saw a number of tortoises in a compound which were quite large. It was funny watching the male getting randy with one of the females but she must have had a headache as she gave a very loud grunt of disgust and then ran away into a pool to hide. He just stood there looking very dejected!
A long rough ride back to tha main road again and back to Port Louis and the ship. We set sail at 5.00pm bound for Perth.
No more from me until Perth.


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15th February 2011

Fantastic trip
I cannot believe how quickly your trip is going. It all sounds so amazing. I look forward to seeing your photos. Have a wonderful time in Perth. Love, Jennifer & Alan

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