Travel Blog: Land!!!!!!!

After almost eight days at sea, Mother Nature saluted our arrival in Port Louis with a very intense rain shower. The Captain had said the day prior the forecast called for rain, so this did not portend well for those people anxious to put feet on dry land, both passengers and crew!! While it was heavy, it was brief and shortly thereafter we had a double rainbow over us! The end of the brightest of the two was apparently on the Promenade Deck right below our stateroom, but look as we might, no pot of gold!! To ensure it would not rain for the rest of the day, we took our Crystal umbrella on tour with us, and it worked. Didn't see another drop all day!!

Chinese shrimp fishing boats rafted in the harbour

Mauritius is a fairly large island, 65 KM long and 45 KM wide, with a population of about 1.25 million people, concentrated mostly in four smaller towns and the capital of Port Louis. Our tour today was South Island Sights, a bus tour around, as the name would imply, the southern part of the island.

Our first stop was at a shop that specialized in making small model ships. Not sure why, but this has been a specialty of this island for many, many years. All of the work is done by hand by local artisans, and the detail work, especially in the models of the old sailing ships, was impressive. There was even a model of an old friend, the Asuka II, the once and former Crystal Harmony on which we did our first few Crystal cruises.

The island is volcanic in origin and our next stop was a hill overlooking the Central Plateau. This area holds the four major towns and is actually the floor of the caldera of a long extinct volcano. It is mostly surrounded by hills/peaks of various sizes, including the one we visited, that formed the rim of the volcano, with Port Louis on the far side of "the rim". All we know is that, from the size of the plateau, the last eruption of this volcano thousands of years ago must have been pretty spectacular!!

Mauritius has a diverse and varied population made up of Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and a host of others, as a result of its colonial past. The Hindu population is about 20% of the total and this weekend marked the start of one of their major festivals honouring the god Vishnu. The celebrations centred around the Grand Bassin, a small lake sacred to the Hindu population. What makes the lake "sacred" you ask? Water is somewhat central to the Hindu religion (we won't bore you with the details, but it involves Vishnu) and many years ago water was brought to this lake from the Ganges River in India and then poured in to the lake, thus rendering it "sacred". Now, the Ganges River is well known as a virtual cesspool, so we are not sure how that water rendered this lake sacred and that it apparently did will remain one of those religious mysteries best left alone!!

The local Hindu people, if they want to take part in the festival, make a pilgrimage on foot from all over the island. Various temple groups or communities may also construct what are literally floats honouring Vishnu that will be taken into the lake at the culmination of the festival on Monday. We passed many, many people on foot and many groups literally carrying these floats, and sometimes pushing them on carts, from miles around. Normally this part of the tour includes a walk around the area of the lake and visits to the various Hindu temples built around it, but this was not permitted other than a short visit to the foreshore of the lake where individuals were making their food offerings to Vishnu.

Continuing on into the highlands, the next stop on our island odyssey was the Black River Gorge, a significant valley in the central highlands. The river carved out the valley over time, but it is now mostly underground with only a small waterfall to mark its presence. The valley is impressive, but the local population of Capuchin Monkeys, who came out to see the tourists, begging the question who is looking at whom, is also pretty cute. We were warned by our local guide that they can be aggressive, but they were pretty well behaved and mostly kept to the railings of the gorge overlook. They were also not camera-shy. One of the larger ones walked the rail past Monica, climbed up onto the top of a pylon, then spun around to look back at her as if to say "I'm ready for my picture now!!"

Lunch was a very nice Creole buffet consisting of two types of curries, fish and chicken, with rice and stewed lentils at the Chamarel Restaurant. Perched on a cliffside, along with lunch, the restaurant offered some pretty impressive views over the ocean.

After lunch we proceeded to our final stops on the tour, the Chamarel Falls and the Seven Coloured Earths. As you can see from the pictures the falls were pretty impressive.

The Seven Coloured Earths is a natural geologic phenomenon left over from the volcanic past. According to the information posted at the site, the "dunes" are volcanic rock sediment impregnated with iron and aluminum. These two elements repel each other, but bond together, creating the different bands. According to our guide, local scientists have studied the sands trying to determine what gives them the colouration, but have not come up with an answer. Personally we think the source is Tempera Paint powder that gets refreshed periodically to draw in the tourists!!