Wait, We Left Mauritius Already? Seriously?

Wow, that country just flew by. And I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get to see a lot of it – but what I DID see was pretty freakin’ awesome!

Most of what I saw was blue . . . and liquid . . . and slightly colder than it looks . . . and salty. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m talking about the ocean. “Why did she see so much of the ocean?” You might be asking. Well I’ll tell you: Because I got scuba certified! Woohoo! I am now certified worldwide for life. Awesome!

It took two days. I spent two days BREATHING UNDERWATER! Can you believe it? It’s probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Breath underwater. Feel weightless. Be in a completely foreign environment. I felt like I was in Kerry’s fish tank.

Certification usually takes a couple weeks, but we have a VERY condensed course. Two full days of book work, pool exercises, and ocean exercises. So cool! I got to see lots of fish, an octopus, a ray, coral, and more fish. When we were little we had a book about fish (do we still have it?). It had a white cover, it was big, and it was in a series of children’s books about anything you could possibly want to know about ever. Anyways, there was one picture that’s always stood out to me (maybe it’s on the cover): the lion fish. Google it. I saw lots.

In the ocean our dive instructor would swim ahead and we would follow him around. I felt kind of like a kid caught eating batter out of the bowl after being left in the kitchen for a second because while our instructor was swimming with his arms folded or by his side, I was swimming with them in front of me trying (unsuccessfully) to catch the fishes – and he would see me every time he turned around. I don’t think he cared though.

Scuba diving was amazing. New hobby. Very excited.

One thing that amazed me was how much American “surf culture” was here. I felt like I was in Santa Cruz. O’Neil was everywhere. When I said he lived in Santa Cruz, my hometown, people said “That’s a person?” Wow.

Let me paint you a picture of Mauritius before I continue on with my adventures. Close your eyes and picture . . . wait, don’t close your eyes. Then you can’t read this. But imagine the stereotypical, beautiful, tropical island. White sandy beaches, blue waters, palm trees, lush green plants. You’re picturing Mauritius. It really is that beautiful. There’s a lot of agriculture, particularly sugar cane. It reminded me of one time when Dad brought us home sugar cane from the flea market – happy memories.

Okay, now that you have the picture in your head, I’m moving on. So the first two days were spent getting scuba certified. Then the first night I went out to dinner with friends. We were looked at like we were crazy when we walked into the restaurant, so we knew it wasn’t very touristy. Instead of ordering we asked them to bring us what they thought was the best, and they did. I love how in so many countries when you order they bring you big plates to share and pass around. What’s wrong with America? The food was similar to Indian food, except . . . different. Absolutely delicious though! Then we walked back to the waterfront and just when the five of us were going to catch a water taxi (cool!) back to the ship, three of us decided we weren’t quite done with our night. We headed back into the city and ended up at the casino where I got 100R worth of coins to play the slot machines. (Don’t freak out. 100R = $3.25ish). And do you want to know something cool? I left with 135R! Hurray for me! The house DOESN’T always win!

The second night a friend of mine was having a bad day, so I told her she had an hour to sulk/mope and then I was going to kidnap her for a girls’ night. She was resistant, but I didn’t give her a choice. She thanked me later. On the water taxi into the city a fellow SAS student named John attached himself to us. His friends (and the rest of the boat) were all renting villas on some beach somewhere. We exited the water taxi expecting to go different way, but then he said, “So you girls just want to hop it?” meaning “Do you want to stop at every single bar on the waterfront and have a beer at each of them”. . . No thank you. We ended up meeting up with a bigger group of SAS kids who were more interested in what he was interested in, so when they were talking we said we were going to go explore and slipped away.

We ended up following music to a really great performance. A man was singing in Hindi (I think) and there were dancers with brightly colored costumes. Lots of fun to watch. We danced a bit to the music and got some weird looks, but we decided we didn’t care since it was our last night in port and it wasn’t like we were going to see anybody ever again anyways. Then we went up to Shooters, a bar overlooking the whole waterfront where we hung out with a lot of SAS kids. We both got pina coladas (mine was virgin – why pay extra for the alcohol when I really just want the pineapple & coconut?). It was really, really good. Then we called it a night, since we both had early mornings.

The last day was a lot of fun! I went to the Adventure Park – hurray! The park was 7 bridges then 7 obstacle courses. The group that had gone earlier said that it was super intense and that they were sore at the end, so I went in super pumped up for a challenging and exciting adventure.

I probably could have done the course when I was seven.

But it was still fun! Not as high up or as challenging as I might have wanted, but fun nonetheless. Plus the scenery was BEAUTIFUL. And it was different being in a jungle as opposed to a forest. What surprised me, though, was how . . . unregulated it was. They put you in a harness at the beginning, point you to the path, and let you go. From there on I don’t think I saw a single instructor until the end. It’s your responsibility to clip onto the cables and nobody is going to check to make sure you do it or make sure you do it right. Crazy. I was able to be safe, though, since when I did the ropes course at Mount Hermon they actually teach you how to clip in and how the carabineers should be facing opposite directions. Important stuff like that.

After the Adventure Park (or “Parc” as they spell it), we went down to Flic and Flac beach. We only had a little over an hour, so not a lot for a whole beach day. But there was still plenty of time to walk around the town, hit the grocery store to use up some last rupees, and collect coral on the beach. Other people didn’t want to get wet, but I’m my father’s daughter and couldn’t resist taking one last dunk in that beautiful, blue ocean. Light turquoise might be a more accurate color description.

I hadn’t used up all my rupees at the grocery store because I was looking forward to buying fruit on the beach. So, after my dunk, I went to one of the many fruit stands determined to use up the last of my money. I bought: a huge coconut bigger than my head with a straw in it, a pineapple the size of two of my fists carved so that you can hold it by the green and eat it kind of like an ice cream cone, and a WHOLE bunch of other fruits they had picked in jars – some of which I recognized and some of which I didn’t. I was trying to spend my last couple hundred rupee. Fail. The total was 140, which is less than five bucks. But it was time to go, so I went and got back on the bus. Shortly after finishing my coconut milk, I realized that I had absolutely no way of eating the meat inside of. I presented my predicament to the guide and he told me to smash my head against it. Luckily for me, he had been teasing me all day and by this time I had caught on; his first answer is always a lie. So I didn’t try. Then he directed me to a nearby stand that would cut it open for me. So I ran over (we were still waiting for the stragglers and slackers to get to the bus, so I ended up having plenty of time) and asked the guy to open it for me. Not only did he machete the coconut open for me, but he completely gutted it and put all the coconut meat in a bag. Then I handed him some of my remaining money (50R = $1.50) and asked for that much worth of fruit. He filled a huge bag full of picked . . . everything! Why everything is pickled in Mauritius, I don’t know. But there was pickled starfuit (good!) pickled mango (okay) and pickeld other stuff that I didn’t recognize. Some was weird. Oh, and it’s not the kind of sour pickled-ness like pickles in America. It’s . . . sweeter, but still with that same tang.

Anyways, besides the pickled fruit, I had a DELICIOUS dinner on the bus of an ENTIRE coconut and an ENTIRE pineapple. If you know me at all, you know I was in heaven.

Mauritius was wonderful. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back (there are so many islands like that, why not try a different one next time?), but I definitely enjoyed my time there.