I'm starting to write this post on the plane between Mauritius and Dubai. If I finish it here, I'll post it on the blog using the free wifi in Dubai airport. Then when we get back to Beijing I'll edit it and insert some photographs. Otherwise I'll just do the whole thing when we're back in China.
Before I start recounting our time on Mauritius, a question. Do most flights have mobile access now? I knew it was coming, but this is the first i've been on that actually advertises it. On the way here we were able to send and receive inflight text messages using the in-seat handset. That was impressive enough, but now mobile coverage onboard and at normal roaming rates! While I'm impressed by the technology I'm not so sure it's a good thing. Obnoxious mobile users are bad enough on the ground, imagine a 12 hour flight back to the UK stuck next to one! Hopefully the frequent users will be stuck in business class, poor fools...
Anyway, the holiday.
We spent the first four nights staying at a German-owned gästhaus in a resort in the south-west of the island called Tamarin. It is a small place with only a couple of small shops, restaurants and a supermarket. Like the rest of the island it did have a wonderful beach and beautiful blue sea to swim in. The accommodation was great, perhaps a little further from the beach than we would have chosen, but since we had a hire car for the whole holiday, it really was no hardship.
While in Tamarin we got a little pink underestimating the strength of the sun on our first day, factor 15 was insufficient! We didn't forget to apply plenty, just haven't been so close to the equator and therefore the sun before I guess. Anyway it was a quick lesson learned and taught us well for the rest of the holiday, we didn't make the same mistake twice. We walked up a steep hill in the national park and had a wonderful view of the coast. We swam with dolphins, which was a definite highlight for me. We visited Flic en Flac, a growing resort named either for the Dutch for free and flat land or the sound that the French soldiers' boots made in the marshland. We saw the somewhat unprepossessing hamlet of Wolmar where many of the five star hotels are based. We visited a beautiful rum plantation and tasted and bought some agricultural rum, made with the first pressing of the sugar cane, rather than the byproducts of sugar production as industrial rum is made. We also visited Chamarel where there is a waterfall and seven-coloured earth, caused by the different ores present in the soil and their oxidisation.
We also had time to read, relax, catch up on sleep, swim, snorkel, eat, drink and tan.
After four days, we rather reluctantly packed up our things and headed up the east coast, making it through the capital, Port Louis, mapless and with relative ease.
Finding our destination for the next week wasn't too difficult. Pointe aux cannoniers is the most north-easterly on the island. This time our accommodation was a little more basic, but the payoff was a seaview and beach 30 seconds walk away. From here we spent a morning horse-riding on a sugar plantation. We drove around the north coast, through the intriguingly-named, but in practice somewhat dull, poudre d'or and goodlands. We spent an afternoon exploring the markets of Port Louis and saw the world's most expensive stamp. We visited a sugar plantation and tasted rum and sugar, a tea factory and tasted tea and a vanilla farm, where just to be sure, we tasted some rum again. We met one of Caroline's former colleagues and saw the fantastic work they're doing establishing a diverse range of fairtrade manufacturing in Mauritius. We also visited the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (father of the nation) botantical gardens and saw some huge tropical plants, palm trees and tortoises. Again, we also swam, snorkelled, slept, read, ate and drank.
I've inevitably missed somethings, but I'll add them in later with help from Caroline when I add the photographs too.
It was a wonderful holiday and a beatiful island, I only hope our photographs do it some justice. It's an interesting place too, with lots to see and do. And we tried to sample as much as we could. There's an interesting mix of cultures and communities on the island too, which I'll probably try and write some thoughts about in the next week or so.
But for now I'll call a halt in order to grab a couple of hours sleep so that we can enjoy our shorter, second visit to Dubai.
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1 comment:
Lifes tough for some !!
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