Six days in Mauritius December 7 to 13, 2015

After 12 hours in airplanes, we arrived in Mauritius.  A shuttle drove us to our resort in Flic En Flac--along the way we viewed mountains, sugar care farms, lots of construction and a few small towns.  We checked in and went to bed.  12 hours later, we were revived and ready for the beach.  Had to buy a "woggle" for me, water shoes for George and then we spent most of the afternoon floating in the Indian Ocean.  Yay.  This resort has themed buffets and tonight it was Mauritian and ending with Mauritian dancing.  The drumming and singing sounded like our Aboriginal music and the dancers had yards and yards of fabric in their skirts which they whirled around in.  Very lovely.

Today, a tour to a Tea Factory and a  vanilla museum.  Did you know that all tea starts from the same kind of leaves and the way it is processed makes the tea?  For example, to make vanilla tea, they add vanilla powder to black tea and it sits together for 3 months and voila! Vanilla tea.  I am no longer surprised that real vanilla is so expensive.  It is quite a process to get vanilla.  I have to admit that I only like herbal tea which isn't actually made from tea and I never use vanilla as I don't like the taste of it.  However, it was an interesting day--although a long drive.  Mauritius is really quite small--only takes an hour to drive across.  It is a beautiful island with many lakes, mountains and of course, the ocean.  We visited a couple of plantation houses and had an excellent lunch at one.  The lunch started with smoked marlin--delicious.

I think if our dermatologist could see my skin, she would be shocked.  I got quite burned today and I don’t know how it happened.  I was almost never in the sun without sun screen and mostly when I have a swimsuit on, I am mostly under water.  Oh my!  On Tuesday, we didn't get sunburned so why did we on Thursday!   My skin is hot and hurts.  When I am out I must us an umbrella to keep the sun off me.  Sheryl said that it is possible to get burned even under water.  The temperature here is between 30 and 35 in the daytime and 25 at night.

Our next tour day involved visiting a ship model making workshop.  There were models of the ship Vasa which we saw in Sweden.  It was built to the King's specs but was too high so on its maiden voyage it sank after 1 kilometer--didn't even make it out of the harbour in Stockholm.  It spent 300 years under water, was raised and is on display in its very own museum.  Kind of cool!  We visited and were blessed at a Hindu shrine and temple.  There is a shrine to Shiva who is one of their many gods.  Over 300 thousand people go there to pray at the annual pilgrimage .  We saw a volcano crater, a waterfall,  huge tortoises, a rum distillery and many other sights.  It is a small island but there is lots to see. 

If I summed up our time here, I would say our schedule was:  arrive, float in the Indian Ocean, tour, float in the Indian Ocean, tour, float in the Indian Ocean, leave for Jo’burg and Pretoria.  The food has been excellent--every evening there is a theme at this resort.   There is happy hour every night for a few hours.  We usually go down to the bar, get a drink and then play "Take Two" which is Neil's game.  Well, sort of, it is played with Scrabble tiles and no board and when he plays, it is called "Take One".

George read that Mark Twain once said that God first created Mauritius and then used it for the blueprint for paradise.  I think he is right.

And on to South Africa.  Yay.