Today we spent most of the day in Mauritius, a beautiful tiny island to the East of Madagascar. It’s just a little blip on the map – literally, it makes Madagascar look like the Eastern coast of Africa compared to this tiny island. Nevertheless, it has gorgeous beaches, mountains and the longest continual coral reef in the world. Its inhabitants are actually all slaves/indentured servants from the colonial era (it was inhabited when different nations came across it) and they are now heavily Indian (from when Great Britain brought them over to tend to the sugar cane) with many East Africans (from the French colonies in Eastern Africa) and Indonesians (from the Dutch East Indies Trading Company days). They speak English, French (for business, one of the only nations that GB didn’t force over to English when they took them from the French) and Mauritian creole. Last, but certainly not least, they are the sole home of the once glorious dodo birds, before they all got eaten (by the Dutch).
So today I went on an ‘adventure.’ We went inward in to the mountains and the forests to go on some ropes courses. There was two parts to the ropes course: suspension bridges and an obstacle course. There were seven suspension bridges, mostly very easy. They were the warm up for the obstacle course. It began with a rope bridge, made out of the lattice-work rope that you walked across. Then, there was a suspension bridge with the slats very far apart – farther than you could jump. So, you had grab the conveniently hanging ropes and swing like Tarzan to the next slat. That was fun. Then there was another lattice-work rope, but it was draped over the path to the next obstacle, without a bottom. This meant I had to crawl through it, trying not to do the splits while the swaying ropes spread apart. It was quite difficult. After this, there were logs hanging from ropes for you to walk across. Except that they swung, which made it very difficult to get across. By this time, I had used much of my limited arm strength, and the next task was a wall of lattice-work rope to climb across. This killed me – it was so hard and I am certainly no rock climber. I made it 3/4ths of the way until I had to ask to get pulled to the other side – I was holding everyone up and my arms were about to kill me. I was pretty bummed, but the next section was a zipline, so that was a good pick-me up. It was too short though. The final section was composed of four ropes, two to walk on and two to hold. The only problem was that the ones to walk on were kind of slack and the other two were even more so. I tight-roped it until the middle, when I fell off and then failed trying to stand up again. The ropes would just move to the side and I couldn’t manage to stand. So, I had to shuffle across on my back. It was not very fun, but I finished it! After, we had lunch – some chicken curry, with rice, lentils and cole slaw. It was a little taste of Mauritian food, but what can you do when you have less than a day?
Later on, we went to the beach, which was absolutely gorgeous. For some reason, I expected Mauritius to have better public bathrooms, but they didn’t have the best facilities – more reminiscent of Ghana. I guess I had assumed that since they are one of the richest African countries (GNI $7000), I guess I assumed it would be that much better. The sand was very soft and the water was so clear and blue. There were many corals and sea urchins in the water (the urchins were farther out so I stayed away from them – did not want to get one of their spines in my feet). There wasn’t any good place to stand in the water though, because the floor was covered in dead coral pieces or other things, unlike back home where, once you go a few feet out, it is just sand to step on. This was the only detraction though, because everything else was beautiful. The water wasn’t too cold and there were hardly any waves, it was kind of like being in a really, really big swimming pool. We spend a while there, but then we had to go back to the ship. Too bad we could only spend one day in Mauritius…
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