March 16, 2025

We woke up docked in beautiful Port Louis, Mauritius to glorious sunshine. I had a friend tell me “You’re going to so many places I’ve never heard of!”. This is true, they are fairly unknown to most Americans. I knew most of the destinations by name but maybe because I’m a huge fan of the parade of nations at every Olympics. There are always tiny contingents from places like Mauritius, the Maldives or La Réunion (our next port) proudly waving their flags. Typically, they only have a couple of participants – usually swimmers or badminton players but I have always admired their gumption just to show up and participate.

Off we went at 9:00 for a 5-hour tour titled “the Colors of Mauritius”. We climbed on a slightly smaller than your average bus, headed to our spots in the back, fastened our seatbelts and geared up for another adventure. The weather was perfect being in the low 80s and not too humid. Tod remarked that we are going further south to cooler climes as the Southern Hemisphere is approaching its autumn. Our first impressions were of a very contemporary city with short but modern high rises. We immediately jumped on their M1 road which is equivalent to the interstate at home. It was in beautiful condition, and we sped past many car dealerships including Jaguar, BMW, Volvo, many Chinese dealers and the like. Also, there were 2 or 3 absolutely huge indoor shopping malls, one of which the tour guide described as “the largest in the country”.

She was a very nice woman named Pamela, around 30ish and spoke excellent English with a slight French accent. She described the history of the country which, like the Seychelles had no indigenous people. Pretty much the same story as before: First came the Dutch who brought all kinds of non-native species like pine trees, sugar cane, monkeys and mongoose (mongeese?). Then came the French and then the British and between them they killed the native dodo bird and tortoises to extinction. So, as a result, the current Island is far from what it was in the early 1700’s. It achieved independence from the Brits in 1968 and just celebrated their Independence Day on March 12, so their colorful flags were flying everywhere. It is 790 square miles, slightly larger than Maui only round.

About 50% of the population is Hindu, 30% Christian, 17% Muslim and 3% Chinese (assumingely Buddhist). Everyone apparently gets along swimmingly. She said that education was not mandatory until the 1980’s so there is a lot of illiteracy remaining unfortunately. However, we saw no evidence of homelessness, 3rd world type housing and never did see a piece of trash. I suppose it exists; we just didn’t see it. The kids in school are taught everything in English except of course, French which is the preferred spoken language. They also speak Creole, and they are taught how to write that dialect. The prevalent race appeared to lean much more Indian than African.

Our first stop was a model ship factory but since it was Sunday, the place where they created the ships was closed. There was, of course a massive souvenir shop with many of the ships which were beautifully intricate. There were other typical touristy things including plenty of dodo birds in every shape and size and POSTCARDS! No stamps of course, “it’s Sunday!”. Another offering of note was a huge area with perfectly folded t-shirts (kind of like the old J Crew) which I assumed were of standard tourist variety. Upon closer inspection I saw that they were Gucci, Prada, Christian Dior, Givenchy etc. Later I asked Pamela if the t-shirts were knock offs. She looked very puzzled and said she didn’t understand what a knock off was. I tried my best to describe, which didn’t work, and she shrugged and said, “well they are all made in Mauritius if that’s what you mean”. With that reply, she essentially answered my question.

Next stop was the biggest lake on the island which is turning into a mud puddle because they are having a terrible drought. Even Cyclone Jude brought no rain, only wind. She remarked that the climate on the island is really changing. On we went to a lookout over an ancient dormant volcano surrounded by a beautiful park area that is used by locals for jogging. It also gave us a great view of distant volcanos that dot the island. Back to the bus we continued on to a massive Hindu shrine, temple and holy lake. There were 2 enormous statues of the Hindu gods Shiva and Durga with a lion. Pamela, who we assumed was Hindu went into detail about all the shrines to Hindu gods we would soon be seeing. Each statue was made in India, shipped over and were 120 feet tall. Behind them we would find the temple and the holy lake which I will describe.

As the story goes, in a nutshell some guy in the 1800s came to the island and studied to be a Hindu priest. After his studies he became very holy and sailed to India to the holy Ganges River and got some water and brought it back and poured it in this lake making it holy also. Now it is the site of an annual pilgrimage of followers of Shiva and the other gods at the end of February. Five hundred thousand (!) devotees walk 40 to 50 Km to get some of the holy water and walk it back to their own temples as an offering. It’s quite the event as you can imagine. It takes 4 to 5 days to do and they are only allowed to eat fruits and vegetables and drink water. We stopped next at the lake and the temple and took off our shoes and went into get blessed by the priest who painted red on our foreheads. It was crowded with worshipers, people gathering water and making offerings to the gods. It is obviously a very holy place to Hindus and it was a fascinating experience.

Next stops included waterfalls, tortoise area and nursery (the indigenous ones are extinct so they are introducing the breed from the Seychelles) and an interesting volcanic area where the earth is “7 Colors”. To get to these places we had to drive to the center of the island to a huge national park. We also saw an area where the native forests, including ebony trees (that grow 1 mm per year - no wonder it’s so expensive!) are located.

Soon we started to navigate on a tiny, narrow “C” type road that had no shoulder at all just lined with jungle and bamboo. Cars were stopping right on the road (well, maybe pulling over 6 inches) putting their emergency blinkers on, throwing doors open wide on both sides and out would jump an entire family with baskets. Then they would dive into the bushes or just wander aimlessly around the extremely busy road. We were all terrified that these seemingly oblivious people of all ages, shapes and sizes would turn into human bowling pins as the giant tour buses barreled down the road. Pamela explained that it is peak Chinese guava season, and it was traditional for families to come out and gather as many as they can. The bush are an invasive species that grow everywhere and were brought over from Brazil (go figure). Anyway, they are apparently much-loved, quite sour and are eaten with salt and chilies. We were swerving in and out of the cars and people like a slalom course at 25 to 30 mph. We must have seen at least 50 cars and hundreds of people. But the most exciting part of the drive was yet to come.

Pamela announced that they would be turning off the air-conditioning for about 20 minutes so if we were hot, we should open the windows. Tod turned to me and said, “you know what that means”, and I said yeah, steep hills. Soon we started to climb, and then we began the “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” segment of the trip. I have never seen so many hairpin turns concentrated in one place in my life. And when I say hairpin, I mean almost 180 degrees. Frequently, the bus would just stop, the gears would grind as the driver would try to shift down and when he finally would succeed, we’d lurch forward to approach another turn. Tod gulped nervously and said, “you know that driver is only about 16…”. I told him to stop stressing, that he was at least 17 in my opinion, and we climbed on. Not soon enough we reached the high point, and we could close the windows again and the air-conditioning would be turned on. With relief we sat back and enjoyed the trip back to the ship about 1 ½ hours late. Regardless, we were very impressed with the island and its people and would gladly recommend visiting it to anyone who happens to find themselves off the coast of Madagascar.

Tomorrow, La Réunion.

Mauritius

La Réunion

Sea Day #2 The Indian Ocean