I needed land... and quickly.

So the stretch from South Africa to Mauritius was the worst, as I was told it would be. I finally felt the effects of bobbing up and down on a little ship in the middle of the great big ocean. Everyone was feelin it, but especially people who had rooms at the top front of the ship, aka ME! I was getting almost zero sleep. One night I was trying to sleep, but I was getting air while laying in bed every other 5 seconds, the drawers were slamming open and closed, and stuff was falling all over the place. The noise was another problem. It sounded like a small bomb exploding across the hall every time a wave hit. I had to wake up my friend at 4 in the morning to go down to his room where it was less rocky and I could actually sleep. When I came back the next morning, everything was on the floor, the phone was on the floor and off the hook beeping and it was just a mess. I went to my first 8 am class and barley made it through. I skipped my next two classes, took some seasickness meds and passed out from 9am to 5pm. I later found out from my friend that only 6 out of the 40 people in my religions class had shown up for class. I can only imagine what “the wave” and storm were like for my brother…

We then landed in Mauritius the next day. I couldn’t have been happier. It was absolutely stunning as well. I love mountains and Mauritius (being a volcano) had tons of them. Random jets of land poking up all over. The water was as blue as could be. The first day, we actually arrived later than originally planned. Due rough seas (duh) and going out of our way to avoid a cyclone, we arrived in the early afternoon. A bunch of my friends and I had rented two villas on the North Shore of the Island. All of the other SASers rented on the West side so we were far away from them, luckily. For the first time no one knew of the student ship. It’s amazing how our little ship can take over an entire small country while we are there, so it was really surprising to hear that they did not know of us. The villa was awesome. It was in the middle of some residential area right across from the beach. We hit up the grocery story, bought a lot of food and drinks, and went to the beach, made dinner, and partied.

The next day, my friend Jeff and I had to get up early to catch a taxi back to the ship for a day trip that we had both planned with SAS. I was supposed to go hiking in the mountains/volcano, but that’s hardly what we did. We actually took a bus around and saw a lot of different sights. Our first stop was a lookout over the volcano (which is now a lake). We overlooked the black river gorges as well. Here, there was a wild money sitting on the railing, and people were trying to get pictures of it, and one girl got hit in the head. It was pretty funny. We also went to a Hindu temple located on a sacred lake. It was really neat, but I was a little disappointed that we had nothing explained to us at any of the stops. We ate lunch at a beautiful restaurant located on the top of one of the mountains that over looked a bay. I took lots of pictures of course, but I’m always disappointed in how they fail to capture it. By this point I realized that we weren’t going to hike. We proceeded to see the 7-colored earth (which I bought like a tourist would). Here, the dirt was well, 7 colors. It was actually really cool and the pictures turned out pretty good. I have so many pictures to show… We also went to a beach for a little bit and headed back to the ship, and then back to the villa for the second night of fun. We ate dinner at this café down the street and once again got to know the owners. The food was amazing (I got prawns once again) and the owner was so nice.

I spend my last day in Mauritius in an Internet café, shopping, eating, and drinking. Not too shabby. Since Internet is ridiculously outrageous on the ship, it’s nice to find a café in port were it’s dirt-cheap. We went to china town only to find it all deserted at 5pm. The restaurant we were going to didn’t open for another hour and a half so we went back to the water front and had drinks and appetizers. I ordered a margarita with one of the life long learns who was spending the evening with us. The waiter couldn’t seem to get anything right as he took our orders (about a 15 minute process). When he finally brought us our “margaritas” Mary and I just looked at each other. It was no margarita, even though he said it was. It was served in a martini glass, no ice, no froth, no smoothie goodness, just some nasty alcohol and a lime. I ended up adding enough ice to my during the course of the evening so that it was practically water as I drank it. And no way was I not going to drink it. I felt like I should have gotten a metal at the end. Mary and I decided we will get real ones in Hawaii. We then went back to this excellent Chinese restaurant. Chinese food normally makes me sick. Lucky for me I was able to order pawns and chicken dishy thing. It was goooood. I had already eaten a whole large pizza a couple of hours earlier but I promised someone that I would stuff my pretty little face in Mauritius since I hadn’t been able to eat much on the ship ☺

Next up… India. I am doing two home stays and I am really, really looking forward to it. Pepto-Bismol will be my new best friend. Wish me luck!