Two Days in Paradise - Maritim Resort

So one of the great guys with whom I consulted got us a very well priced stay at one of the 4 start resorts - Maritim in Belacava.  Above is a picture of the pool area, with the beautiful view somewhat marred by the gentleman sunbathing in the foreground. 

These are all inclusive resorts - so sailing, water skiing, glass bottom boat rides and a host of activities are all free.  I went horse back riding on the beach.  The French and german tourist that frequent such resortsd stay for two weeks at a time, happily lounging, drinking and getting terribly sunburnt.  Two days was great, and just long enough!

The infinity pool, with Will and Sam.

A view of Turtle Bay, on which was located the Maritim resort.

The spa at Maritim, one of the largest on the island.

Buildings In Reduit and Quatre Bornes

I had gotten sort of used to the old quirky buildings in Reduit (where the University of Mauritius is located) and Quatre Bornes (where we lived).  Brian had not.  So one day while I had to work he and the kids wandered around and took pictures, and these are some of the buildings that caught his eye.    Above is the Cash Office at the University.

The Post Office in Reduit where I often mailed packages.  Peple get their pension checks here on the first of the month, and I quickly learned to not go on that day!

Some of the original University buildings - they date from the last turn of the century.

One of the original train stations.  Mauritius stopped all rail travel in the 1950s, and they regret it now. 

Across from the Post Office - a small store frequented by the students.

Hmmmm.   An unfortunate attempt to get all the words in on this mosque in Rose Hill.  What is says is:  'Love for All, Hatred for None'.  Many of the mosques I saw featured such sayings on the buildings.

The mosque closest to our house in Quatre Borne.

An example of an old Mauritian style house.  This is owned by a weathy doctor, and currently used as their office.  Such houses are not longer built, as all buildings are now concrete due to cyclone protection.  These old wooden houses can be found tucked away all over the island, and they are graceful and elegant.

Back Home - Catching Up - The Seven Coloured Earths

Well, we made it back to Alabama!  Since my computer hard drive crashed the last week that we were in Mauritius I did not get to finish up this blog, so these last entires will feature all the stuff we did while Brian visited us in Mauritius.  It was a great experience for all - travel internationally every chance you can!

The seven coloured earths are located high in the hills of Mauritius, and are famous for being an area of exposed earth that is colored by iron and aluminium oxides.  It is a huge tourist attraction and most are probably pretty underwhelmed when the finally see the Earths, as they are very over-hyped on the island.  As a soil scientist I thought it was pretty neat.  Beautiful waterfall, too.

The water fall at the entrance to the Earths.

The seven coloured earths.

On the way to the seven coloured earths we went past one of the Hindi prayer parks.  It was a special day for some diety because all these people were walking barefoot, many carrying a leafy branch, to the prayer park. 

I tried to get a picture of all the activity at the prayer park as we drove past.

Saturday is Errand Day - an old post that never got posted

Today (Saturday) we took a bus to a newer bigger shopping center and went to the Jumbo store.  Think a big K-Mart with groceries and reggae (actually Mauritian sega music) playing really loud while you shop.  I wanted to buy the guys a DVD player.  I found one for 900 Ru (around 35.00 US).  OK - I just had to go and check.  Yep - it really was only 35.00 dollars!  Here are the boys walking back from the bust stop, toting our haul.  The three story apartment complex on their right was colored grey went we went to the market this morning - some people got really busy in a very non-tasteful way while we were gone.

I took these pictures while walking to the ShopRite to buy groceries.  Our neighborhood is in the Sodnac area of Quatre Bornes, and to put it in perspective it would sort of be the upscale area of the city.  People in Mauritius tend to live as very extended families, and so there is often construction to accomodate newly married sons or daughters, or grown children returning home from educations abroad.   The top construction picture shows a house under construction, while the bottom shows one in which people live, and they just keep slowing adding on to the top.  This goes on everywhere, and it goes a a very leisurely pace.  The house next to us has been in progress for two years, apparently.  Two doors down a brother is working on adding his floor to the family house, and he apparently sleeps on the pool table in the garage (it's really a car port - I can see the pool table) at night.  One would think he'd get a move on.

The boys really needed haircuts, and Mela (our landlords wife) had recommended a guy (Viya) on St. Jean road, a close walk.  So, after our market run this morning we walked down to Viyas shop.  It was a tiny little place down a corrider (past the Hindu deity store, where Sam bought his Ganesh).  Viya is a very popular guy, with all kind of people lined up for haircuts, and he gave Will and Sam GREAT haircuts!  The hilarious part is that he did them in full Maritian style, with holding gel added at the end to create spikes.  This is the look that all my students sport.  Sam was a little unsure but now he likes it.  Wills' would not stay in spikes for long, but I snapped this picture immediately after.  Cost for both cuts?  200 Ru ($7.00). 

This is our 'corner store'.  It is one block from our house, and is a typical small place that sells sodas, the paper, snacks and other sundries.  Will and Sam have decided that they can get their on their own to buy a Coke.

Various things we've drug Brian to...

Really cheap Christmas trees for sale in Port Louis.  They also double as toilet brushes.

Lichee salesman in Port Louis.

Brian wanted to see where the kids had gone to school so we drove to Moka and visited the grounds.

Eureka, which is a 'replica' Creole plantation estate built by an Englishman in around 1904 that is very close to Clavis school (the boys' school), so we did the tourism thing and visited.  This is a stop on the tourist schedule and when we arrived three busloads of tourists were just finishing their lunch on the veranda.  We took this picture using the self timer on the camera, on our hike down to see the waterfalls on the estate.  The hike is just treacherous enough that not many do it (and I had on flip flops - what fun) but it is absolutely beautiful.  In that classic Mauritius way you can swim there if you want, and there is not a lick of safety railings or warnings in sight.  What fun!

Clavis school.

On Thursday we (all the Fulbrighters, Melia and Neya) all went on another tourist thing - a sailing excursion to St. Gabriel island.  You go to Grand Baie (the very very touristy area in the North) get on a big sailing catamaran with 20 other people, sail to deserted St. Gabriel (deserted except for the 200 other tourists that are all doing the same thing that day), have a BBQ lunch and drinks on the beach, swim and snorkle, and then sail home.  Everyone got slightly seasick on the way out but we all recovered quickly, enjoyed the lovely island and cruised home in good shape.

On the boat outside St. Gabriel.

View of Grand Baie from the boat.

Yesterday we went to the races - the last of the season.  It was a very big weekend with jockeys coming in from all over the world and Princess Anne was there to give away a trophy for one of the races.  From L to R you have Karen, Will, Sam, Matt, Salini and Anna.

Off they go!

Princess Anne leaving the races.  She came in for a few days in Mauritius - visited some things, came to the races, and today she is opening some new cricket ground.  The President of Mauritius and the Prime Minister all go everywhere in BMWs  (black 7 series) but someone had the presence of mind to get a Jaguar for the Princess. 

Rose Hill and the Lighthouse

This past Wednesday we went to Rose Hill to go shopping at the local small jewlery stores.  Rather, Karen (another Fulbrighter) and I would go into the stores, and Brian and the boys would hover outside.  This is the local Hindi temple where we parked the car.

With the request to remove your shoes, you are free to wander around these manificant, colorful temples.  The number and varieties of the dieties is amazing, and many are left incense, fruit or other things by worshipers.  These were very carefully wrapped in the fabric you see here, with incense burning.  

Another diety at the temple.

Street seller scene in Rose Hill.

From Rose Hill we headed North until we hit the sea (which is pretty easy to do in Mauritius), turned left, and then headed south down the coast to the small town on Albion.  As we wandered we kept seeing signs for a lighthouse, so we followed it to a lighthouse (surprise).  The lighhouse keeper, a guy named Ash came out and pretty much phrased it like this:  'you can go to Port Louis and get the required pass (300 Rs for each person), OR you can give me 400 Rs for all of you and I'll give you the key to the lighthouse'.  Well, DUH.  Fifteen minutes later we had the key and had climbed to the top of the lighthouse.  This is still a working lighthouse (it was built in 1904) and it was great - the lamp, the steps up, the complete lack of any safety devices (as my 8 and 10 year old clambered out onto the open ledge).  What amazing views.   

The southern view from the top of the lighthouse.

Karen, Sam, Will and Brian at the top of the lighthouse.

The view to the north from the lighthouse.

More views.

St. John Catholic Church Cemetary

We pass the St. John catholic church every day, as it is on the main road that leads from Quatre Borne to Rose Hill. It is a beautful church, and that is unusual for Mauritius, as most of the churches are built from the grey, dark volcanic rock, and they end up looking very forbidding and gloomy. This church is bright burnt orange, and is highly visible in the afternoon light. The cemetary is directly behind the church, and to say that folks are packed in is an understatement. Well tended gravesites are freshly painted, with the names of the dead outlined in paint.

Looking from the rear of the cemetary towards the church itself.  The oval 'egg bank', which is under construction, is just visible to the right of the church.

Earliest graves date from the 1840s and people are still being buried here. 

The flower sellers sit outside the cemetary walls every day, and they sell flowers to those who visit the cemetary.  This cemetary is not a touristy thing at all, and thus is quite peaceful. 

 It is interesting that the longer I live here I realize that the things that, to me, are the most interesting are not developed at all as tourist attractions.  That would include stops such as this wonderful cemetary and the delightful crazy shopping culture of a town like Rose Hill.  The Mauritius tourism industry focuses on the resort destinations, and the idea that one rarely leaves the resort.  If one does, it is on an air conditioned bus that takes you directly to the location.  The Mauritan tourism industry has no suppport structure for backpackers or economy tourisim.  You never see herds of college students on their gap year travels, for example. 

Sugar Cane Mounds

These tall stacks are several hundred year old piles of rocks that have been dug from the sugar cane fields.  Will snapped these pictures as we drove to the airport to get Brian.  I thought that such piles were common, and that they were found all over the island, but that has changed in recent years.  The reason is that such piles of rock now have value, as the harvesting and grinding of coral (for lime and roadbed use) has been made illegal, and the rock piles now have value as sand.  Most piles are gone and these (I was told) are left by the airport as a sort of tourist attraction. 

DVD palace.  And you wonder why the majority of movie theatres in Mauritius are closed?

Happy Thanksgiving (and Lichees)

We had Thanksgiving dinner at my house on Thursday.  A variety of folks from the University of Mauritius came, along with all the Fulbrighters, and we had a great dinner of various American and Indian dishes. 

More Thanksgiving dinner pictures.  Christmas stuff is now out in full force in all the stores.  I do not see any house decorations.  It is just odd to even think about Christmas - seems so far away.

The red fruit hanging from the tree is Lichee fruit.  They start as a hard green husk which gradually turns red.  This picture is a week old, and most of the fruits are red now and they are for sale in the markets.  Trees are plentiful, and any fruit that hangs over into a 'public space' is pretty much cleaned off of lichees.  You peel off the red husk and eat the inside - it is a white jelly like material which looks like and tastes like the inside of a grape.  Lichees are widely grown and are processed into jelly, juice and flavourings for ice cream.

Our neighbors lichee tree.  They've tied up the branches to the left of the tree because they are so heavy and are hanging down into the front door.

Mauritius has so many religions that when these started to pop up a few weeks ago I thought 'now what holiday??'  On all of the island the trees where sprouting plastic flags like these.  Then it hit me - it is to keep the birds and fruit bats out of the lichees.  The commerical felds (we pass several as we drive places) have entire trees covered with mesh fabric.