MAURITIUS!!!

So far I am right; nothing will beat South Africa. Mauritius was fun; but just like I expected there was not much to see and not much to do. Some of the students spent the 3 days getting drunk, which gives not only SAS a bad name, but also Americans a bad name. Others, like me, took advantage of the beautiful beach and the marketplace. We were supposed to arrive at 8:00am on Thursday the 15th of March. However, we did not end up getting there till noon. This would not have been a huge deal, except that we did not have long in Mauritius anyway. Personally, I would rather it be there that we have less time than anywhere else since I am more looking forward to other places. So, we arrived and I got off the ship with Brenna, Jaime, Derron, Terron and Eric. We walked around and got to know the port before heading down to the marketplace. The area that the boat was, was very Americanized. There was a McDonald’s and a Pizza Hut and a very nice mall. However, I did not realize until later that in the mall, there was a marketplace. Obviously it was cleaner and higher priced, but that made it vary from the states at least a little. After exploring the marketplace, we sat down for a nice Indian meal, which ended up costing about 4 dollars a person. Mauritius is a combination of African and Indian cultures, resulting in an amazing selection of food. After dinner, some people headed to the casino, while Brenna and I, along with some other girls, headed back to the ship. I was ready to go to sleep when some of the girls mentioned the villas. About 200 SASers rented villas at Flic ‘n Flac Beach and I knew that a lot of my friends were there. A small group of us were supposed to go but some of them backed out at the last second, so Brenna and I ended up jumping into a cab ourselves. It was fun being able to be with several groups of friends at one time.

The next morning a huge group of SASers headed out to eat before heading to the beach. The beach was beautiful. Personally, I do not like swimming in ocean water, but this was like bath water. The water was so blue and so clear. After pruning, we headed back to the ship. A lot of SASers were spending the second night at the Villas as well, but at least Brenna and I were sleeping on the ship. That night, we went out to eat and then out to the casino. I changed 15 dollars into coins and played for hours. When I was ready to go, I got 10 dollars back, meaning I entertained myself for hours on 5 dollars. It doesn’t get much better than that. I haven’t been to the casino since the Dominican, and most of you know how I LOVED the slot machines there, and these were just as fun. I found my lucky machine and kept winning. Jay (Joanna) was planning to go out to a club that night. But when I called her when we got back, she had changed her mind and was already sleeping. So instead, I put the Illusionist in to watch, but fell asleep after about 10 minutes.

Saturday morning I walked around the port area myself. I got the souvenirs that I had been looking for and did exactly what I wanted to do, which is always fun. Of course there are 701 other students I couldn’t help but meet up with many of them. I joined one group for lunch and then another group for dinner. Brenna has been buying t-shirts in every port but since this was such a short one and she had done an SAS trip that day, she had yet to buy one. We finished dinner at around 8:30pm when on ship time was at 9:00. we should have headed straight back to the boat but we found some open stores. She was able to get her t-shirt and I was able to use the rest of my rupees. It worked out well, but all of a sudden it was 8:50 and we still had to take the water taxi back to the boat area. We booked it and there were a lot of other students in the same situation. If you are not back by on ship time, which is 2 hours before the ship leaves, you get dock time. This means that in the next port, you cannot get right off the ship when we dock. You have to wait a certain amount of time. That time is determined by how many minutes you are late. Every minute you are late equals ten minutes of dock time, which adds up very quickly. Luckily, we swiped in at 8:59. We were lucky and ready to leave Mauritius.

I did not take my camera with me to the beach for fear of losing or breaking it, so I have to get some pictures from friends. Until then, I have pictures from two separate dinner occassions to hold you over picture wise :) ...

this is Candace, Jay, me, Brenna and Jaime at a Chinese food restaurant.

this is Jaime, Brenna and me at a Sports bar.