Holiday in Mauritius

10^th - 25^th September 2010

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I had a good time in Mauritius, but the weather wasn't as good as I'd hoped. For about half of the time it was sunny, but a few days it was quite overcast. It also wasn't as warm as I'd hoped, but it was still nice enough to sit out in beach wear most days. The hotel was OK, the room fairly standard for these sort of places. The staff were extremely good but the food in the main restaurant became quite boring after a while. The steaks were to die for though.

I went on three trips. The first was round the south of the island and took in the extinct volcano of Troux aux Cerfs, with excellent views of a lot of the island. We also went to a model ship factory, apparently Mauritius is famous for it's model ships and a glass factory. I also went to a bird park, where they had a lot of giant tortoises and birds (obviously). After that, we went to Chameral to see the fountain and the seven coloured earths. They were fairly varied and it's because of the volcanic eruptions and their different densities, supposedly. Finally we went to Ganga Talao, the Sacred Lake, where we saw the worlds second largest statue of Shiva and the temple there.

My second trip was to Pamplemousses Gardens, which are the oldest in the Southern Hemisphere. There were some interesting trees and plants there, including a tree that was growing inside another, hollow tree. There was also a status of Pierre Poivre, a French botanist, who, they say, is the Peter in the Peter Piper tongue twister. After the Gardens, we went to a sugar museum which is in an old sugar mill. There are twelve different types of sugar, seemingly. They also made flavoured rums. We stopped off in Port Louis, the capital, then we came home. My third trip was a catamaran cruise, fairly standard stuff. I did take my parasail flight though, from a wooden raft in the sea. Really good fun. I also took a stroll into the local town of Mahébourg, to the weekly market. It was huge and they sold fruits and vegetables I'd never seen before.