Mauritius Day 2

 

On our second day in Mauritius, I woke up early and watched the sun rise over the mountain behind us.  The roosters were crowing all over town, and the dogs were all out walking around having their morning constituutional.  The locals were catching their buses or climbing into the back of trucks to go to work.

 

We sat on the veranda and watched the life on the bay.  Through my binoculars, I watched three boats with two guys poling them through the water with two more guy sitting in the boats.  They moved as a unit, and then the guys who were poling started slapping the water with the long poles.  Then I could see fish jumping, and they seemed to be herding them until they formed a triangle with the boats.  Then, the guys who were sitting in the boats jumped in with nets, and they seemed to be catching the fish.  I would have loved to be out there with them watching up close.

 

Then Theresa woke up, and we headed down the street to find coffee. There were several walk up little stores, and we asked a guy outside the first one if they had coffee.  He said "no coffee".  We asked and he didn't know any place that had coffee, so we wandered on up the street passing several other places that didn't seem to have coffee.  A few minutes later I heard someone yelling "coffee, coffee".  This guy had stopped at one of the places we passed and found out that they could make coffee. How astonishing that someone had gone so out of their way to help us.  I'll always remember his kindness.  And the coffee and fresh bread were delicious. 

OK, I swear this is true.  While we were having coffee, we were next to the only stoplight in town.  I saw a dog standing there, and when the light turned red, he crossed the street.  The dogs are really smart here.

We checked out of our nice and inexpensive lodging and said goodbye 

to the Ropsens and were off to join our friends for hiking.

This is the point that I should probably talk about driving.  I was now driving on the left side for the first time in my life. I love driving, and I had not driven for over two months.  Now I had to sit on the right side with the gear shift on the left side and drive down the left side of the road. I actually caught on pretty quickly, and only once did I find myself driving down the right side of the road, and the oncoming car let me know that I was in the wrong by blinking his lights.  There were a few more things to learn as I kept turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal which were now switched around.

We did a short hike with Mary Abel around the place where they were staying in Chamarel.  It was very nice with bungaloes and pool and beautiful landscaping in a pretty remote location up in the mountains.  They had very nice views.  Everything was so lush on this island paradise.





The six of us finally got our act together and headed for Black River Gorge Park.

We made a brief stop to view Alexandra Falls on one side and the south seashore on the other side.


Then we moved on to the Park where we were happy to see some students taking in the sights. The park offered a number of options for hiking, so we took a "out and back" trail along the top that lasted us a couple of hours and gave us spectacular views.

It was great to be out in nature again, walking in a country that was not parched dry like India.  As we got ready to leave, Nancy hugged a tree and then said "I can go back to the ship now".  It was also nice to be in a place where there was hardly another person.  I also loved watching the White-tailed_Tropicbirds soaring about.

So we climbed back into the car with me driving on the left sides still and stopped for lunch at a fancy restaurant at a rum distillery where I had a sample of raw sugar cane juice and a healthy salad of palm hearts as befitted the designated driver. We headed back to the ship with plenty of time to spare UNTIL traffic came to a complete stop.  We didn't think it would be a problem since we had almost 3 hours to get back to Port Louis, turn in the rental car and get back to the ship.  It turned out that we were waiting for someone to clear up an overturned truck load of frozen squid that was blocking both lanes.  We eventually got clear, but had lost our margin for trying to find the ship by car and maybe shopping.  Oh yeah, it was now rush hour.  Thanks to directions at a bus depot that we accidentally turned into, we got back to the rental car place, and rushed to get to the ship by "ship time" which means we would be penalized at the next port and have to be on the ship earlier than usual.  We tried to run for it, but the ship was across a bay, so we grabbed two (expensive) cabs, and these guys raced us to the ship with 15 min to spare.  But, there was a line that was moving slowly as everyone was getting checked in and searched for contraband (ie. alcohol).  We were in the very back and our colleagues on the ship were yelling down from the decks "dock time".  I have to tell you that we did make it with almost a minute to spare and were very relieved.  We all agreed that we could live here.  The people were wonderful, and life moved at a nice southern pace.

For my birder friends, we also saw the Red-whiskered_Bulbul and the Madagascar_Fody.