Mauritius October 3 2012 Wednesday
Today was our first“free” day. We had a leisurely breakfast and visit. Then we gathered our gear, loaded into the van and headed out for a tour of the island. We were in the Flacq district. The beaches are beautiful. The seas are pretty calm with sandy beaches and lots of lava rocks. (I expected to see iguanas like in the Galapagos!!). We did find neat little pieces of seashells and corals (there are nice coral reefs off the island). But it is illegal to take shells and corals from the island, took some nice photos, though!
Many of the beaches have wooded areas, many pines. Different than those in the Pacific Northwest, and not nearly as dense. Can tell that the wind blows a lot, the trees are all leaning from the constant wind from the east!
Windsurfing is very popular here because of the almost constant wind. We did see a windsurfer and a sailboat out on the water this am.
We drove through some of the small towns, some stray dogs, though not as many as I would have expected. The towns are pretty crowded and busy. Quite a mix of nice buildings and broken down shacks. Overall, the roads are amazingly nice. There are lots of road crews out working every day. They drive on the left side here and the roads are very narrow and they drive fast. Drivers often stop in the road, or pull over very slightly, and the other drivers just tap their horns and go around… avoiding the oncoming traffic! It is a bit disconcerting! Mix into that: motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians (no sidewalks) and you have a nerve racking bit of travel!
We visited the sites for our next two clinic days. They are very nice. Sue was concerned that they would not be nice enough to work in. Wow, if she only knew the conditions we usually conduct the clinics in… these are like the Ritz!! Big and roomy buildings, electricity, running water (hot and cold!), and flush toilets!! What more can you ask for?
We spent the afternoon at the street market looking for special things to take home! We had lunch from a street vendor. It was the “roll up” sandwiches, the“tortilla” made from ground lentils (very tasty) filled with a stewed lentil, a finely shredded cabbage and a salsa type sauce. There was also the option of the chili sauce. Half of us declined… and I was one of them, thank goodness!! The same spoon is used to ladle each ingredient, so there was plenty of chili in my wrap, and it was HOT!! Whew, I don’t know if I would be able to get used to that!
Several of us bought nice traditional Indian (from India) outfits: the tunics with pants and scarf. I got one tunic then an entire outfit. The pants and scarf can be worn with either tunic. One tunic is very fancy (two layers with embroidery and sparkles on the top layer) and the other one is more plain. They are very pretty. The simple tunic was 350MRU (Mauritian Rupees) and the outfit was 1000MRU. (There are about 30MRU to one US dollar, so the tunic was about $11 or 12, and the outfit was under $35. Thought those were pretty good prices!)
We went back to the house for a rest and regroup, then went to dinner at The Beach House again. Moira joined us again AND picked up the tab AGAIN! She would not hear of us paying the bill. The folks here are so delighted and excited that our WV team came out to help with their animal needs, they cannot seem to thank us enough! They are really nice people.
Well, off to bed. Another clinic day tomorrow and we will have an early start! Goodnight!
Photos:
1. Karen and Blue at the beach
2. Stacy and Woofie sitting on the lava rocks
3. Shells and coral fosilized in the lava
4. Windsurfing and sailing are quite popular because of nearly constant winds
5. Mangrove trees, these are quite small compared to most that we saw
6 and 7. The street market
8. Eating street food
9. At The Beach House Restaurant. Karen and Karen ordered the kabobs!!
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