We have reached land again - hurrah. We awoke at 7ish to find ourselves just docked in the wonderful island of Mauritius.
We had another decent sized breakfast delivered to our room, had our day bag packed and were ready for our ship excursion tour of Southern Delights.
When we left the ship we greeted by Mauritian Dancing on the quayside.
We met a small coach (no. 9) on quayside pier. It had 35 seats but we weren’t full though it was one of many coaches doing the exact same tour. Our guide was called Manoj and our driver was called Vinesh. We left at 8.40am and after about an hour we arrived at a large crater of a dormant volcano (there are 23 volcanoes on the island but they are all extinct except this one and nothing has happened to this one for a very long time). We was expecting a barren area but, like the whole of Mauritius, it is very green with lots of plants growing out of it. To be honest, the guide could have told us anything and we would have known no different.
Next we went to a tourist shop that also had models of ships. We think that another reason for this visit were the free toilets which had the biggest queues. Old people and their bladders. Mark is definitely included in that statement. We bought a few trinkets but the currency is Mauritian Rupees so the exchange rate on paying in Euros or dollars were not good. Luckily things are fairly cheap here anyway.
Our next stop, in a packed schedule, was a double header. First we went to a Hindu temple which was not what we expected. It had statues of their gods in the middle of the water surrounded by tiny fish and a inside temple that was mostly displays of statues, flowers and candles. We had to take our shoes off for the inside temple
This was followed by the shortest of drives to the base of these marvellous statues of Hindu gods Shiva and Ganesh( we think) They were enormous and painted. Shiva also had smaller statues next to him in glass boxes. There was a golden cow and a family statue with Shiva wife and children( we think). We did not get a long time to investigate more.
The extra bonus here were the wild monkeys who looked cute be were warned not to get to close to them as they can attack as they are protective.
On the way to our next stop our guide told us some more information about the country. Mauritius is made of 4 main religions as depicted in their flag Blue (Christianity); Red (Hindu); Green (Muslim); Yellow (Chinese). They have 16 public holidays each year to cover all religions.
We then went to a mountain lookout with a waterfall There were also Market stalls along the route and Mark purchased a t-shirt.
Lunch time! The restaurant was lovely with amazing views and it even had wi-fi as long as you didn’t leave the table!
It was a buffet lunch with bread, salad, rice, chicken stew, pumpkin gratin, creole fish, vegetables chickpeas and aubergine dish. They also gave a free drink of whatever you fancied - Pam went with wine whilst Mark had a tropical juice. There was also a tapioca and fruit cocktail for dessert plus coffee/tea.
On our lunch table were Rabbi Arthur and his wife Debbie. They now have names so they are no longer known as the couple with crabs - they brought it up us not us but if they hadn’t you can bet Mark would have done.
Our next drive, after lunch, was onto the national park to first see the 100m waterfall.
There was a further viewpoint, up a steep slope and many steps so Mark was sent to tackle that one.
Our final stop is the 7 coloured sands and giant tortoises.
The best pics, we were advised, were a short walk away around the area. Pam took a number of pictures, from various points, so you can choose.
This may be one of those "you just had to be there" moments.
However, Mark was more interested in these gigantic tortoises. They have been imported as the native version are extinct - apparently they were tasty and were eaten to extinction. These must eat a lot.
We then drove over an hour back to the boat and captured a few scenic pics from the coach.
What a very beautiful country Mauritius is. The scenery spectacular, the people friendly, the food (that we had) was delicious and the only downside was the amount of traffic and the huge amount of construction taking place around the port. We would gladly visit here again given the chance.
So back aboard, we needed to shower and relax. Mauritius was 30c and the biggest problem was the high humidity. Pam showered and relaxed in the room whilst Mark took a quick poolside shower and swam in the outside pool - that was about 26c due to being in the sun so was not the cooling off he was hoping for.
We had pre-dinner drinks (plus crisps and canapés) in the Chart Room again with the Brevis string trio once more as our background music. We had dinner in the main Britannia restaurant and sat next to a lovely couple from Queensland so we could speak with some knowledge on the Sunshine Coast and Mooloolaba. Dinner here is so much better than Arcadia though the portions are larger so that is a bit dangerous for weight gain. We may need a UK walking tour when we arrive in Southampton. We both had a large piece of grilled salmon, with vegetables, for our main though Pam had already had pate and french onion soup to start - Mark had some baked mussels and cauliflower & spinach soup as his starter. For dessert it was strawberry ice cream for Pam and Italian hazelnut cake for Mark.
We wobbled over to the Golden Lion for the 9pm special music quiz hosted by guest lecturer David Mallinder. He had done a number of talks on the Rat Pack members that hadn’t interested us so we hadn’t seen him. We joined Diane and Andrew plus their friends Ruth and we believe her husband is called Jim. We got 27 out of 40 on a mixture of questions and intros from 1950s to 1990s.
It had been a long and rather wonderful day so it was definitely time for bed after all that.
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