Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Mauritius

Mauritius was a quick stop on our voyage. We had about 6 hours in port. While most of the ship left early to do catamaran rides, otherwise known as “booze cruises” my friends and I opted to go explore the town. From the dock we had to take water taxis into the town so we hopped on one for 2 dollars and a 10 minute ride to the city. There wasn’t much there, and because it was a Sunday the few stores that were nearby were either closed or would be closing at noon and it was already 10 am by the time we got there. We wandered through the water taxi port and walked towards all of the buildings close by. We found a mall but the shops were all closed so we kept walking and came across a “craft mart”. Many of the vendors were selling handmade crafts and Karissa and I found collages with dried flowers mod-podged onto banana leaves. We each got one and those were our purchases for the day. After the craft mart we went to lunch at a small cafĂ©. I ordered a chicken Panini, but it was pretty much just bread. When we were finished with lunch we went back to the water taxi’s because Karissa went back to the ship since she was suffering from a fat lip. The cause of that is still a mystery.

After we waved Karissa off my friend Chelsea and I decided to wander in another direction. As we walked we came upon an open air market/street fair kind of thing. We walked up the street browsing the tables filled with sandals, perfumes, knockoff boxer briefs, Tupperware, kids toys, and more. Once we walked the whole street we decided to go back to the craft mart and make sure we didn’t miss anything. Unfortunately at that point it was already passed noon so we were out of luck. The city was pretty much shut down by then so there was really nothing left to do. We headed back to the water taxis and back to the ship.

We got back around the same time that people were getting back from the booze cruises and it was quite the scene on the ship. Dinner was filled with kids swaying with the ship, except that the ship wasn’t moving. Everyone was in sunglasses trying to cover the drunk eyes, dresses on backwards, cowboy hats, and lots of yelling. And those were the kids that got past security. Apparently a lot of people were written up getting back on the ship. Good things we skipped that mess.

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