Paradise Lost

Ah, the day in Mauritius was an interesting one. I decided it would be a good idea to take the city orientation tour to learn a little bit about the country itself, rather than just doing a snorkeling or diving trip and then I would have time afterwards to do that sort of thing. Well, the city orientation actually just went to a Hindu temple and the botanical gardens. I was expecting to see downtown Port Louis, but I don’t know why, since we get to read the descriptions of the trips beforehand. I really wanted to go snorkeling after the trip, and somehow thought I would have time, but it ended up not working out.

Anyway, we arrived in Mauritius on time at about 8 a.m. and listened to the US consulate give us a diplomatic briefing before getting off the ship and heading out for our tour. The trip was interesting, but it was really humid and sunny and I would have rather been at the beach. First we stopped on top of this big hill (or maybe a small mountain?) where a fort was located to defend Port Louis, the capital city of Mauritius, but it has been virtually never used. The views of the city are nice, though, and you can see the horse racing track right below the hill –apparently it’s the second oldest behind one of the racetracks in England.

Next we stopped at a Hindu temple on the island. It was really pretty, really colorful, but the guide didn’t explain much else to us. There was a main entrance where you take your shoes off, then a shrine (I think) outside in the middle of this courtyard, then the actual temple itself, which we didn’t go in because of the religious significance, I think. The temple had a sign up for a preschool and I could see the buildings off to one side and there was also a cage with about 8 peacocks in it behind the temple. Pretty cool.

Our next stop was the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Gardens. The gardens have been there for over 200 years, I believe, but was renamed in the 1960s after Mauritius gained its independence. Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam was the first prime minister of the country and lots of things are named after him. Our guide showed us around the garden and introduced some of 80 varieties palm trees that they have growing there –one that only blooms every sixty years
(the Talipot Palm), another that looks like an elephant foot –then we also passed a pool full of lily pads originally from the Amazon, which, as the guide said, can hold a newborn baby afloat for 30 seconds. They were huge and their flowers were pretty. Speaking of flowers there was also a pool full of lotus plants and blossoms. I took some pictures of their pretty flowers, too. We also stopped for a few minutes at this enclosure with about a dozen giant tortoises. There was once a type of giant tortoise that was native to the island, but passing travelers would eat them and contributed to their eventual extinction. These giant tortoises are actually native to the neighboring island nation of Seychelles. They were pretty cute and huge! Some of them were moving around too, and they were moving a lot faster than I thought they would be. I could have sat for a while longer just to watch them munch on the greens on the ground for lunch. It was so cute! There was another enclosure with little deer from Java. There was a little girl standing on my right and a deer trotted over from the middle to near where we were standing. It was funny and the little girl liked it. There is also a colonial house in the garden, which I think was only used up until the country got its independence, but it may have been used by the former prime minister, I’m not sure. There were lots of pictures of him in a little display in the house. He is also buried on the grounds of the garden. After the tour, on our way back to the ship, we passed a sugar cane plantation. Most of Mauritius’s economy used to based on sugar, but the island is trying to move away from that industry and into ITS and computers.

I returned the ship from the tour, and found Emily who I was going to go get lunch with. My only problem was that she didn’t want to go to the beach, but I really wanted to. For some reason, I couldn’t find someone to go with. (Later, a girl who happened to be on the city orientation said she would have went with me. Ugh.) So I walked around and found someplace to eat lunch after we took the water taxi across the bay from the ship to the waterfront area. We stopped at a little café and noticed one of the professors by herself, so I asked her if she wanted to join us. Her name is Marchesa and she is an anthropology professor. So that was interesting. Then, I ended up breaking from Emily and shopped around by myself. I went to find a newspaper and wandered out of the waterfront to the market, which was more of a local thing. I was interviewed by the videopgrapher even though I wasn’t happy that I hadn’t gone to the beach. One of the librarians said they had gone to the beach and that it was a half hour taxi ride that cost US$35, and this was at about 4 p.m., so I didn’t have quite enough time or money to go by myself. I was kind of upset about it, because that’s really all I wanted to do in Mauritius. Instead I hung around for a little while longer before I went to the internet café to talk with Tim and Mom on Skype.

I talked to Tim for almost an hour, then called Mom on a fluke, thinking that since it was a Friday morning no one would be around, but she answered! She seemed happy to hear from me, even though she said I woke her up (this was at like 6 p.m. in Mauritius, so it was about 8 a.m. at home). Well, this is where the adventure begins: I finished talking to Mom and realized that I had about 20 minutes to get back to the ship! We had to be on the ship by 8 o’clock and I had just lost track of time, since the clock on the computer I was sitting at was an hour behind. So, I go up to pay for the internet and I don’t have enough! It was supposed to be like 290 rupees and I only had 190! And they didn’t take credit cards. So, I just thought I would run outside to an ATM. Well, running outside required you to run outside, down into a pedestrian walkway under the highway, and to the ATM. I put my card in and it was processing my request and instead of giving money it said that the transaction could not be completed because the machine wasn’t working. Oh, crap. I went into panic mode –I had to get back to the ship, what was I going to do?! A guy had asked me if I needed a taxi as I was running to the ATM, so I hurriedly asked him if there was another ATM nearby. He pointed down the street and tried to give me directions. I ran down the street for a block and was so panicked that I couldn’t find it –everything seemed closed up. So, I ran back down the street and figured, you know what, screw the internet café, because I had about 10 minutes to get back to the ship. All I had left was US$4. I pleaded with the taxi driver to take me to the ship because that was all I had left and he kindly obliged. (Actually, the drive wasn’t as far as I thought it would be, so that was probably about what it was worth.) I got back to the ship and there was actually another girl in front of me who was just as rushed. I had about 5 minutes to spare when I got back on the ship, so I wrote two postcards quickly (because they have to be in by on-ship time if you send them from the ship). Whew. And I missed dinner, but I didn’t get any dock time! I was just glad to get back on the ship.

So, I came back and got a shower, which I really needed, since it was so freaking humid in Mauritius. Then it was time for the opening of the Sea Olympics! That’s my next post!