KalahariLog

After spending Christmas in Gaborone we headed to Mauritius for New Year's. As advertised, the experience was great. Like most islanders, the people were very friendly, diverse, and tolerant. On the way to the island we flew over nearby Reunion island. The captain of the Air Mauritius flight told us to look out of the windows for the active volcano which glowed reddish in the late afternoon. As soon as we arrived at the airport we were greeted by smiling officials manning short immigration and customs lines. After a short taxi ride we arrived at our three star resort. We had a quick dinner in the restaurant, so as not to miss the "sega" show. Sega is the local music/dance that incorporates African drum beats, with Caribbean dance steps.

English is the official language in Mauritius but everybody speaks French and even all the signs are in French. The Dutch, French, and eventually Brits ruled over the island in the past 400 years. If I recall right, this is the only place where the dodo bird lived and it was the Dutch in their first few years on the island that put it out of existence. Having been to Holland before, and having Dutchmen in the past, I had nothing but good impressions. Their colonial history is another matter altogether. One only needs to look at South Africa and Mauritius to feel less affection for their soccer team. Many other unique species quickly became extinct when the entire island was converted into sugar cane fields. The famous pink pigeons (try to spot them in the picture) were down to two pairs in the 1960's.

Although Mauritius is closer to Africa, the island's relative proximity to India (about 2500 miles away) gives it a distinctly eastern feel. The diversity of the population is very noticeable especially in the capital city of Port Louis with its quarter of a million inhabitants. Big mosques are right next to catholic churches, which in turn are next to Tamil and Hindu temples. The Dutch and the French brought African slaves; the Indians came later and the latest group seems to have been the Chinease. There is a small Chinatown bordering the muslim part of town where the best restaurants require reservations even for lunch time. In one of those, the Indian running the place told us (quite smugly) that there is not such thing as vegetarian dim sum and offered us vegetable fried rice instead.

Near the capital is a famous botanical garden known as "Pamplemousses" (French for "grapefruit") and well worth the visit. The main gates are supposed to be the original gates from Buckingham Palace, or at least that's what out hyper-active guide told us -- she was very excited about it, but then again she was very excited about nearly everything. Tour-guide issues aside, the gardens are beautiful with over 500 different species. Even though less than 10% of the plants there are native, this is the place to see what remains of the indigenous plants like the bottle-palm trees, and imports from as far as the giant Victoria lilies from South America and the lotus plants from China. The mild subtropical weather with plenty of rain makes most plants happy, although occasionally cyclones do hit Mauritius.

There is a pretty good public transport system; getting from one end of the island to the other takes about an hour in old French busses. Some parts of the island definitely have a Hawaiian feel, especially where the trees growing on the side of the road form tunnels, very similar to the tree tunnels on Kauai. We rented bikes for the week to get to the nearby villages and beaches. Drivers were reasonably careful with bicyclists on the road and there was a lot of less of the constant honking of horns that seems to accompany traffic in such densely populated countries. Incidentally, Mauritius is in the top 20 list by population density with over 600 people per sq. km. (for comparison, Botswana is in the bottom 20 with 3 people per sq. km.).

There is a thriving arts and crafts scene on the island. Strangely, Mauritius is most famous for replicas of ships made out of wood. How this came to be is not clear but hundreds of shops sell this stuff and thousands of people are employed in this industry. There are, of course, lots of other nice things to see, notably paintings on silk and wood carvings. We saw one of the local sculptors, known only as "Noelle" busy at work near the center of the city.

The resort we were staying at had pretty good breakfasts and dinners but going out for lunches in the nearby villages was well worth the sweaty bike ride. Arabic treats, indian curries, and chinese dishes were very very good. After the relatively bland food of Botswana and the mostly French-oriented food of Madagascar, the spicy and hot stuff on offer in Mauritius was one of the most memorable part of the trip. That, and the lovely beaches, of course.