Seeing the work site and Mauritius Media

Mauritius   Monday, October 1, 2012 

Woke up to gazillions of birdies greeting the new day!  There are Minah birds, cardinals, English sparrows, masked weavers and many, many others!  They are a noisy bunch, but very beautiful to watch.

Studied my lines for a while (yes, Linda, I really am!!) as I sat out on the patio outside our room.  Had a great night of sleep.  No WiFi here at the house, but I am trying to get these blogs written and pictures downloaded so I can put the blog together once I get to internet access.  Dang, just got stung by a wasp/hornet!  That hurt!  The darn thing just paid the ultimate price… hope there are no buddies following along.  Hmmm don’t have any ointment… better go get some ice on it.

Sue arrived a bit after 8am, Wendy, the maid/cook, prepared a yummy breakfast of eggs and tomatoes and toast.  We also had a wonderful fruit salad with local grown fruit.  The bananas and pineapples are very small, but oh so sweet!  Wendy added chopped apple and oranges, superb!

 

We all piled into two vehicles and set off for the Mauritius PAWS facility to take a tour and meet the veterinary team. They have a nice facility, especially for a third world country! There are two vets working there on international contract: Jay, from India, and **** from Ireland. They have wonderful veterinary assistants, nice enclosures, and lots of very cute dogs and cats. The dogs all look similar and are called Mauritius Rockets (well, that is as close as I can get to the French word that they use for mongrel). They are all very cute and friendly. The facility has a large reception area, treatment and prep area, and a small surgical suite. There is no gas anesthesia, all of the animals are anesthetized with injectable anesthetics, similar to the World Vets protocol.

The veterinary team does many sterilizations and veterinary care for animals all over the island. They even have a nice mobile surgical clinic!

After the team introductions and meeting, the WV veterinarians were taken to the Ministry of Agriculture to get our paperwork finished for our temporary permits to do sterilization in this country. We met with three different officials, but got it all done! We will have the letter tomorrow.

 

Back to the house for a very quick clean up and off to a book signing reception! One of the PAWS supporters wrote a wonderful little children’s book about what happens to stray dogs. It is beautifully illustrated. There were lots of people there in support of PAWS and the work they do. Several speeches, including Karen, our WV trip leader. There was plenty of wine and hors doeuvres. Afterwards we went out to a local restaurant for dinner that was paid for by one of the couples! We had a very nice visit with them.

Tomorrow we have our first day of clinics! We are aiming for 100 sterilizations per day… I am sure we can do it if that many animals are brought in!

Time for another good night of sleep!

Captions for photos above:

1.  Masked weaver, one of the glorious birds that greets each new day!

2.  Blue getting a major puppy fix!

3.  Our World Vets team (except me, I am behind the camera) at the book alunching reception.

4.  Part of the front of the PAWS building.  The artist that painted it also illustrated the book.

5.  Stacy and Steve with the banners in front of the PAWS mobile clinic.

6.  Stacy and Stella, the author of the little book.

 

View from our patio.

Sunday, September 30, 2012 Mauritius

After a 6 ½ hour flight we arrived in Mauritius at 9:30 am.  Took a while to get through customs and passport control.  But no problems there.  We expected to meet Judy Taylor there, but did not find her.  Our driver, Ali, met us and told us Judy’s arrival was delayed until the 12:30 so she was going to take a later shuttle.  So off we went for a 50 minute drive to our accommodations.  It was a nice drive, some clouds in the sky, low 70’s, nice breeze.  Got to ride with the windows down, have to love that fresh air!

Arrived at Kuxville (pronounced “Cooksville”) and we are all staying together in a nice house.  It has 3 bedrooms, each with two twin beds.  The two upstairs rooms open onto a large balcony with a view of the water and we share a full bathroom. There is another bedroom/bat downstairs that Judy and Lisa are using.  Judy does not need to do stairs!

Sue, our liaison from Mauritius PAWS, met us at the house.  We quickly dumped our gear in our room, changed into swimsuits and headed to the beach!  The ocean is right in front of our house, but there is no “beach” so we walked along the water and bulkhead edge and went off to a nice little beach and got had a very refreshing swim.  It felt wonderful!  Sat out in the sun for a while.  Some of Sue’s relatives were there and we had little visit.  Headed back to the house to clean up, have to be very careful about being out in the sun too much, we can easily burn to a crisp!

The rest of the team arrived, got them settled and met Moira, another PAWS volunteer and she took us out to dinner at her husband’s restaurant, The Beach House.  We had a great time visiting.  The restaurant opens out onto the water, drinks were good, the food was great!  Excellent steak, about as good as the steak we had in Ecuador!

Finally went back to our house for a much needed night of sleep.

Until next time!!

 

 

 

Mauritius, September 29, 2012 Dubai

We arrived in Dubai almost an hour early! By the time we figured out how to use the public phone, called Patti, made it through passport security… it was a bit later. We met Patti and grabbed a cab and off we went to the Dubai Mall. It was dark by the time we started out, so we got to see all the buildings lit up.

The mall is HUGE and very modern and clean and a true mixing pot of nationalities of people. Our first stop was the dancing fountains. Beautiful fountains dancing to music. I was surprised that there were not colored lights on the water. The surrounding buildings are pretty. But every chain (food, chocolate, clothing, jewelry…) from anywhere in the world can be found in Dubai.

We ate some wonderful ice cream, saw the massive indoor aquarium and the indoor ice skating rink. Never have to leave the building!!

 

 

 

 

We said goodbye to Patti, then we headed off for our elevator ride to the top of the world’s tallest building: Burj Khalifa. Takes less than a minute to go up 124 floors!!! And it is as smooth as silk. The views from the top are amazing. They have telescopes at the top with large viewing screens and you can view “real time”, day, night or historic. It was neat to see the day time and historic since we are only here at night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patti was extra special to us.  She covered the cost of the cabs and treated us to the ice cream.  Hope she comes back to the US for a visit so we can reciprocate soon!

About midnight, Blue and I headed back to the airport.  Glad we left pretty “early”, it took a while to get back through security and find our gate.  Had a nice sandwich for dinner then waited for our next, shorter, flight.

Fun way to spend a long layover!

Until tomorrow!

OK, internet is extremely hard to get on... and then incredibly slow.  So, only a few pictures will be in the blogs until I find a better connection!!



At Seatac Airport

Well, here we are!  Got the dogs walked this am, last minute details taken care of and left for Seatac... almost on time!  We will board the plane in about an hour, then it is 14 1/2 hours to Dubai... yikes!  Got some sleeping pills (Thanks Dr T!!) and hopefully the time will pass quickly.  Patti is meeting us in Dubai, taking us on a little tour of the city, we have tickets to ride the elevator in the world's tallest building at 10pm Saturday.  (123 stories!!)  We will leave Dubai at 3am for a 6 1/2 hour flight to Mauritius.

As you can see, Woofie could not travel without all his "clothes" from all the countries he has visited!  I told him it would be hot where we are going, but he still wanted to wear his "chullo" (Peruvian knitted hat) and carry his Guatemalan satchel.  (His collars are from Ecuador, the Galapagos and Romania)

Blue is posing as a secret service agent, protecting Woofie.  I am just along for the ride!

Hope to post again soon!
Stacy, Blue and Woofie

The IPad is smarter than me...

I may have to admit defeat... and leave the IPad at home.  I can do the blog easily on the laptop, but I am only getting frustrated on the IPad!  DANG!
OK, I am supposed to be packing and getting other errands done...  Anybody out there done a blog from an IPad?  Let me know!!

Gotta get back to work...

Tues, Sept 25, 2012

Well, we actually go past Africa on our way to Mauritius, off the southeast coast of Africa, in the Indian Ocean!

From the World Vets website:
World Vets has been approached by PAWS Mauritius to help them promote and provide a humane solution for population control on the island of Mauritius. As such World Vets will send a small a team to carry out a pilot project that will provide free spay/neuter services for the islands animals. This project has also been strategically scheduled to be carried out during International Animal

Week. This is to help raise awareness about animal welfare on the island as well as on the international stage. The World Vets team will also take part in other events that have been planned for the week.

Blue and I will be leaving for the tiny island of Mauritius with World Vets on Fri, Sept 28. (OMG, that is only three days away!!) The first leg of our flight is about 14 hours: direct to Dubai! We are hoping to meet an American lady that lives there and get a little tour of the area. We see lots of info and photos on Dubai on the internet... but seeing it in person will be really neat.


Below is a map of the area.  Mauritius is a tiny island out in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar off the southeast coast of Africa.  We are staying in Cap Malheuereux on the northern tip of the island.



Anyway, we are certainly on the short countdown.  Mainly this entry is to practice posting blogs.  If there is good internet access (supposed to be) and my IPad works (supposed to) and I can figure out how to use the IPad (that is the big unknown) I am planning to post daily.

Until travel time...
Stacy and Blue