Out and about again

After a chaotic one week at home, sorting out finances from the last trip, making arrangements for this trip, catching up on three weeks of missed French lessons and celebrating my parents' 45th wedding anniversary, I am back on the road again (so to speak). Yesterday I had my first international departure from Durban's King Shaka International Airport. I am always excited to do something new, no matter how small, and this was no exception! I wanted to see what was behind the security gates and it was a little disappointing but interesting anyway. There are two coffee shops, one sweet shop and one duty free shop (where a bag of jelly sweets will set you back R50!). Then endless miles of corridors leading to the boarding gates. The strangest thing about the place was the silence. There was only one international departure in the morning (mine to Mauritius) and most people came through to the gate at the last minute so I was at the gate in the quiet with 6 other people for quite a while.

The Air Mauritius Airbus arriving in Durban

Very quickly we boarded the plane and everyone settled down in their seats. It was very clear that the school holidays had begun from the number of children on the plane. I was seated next to a couple and their 6 month old baby which made me wonder about how peaceful the flight would be. But unlike that other mother I ranted about last month, these parents were prepared. They had enough food for their daughter and all her favourite toys and when she wasn't sleeping or eating they kept her busy which meant no crying at all. The flight was uneventful thankfully and we arrived in Mauritius 15 minutes early.

First sight of Mauritius

Not just beaches but sprawling urbanisation too

Mauritius has to have the slowest immigration procedures on the planet and it seemed to take forever to get through. I'm not going to complain about that too much though as the official stamped my passport exactly where I told him too - I'm conserving pages because my passport is very full and I need two clean pages for my Schengen visa. Next was the health authorities who took particular interest in my visits to the Comoros and Tanzania but then just let me through.

After collecting my suitcases, I walked out of the airport to discover two people from different places waiting to meet me. Oops! I forgot that when I booked my accommodation in January I asked for an airport transfer to the hotel and Satish (my local WIOFish partner) had organised for the driver from the Albion Fisheries Research Centre to collect me. The guy from Albion was very understanding and said that he was just happy to know that I was okay - made me feel even worse! He said that Satish wanted to speak to me so he quickly phoned Satish on his phone. Satish asked me what I planned to do for the public holiday (the one he only informed me about two weeks ago) and I said that I planned to spend the day at the beach at Flic et Flac. He said that he wanted to ask me to spend the day at his house but I had really made up my mind to go to Flic et Flac. He was okay with that (maybe relieved that he didn't have to entertain me all day) and we agreed to meet on Tuesday at 8am outside my hotel.

With that all sorted I got into the arranged transfer (a hotel contracted taxi) and the terrifying trip to the hotel began. I think the Mauritian taxi drivers are maybe the worst. This guy drove over the speed limit and did not slow down until he was on the bumper of the car in front. To be a little bit fair to him he was driving at 120km/hr in a 110km/hr zone but on roads that in SA would be 60km/hr. The late braking is really what freaked me out though. This somehow (!) did not stop me from organising a ride with him to Flic et Flac today.

He dropped me at the hotel (Gold Crest), I got my room and went for dinner before unpacking. Although I have stayed at this hotel previously, I had never eaten any other meals besides breakfast in their restaurant. It was a pleasant surprise. The menu is quite diverse with Chinese, Indian, Creole and Western food available. I had a chicken breast stuffed with spinach and cheddar cheese served with chips and salad which was delicious and reasonably priced.

My hotel room is nice. It is very big which always goes down well and there is plenty of hot water available :-). I am however trying to use it sparingly as Mauritius has not had good rain for 3 months now. Talking of water though, one of my favourite things about Mauritius is that the tap water is potable. It makes a huge difference (to me anyway) to just be able to brush my teeth and shower without worrying about swallowing any water by mistake. It also means that I don't have to buy water all the time.

The view from my hotel window - not so great but the room is good which is the most important thing!

On to today! As I mentioned above, today is a public holiday here. It is Yugadi Telugu or New Year's Day for the people of the Deccan region of India. The forefathers of many, many people from Mauritius came from this area and so the day is a declared national holiday here. It meant that I had a completely unplanned, free day. I decided that it was time to see what all the fuss was about Flic et Flac. I had only been there once at night to have dinner and was curious about what it looked like in the daytime.

On the way to Flic et Flac - sugar cane fields in the foreground

The taxi driver collected me at 10 am and dropped me off at the beach with the arrangement that he would come back for me at 2:30. He told me that I should get a sun bed under an umbrella and twice told me that I should keep a watch over my belongings. I didn't want to be part of the foreign legion on the sun beds and wandered over to where all the locals were under the Casuarina trees. I put down my little towel (a gym towel I brought along and not one of the hotel's towels) in amongst three families with kids on the presumption that they would look after my stuff while I was in the water. At first I just sat on the beach and enjoyed the ambiance but eventually the draw of the ocean was too much and I put on my mask and snorkel and went swimming.

At first I didn't see much, just a lot of coral rubble but then slowly slowly my eyes adjusted to looking for the small critters. I saw wrasses, damsels, goatfish, a small shoal of Moorish idols, my least favourite - an eel, some sea cucumbers and plenty of urchins. The side current pushed me along the beach and I had a fair swim to get back to my entry point but it was all good ...... except for hearing a strange sound next to me and looking up to find a rubberduck right next to me!

I returned to the beach to find that all my belongings were where I had left them and dried off while reading then went for a long walk along the beach. Soon it was lunch time and I went to Chez Pepe's, a nice Italian restaurant. I had a Phoenix beer as a starter and then had pasta with chicken, mushrooms and onions. While I was sitting there some clouds came over and it started to rain so I stayed longer and had a cup of real Italian coffee - I'm not sure if I will be able to sleep tonight after that :-). The rain eased up and stopped after about 5 minutes so by the time I had finished the coffee the sun was out again and I made my way back to the beach.

Chez Pepe - where I had lunch today.

Before I knew it it was time for yet another terrifying taxi drive back to the hotel! Sandy, the taxi driver, greeted me with "are all your belongings okay" - I guess he has had clients that have had their stuff stolen while on the beach. My pick up was timed well because by the time Sandy arrived I had had enough and really just wanted to get back to the hotel and shower off all the salt. It was, however, a good way to pass the day and I am glad to have seen another part of Mauritius. Tomorrow it is back to work though and it will be good to get on with the real purpose of my visit.