At 7 am, my friend Chelsea and I got off the ship in Mauritius and walked out of the port and grabbed a cab to go to the closest beach. Mauritius has the best beaches in the world. On the way the landscape was very diverse; there were a lot of wide fields of grass with a backdrop of a wide mountain range with sharp tips.
The cab driver brought us to a small beach for local people. When we arrived, there were only a couple people there and it was quiet and serene.
A local there offered to take us out on his boat to go snorkeling. So we joined another group to travel 15 minutes out and then he gave us the equipment. The coral underneath us was mostly leeched which is because of the change of eco system and people touching them. Luckily, there were other girls that knew how to snorkel so they tried to teach me to use the equipment even though I still had trouble breathing. I think I took in more water than air. There were a lot of brightly colored fish in the area; some fish resembled those in “Finding Nemo”. We also got to see an eel. It slithered around the coral like a snake and was rather long.
After that we headed back to the beach and waded in the water for a bit. The Indian Ocean is significantly warmer than the Atlantic and we had no trouble getting used to it, especially that early in the morning. There were more people on the beach now including retired locals, Semester At Sea students and members of the faculty.
We ended up getting sucked into a game of tag with a bunch of the faculty’s kids. We played tag and shark for almost an hour and it seemed that the parents were glad to have a break. I was happy to have an excuse to play in the water without looking weird. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of shells or rocks for me to collect; however, there were plenty pieces of coral.
After our playmates left, we walked over to a bar to grab some refreshments. My milkshake was really thin but still rather tasty. The interesting thing about Mauritius is that it took US dollars which is most likely due to the high amount of tourism on the island. We quickly walked over to a local beach store to purchase souvenirs. When we went back to the taxi, the cab driver had bought us a bottle of Mauritian rum to bring back to the ship with us. It was really difficult trying to explain to them that we could not bring it. He even stopped at a grocery store for us to get a mixer so that we would take it. We ended up leaving the rum with him.
Overall, we had a very productive morning for the limited amount of time we had in Mauritius. There was an issue with some of the other students who had gone to a different beach to party and get drunk. Fifteen people were put in the drunk tank at noon and there were several individuals who came on to the boat staggering or unable to properly walk. It was a bit disappointing to see people that thrashed. The shipboard community, including the dean and many professors were very disappointed.
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