Mauritius

The morning we arrived in Port Louis a group of us went into town to get money from the bank and walk around the board walk. We had to buy some time because James was getting his loose front tooth fixed after Hilton had caught him with an accidental elbow during carnival. We waited around until 1:00 and then left a note on his door and decided to leave because it was taking too long and the rest of us had little patience. We only had about 20 miles to go to get to the villa we were staying in for the weekend, but with the horrible traffic on the island it took almost an hour to get there. That first afternoon after we settled in we hit the beach. Our villa was about half a mile away from the beach so it was a good walk. That evening we went to eat dinner at an Indian food restaurant in town to try to warm ourselves up for the next port. I ordered the chicken masai with cheesy bread and it was really good.
That next day we woke up at 6:00 am to go on our deep sea fishing trip. We walked to the main road in town and found two taxis’s to take our group of 7 people to the marina. We had a 42 foot boat with two local Mauritian guides and 9 hours of fishing to do. It was one of the most relaxing 9 hours I’ve ever had. We sat up on the top deck enjoying the view of the ocean and green mountains while drinking orange Fantas and telling stories of the trip so far. That day we ended up catching 2 Durango’s and 3 smaller fish which I can’t remember the name . Once back at shore our guides cleaned the fish and gave us the fillets. That evening back at our villa we cooked chicken that we had bought the day before and marinated the fish to cook the next day.
The following morning we woke up without any plans for the day, but everyone agreed that we didn’t want to hang out at the beach all day. Three of the people in our group rented scooters to ride around the island and go see the Hindu festival near the center of the island. The Hindu festival was a pilgrimage honoring their god Sheba, and there were 500,000 people attending. The remainder of the guys in our group decided to call Harvey the cab driver whom Andrew had met the day before and see if we could get a tour of the whole island. We ran into a group of four girls while we were buying outrageous Hawaiian shirts who really wanted to come with us, so we called in an extra taxi. The tour lasted almost the whole day and we drove around the entire island. We went to a waterfall, visited the giant tortoises, saw some forts, and ate at a really good Mauritian food restaurant. One girl in our cab was insistent on visiting a school and seeing the school children, which didn’t really appeal to me at the time. However we did and it was one of the highlights of our tour. We pulled up to an elementary school, and following our driver Harvey we walked right on in. We looked in the class rooms, talked to the kids, and they even lined up and sang us their national anthem. After the tour was over we went back to our villa and fired up the grill to cook the fish we had caught the day before. Thanks to Will, who really knows how to prepare fish, it was the best meal I’ve had the whole entire voyage. For 4 hours we grilled chicken skewers, potatoes, pineapples, and the fish we caught.
The following day was our last, so we packed up our stuff that morning and caught a cab back to the ship after lunch. After showering up we went into Port Louis to walk around and check out the market. We bought a few things and had one last meal before catching a water taxi back to the ship.