MAURITIUS

Day 1:
I went on a Semester at Sea trip to the Adventure Park with Sally, Becca and Cara and several other friends in the jungles of Mauritius! The park consisted of two courses. The first course was a series of suspension bridges and then the second course was different sets of hanging nets, balancing beams, and a zipline. We had a lot of fun but it was more of a workout than we were prepared for! After lunch we went to Flic-n-Flac beach to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. As we were leaving we got ice cream from the ice cream truck! But instead of a wrapped ice cream treat, it was soft serve in a waffle cone with chocolate syrup and nuts! Now that is the kind of ice cream truck I am talking about!
We got back to the ship, met up with our other friends and headed out to Blue Bay(about an hour away) to find our hotel! We made it to the hotel, but when the staff saw we had 14 people for 2 hotel rooms they were not very happy. We hung out on the beach for a while to avoid the situation. There were hardly any lights on the beach so the stars were gorgeous! It started to get a little chilly, so me and three of the girls decided to head in. We were able to sneak to our room with no problem, but the others didn’t have as much luck. 7 of the 14 wound up having to sleep on the beach!  However, I’m not sure our sleeping situation was too much better. The lights in the room didn’t work and we pushed two twin beds together for the four of us to sleep on, I guess at least we had a roof over our heads!

Day 2:
We met our catamaran around 9 at a dock near our hotel. A few more semester at sea kids showed up and 8 people from France joined us too! The adventure began with about a 3-hour cruise along the east side of Mauritius. We sang songs back and forth with the French and laid out on the trampolines on the front of the boat. The water was unbelievably clear and we could not have asked for better weather.  We stopped at a waterfall and then went snorkeling! As we snorkeled, the catamaran crew grilled out chicken and marlin for us. We got back on the boat and had a wonderful lunch with lots of local dishes and fresh pineapple! After lunch we sailed for another hour or so until we reached an island. It was a touristy island with a resort and restaurant and several little shops. If I ever have the chance to return to Mauritius, this is where I will come. I thought places like this only existed in movies and pictures! Tiki huts, luscious green mountains in the distance, turquoise water, island music, and sunshine, too good to be true! We wanted to stay a lot longer, but we had to be back to the original dock by 4 to ensure we would make it back to our ship in time and we were a long way out! A little side note- we have to be back on the ship in every port by 6p.m. If we are one minute late we get 3 hours of dock time in the next port. Which means we can’t get off the boat until 3 hours after they have cleared the ship. Our next port is Cape Town- where the family is coming to see me!!   So when we reboarded the catamaran it was already 230 and we started to feel the crunch. The crew was very accommodating and tried to make good time. As we got closer to the dock we all got dressed and were ready to go as soon as they let would let us off. They gave us the ok and we were gone! Luckily, we had arranged two vans to be waiting for us. My friends and I piled in one and we put the drunk people in the other, in hopes that if they got sick we wouldn’t have to stop for them. Well, our driver didn’t know where he was going so we had to follow the other van. Once we finally got on the road around 415, we were making good time and we thought we would make it back in time. But then we got stuck in traffic and our driver lost the other van. Then he decided he wasn’t really in a rush so he lit up a cigarette and started texting!! It was now just before 5. We knew we had to be getting close so we tried to be patient, until we saw us passing our ship! We got the driver to pull over at the port authority and we asked for directions on how to get back. They told us to turn around and go back one stoplight. So the driver pulled a u-turn and just as he was finishing a police officer comes up to the van and pulls him over.  It was now 5:15. However, as the officer was writing the ticket he started to count the number of people in the van. Well come to find out, we had just ridden across the island by an unlicensed driver! We grabbed the money we were going to pay him, hopped out of the van, and started to run. 11 Americans sprinting down the road in rush hour traffic trying to find a ship was a pretty funny sight! We saw a sign for a water taxi and had seen some pull up close to our ship the day before, so we went for it. All of us jumped on the little dinghy and were yelling for the driver to go, but he wouldn’t move until we paid him. So the whole wad of money intended for the van driver for the hour ride across the island went to this water taxi driver for a 5 min ride across the harbor. I don’t think the water taxi could have gone any slower and to make it worse, as the driver passed his other boating friends he would whistle and they would smile back recognizing the fact that he had totally ripped us all off! But at this point we didn’t care, we had to be inside that ship by 6 and it was 5:35. Of course the dock for the taxi would be on the complete opposite side of the ship. So we went all the way around our ship, jumped onto the dock, only to find a huge line to get into the ship. As we waited in line the van driver of the drunk bus, that actually made it to the ship, came up to us and demanded that we pay him because he said our other friends hadn’t paid. But we had no way of knowing for sure because the others had already made it on the ship. I didn’t believe him, but some of the others thought we should pay him. As they got their money out to pay, the wind blew and $10 blew into the ocean….just some icing on the cake!ha Once that ordeal was taken care of the line moved fairly fast and all of us made it through security and on the ship with 10 minutes to spare! You would have thought each of us had won the lottery as we walked through the gangway! However, I think I was most relieved knowing that I wasn’t going to have to explain to Tom and Kandee that although they had flown 21 hours to see me, I couldn’t get off the ship for 3 extra hours!  I really wish I could have videotaped that last hour and a half of events because now looking back, it was hilarious! I think I now know what it would feel like to be on the Amazing Race!