Mauritius and some rambling commentary
Hey people. So, back on the boat from three days in Mauritius. That’s right, Mauritius. Right about now, you are saying to yourself “Where the fuck is Mauritius?!” I thought the same thing. As I think I wrote before, our trip to Kenya was cancelled because of too much terrorist activity in the country and the surrounding waters. So, while we were in South Africa, we got an announcement that we were going to Mauritius. It is a tiny island off of the east coast of Madagascar. It used to be a British colony, but now is best know as a beach island fueled by European tourism. First, let me tell you all what I did there, and then, because this was a short port stay, I want to make some general comments about the voyage thus far.
On the first day in Mauritius, I woke up at 7:30 to get some breakfast and observe the harbor before I went off on my SAS trip for the day. I was a bit surprised by the harbor; I had heard that Mauritius was a big tourist island with lots of beach resorts, but Port Louise was much more industrial than touristy. There were really no beaches in sight of the ship; I learned later that the resort areas were 15-30 minutes away by cab. Anyway, I got off the boat around 9 AM for a city orientation and a visit to the SOS Children’s Village, a village for orphaned and abandoned children.
The city orientation was pretty weak at best. The itinerary said that we would visit temples, churches, and mosques during our tour of the city; what it should have said was that we would drive past temples, churches, and mosques as we did relatively little in the city. We stopped at the site of an old citadel used during the time of British colonialism; that did give us a pretty cool view of Port Louis and the mountains in the background. After that, we stopped in the middle of the city for about 15 minutes. There was not a ton to do there, we just hung out in a park and visited a small local market. Then we drove back to the mall area near the ship, where we were given an hour of shopping time before lunch. What a waste; this mall was literally right next to the ship and we could have easily gotten there on our own. Lunch was at an American style steakhouse, where we were all given some chicken that was very dry and tasted strangely like fish. The “city orientation” was pretty disappointing overall; aside from the drive up to the citadel, there was nothing that we couldn’t have done ourselves by simply walking off of the ship.
The afternoon at the children’s village was a bit better. It was kind of hard to communicate with the children, as they spoke Creole, the native language that is a lot like French. I don’t speak a word of French, let alone Creole, so I smiled a lot, used hand gestures, and tried to do other stuff rather than just talking to the kids. SAS had provided paper and pens and crayons, so that was fun for a while. Then we played some soccer and I let them play with my digital camera, which they all loved. Everyone wanted to take pictures and have their picture taken and see themselves on the little screen. After about 2 hours there, we headed back to the ship. A quick shower, and I headed out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with some of the people I met on this trip. The food was really good, and we just spent the night hanging out at a few different bars right at the waterfront area.
I didn’t really have any concrete plans for the second day in Mauritius; I had wanted to set up scuba diving, but couldn’t since everything was closed on Sunday, and this was Monday. Friends of mine had tried to call a bunch of dive shops the day prior, but had no luck. So whatever, I planned just to go chill on a beach and relax. That morning, I met up with a friend of mine, Lizzie, and we just decided to get a recommendation for a beach from the travel agent on the boat and go. We ended up at a beach called Trou aux Biches, and decided to go parasailing. SUCH a good call. I had never been parasailing before, and this boat said that they could send us up 150 meters. Lizzie and I did a tandem parasail, so we were in the air together. It was such a rush; I was vaguely reminded of skydiving. I was definitely pretty scared; looking down at the ocean, I realized it was a looooong way down, and we were only clipped in by two small carabineers. No locks, no safety clips, nothing. That definitely added to the adrenaline rush. The view was amazing; we could literally see from one end of the island to the other. After we came down, we were so pumped up, and the boat dropped us off at a nearby resort. We chilled out there, had a cocktail, and soaked up the beach, still on such a rush from the parasailing. This resort was absolutely amazing; I definitely want to go back one day and waterski and sail and lie on the beautiful one sand beaches.
After a bit, we took a cab up to the north of the island, to an area called Grand Bay. Grand Bay was a pretty big tourist area, so we did a little shopping before dinner. We ate dinner at this little local restaurant, and had a view of pretty much the most amazing sunset I have ever seen, the sun just sinking into the water and the silhouettes of sailboats and fishing boats slowly fading into shadow. ARG. I need to put up PICTURES; damn this slow internet! Anyway, after dinner we cabbed it back to the boat, changed, and visited some friends who were staying at a resort in a part of the island called Flic en Flac. This was also an amazing resort; it was modeled after a colonial-style sugar plantation. I knew I was going scuba diving the next day, so I made it a kind of early night, and headed back to the ship around 12:30.
The last day in Mauritius, I met up with a group of kids at 8 AM and we drove off to a dive shop for a morning of scuba diving. I was so excited; scuba was the one thing that I wanted to do more than anything else in Mauritius. I was not disappointed. We did two dives that morning. The first one was a wreck dive on a sunken Japanese trade ship called the Stella Maru. The ship itself was very cool; it was probably about 80 feet long and was slowly being taken over by coral and animal life. There were tons of cool fish and coralon and around the ship. Things that we saw that stand out in my mind were trumpet fish, a moray eel in its hole chomping away, another black and white spotted eel, big schools of zebra fish, lots of brilliantly colored little tropical fish, and all kinds of cool coral. It was also just so cool to be scuba diving again; I love the experience of being underwater and looking up at the surface and seeing the sun above through the waves and just thinking “I am underwater and I can breathe.” Too awesome. We went up, took a break, and did our second dive on a part of the reef called The Aquarium. There were even more fish here than the first time. The divemaster brought down some bread in a plastic bag, and he gave it to us, and all of a sudden we were absolutely surrounded by fish, who would come up to you and peck at your hand and eat the bread. I had an entire school of zebra fish swarming me and eating out of my hand; it was so cool! We saw lots more of the same fish as on the wreck, but this time we also saw a lionfish, and a really skinny fish I think was a needlefish, and also the tiniest moray eel you have ever seen poking out of the sand. Scuba diving in the Indian Ocean. Check.After the diving, we had lunch at a little Italian café nearby, killed some time on the beach, and headed back to the ship. I spent a few more hours wandering around the waterfront area, and then headed back to begin our sail to India. All in all, a great three days in paradise before our Asian leg of the journey begins.
Seeing as we are at about the halfway point of the trip, I think this is a good time to offer some reflections on the journey thus far. Life aboard the ship is definitely not perfect. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I am sadly disappointed with the academic program. To put it bluntly, I think that some of my professors are worthless hacks, and consequently I put in little to no effort in their classes. I guess I just had pretty high expectations that I was going to actually learn something profound and interesting in these classes. With the exception of Global Studies (maybe), that is definitely not the case, and I have now made peace with that fact, so I pretty much tune out during class and really only go because they take attendance. Another sore point is the food; this food makes Stern Dining look like gourmet, if you can believe that. And my last complaint is that there is a certain group of people on the boat with a particular mindset that just really bugs me; someone accurately called it the “frat party at sea.” Instead of really taking advantage of this incredible sail around the world, these people get off the boat, and look for the nearest bar. Apparently, the more you drink, or the more you tell people about how wasted you were, the cooler you are. Don’t get me wrong, I like to party as much as the next college student, probably a bit more. But FUCK, being around certain SASers in port really makes me embarrassed to be an American. And some people have this superiority complex; they think they are somehow better or more important than the local people, and I have seen some behavior SO rude, it almost made me sick. These people should have stayed the fuck home.
Enough bitching. The three negative points I brought up are really only minor blemishes on an otherwise incredible experience. Every port I have been in has been awesome in its own unique way. The natural landscapes I have witnessed, the people I have met, the culture I have experienced have made this journey incredibly rich, colorful, and enlightening. I really believe that seeing all these different countries, even for just short periods of time, is teaching me more about our planet and humanity as a whole.
Lessons I have learned:
1. Talk to people. Cab drivers, bartenders, tour guides, dive instructors. Everyone has a story, and everyone wants to hear your story! Most people are friendly and interesting, and don’t want to rob you. Ask deeper questions; people don’t think you are rude if you are genuinely interested.
2. Eat weird food. It’s usually good, and how many people can say that they have eaten alligator kebabs or ostrich steak?
3. Poop.
4 Everyone, everything, everywhere is connected. I have read and learned about globalization before, but seriously, I am blown away by how small the world is getting. A simple internet café connections you to anyone, anywhere, anytime. There is KFC and McDonalds in MAURITIUS, a country I bet you didn’t even know existed before I told you about it. Cell phones are universal. In a township in South Africa, they were playing 50 Cent. The global village is not becoming a reality, is already IS reality.
5. Pictures are awesome. It really hurts me that I can’t upload pictures to this blog. I am gonna have to go through the thousands of pictures I have and make a Best Of slideshow. The digital camera is pretty much the best invention ever.
More to come later…
And, in terms of the shipboard community, there are a lot of people on the ship that are very cool and intelligent and with whom I can have great conversations. On the ship, I find myself out of my comfort zone a LOT. There are more hardcore religious people on the boat than I think I have ever seen in my whole life. Same with conservatives. And it is really good! I hear points of view and opinions that you would NEVER hear at Stanford, being argued clearly and consistently. There are a fair amount of liberals here too, but it never turns into a shouting match; people are open-minded and not judgmental. And all of this conversation happens on the backdrop of an incredibly complex global setting. Venezuela where some believe Hugo Chavez is a liberator and some think he is the next Fidel Castro, and where gas is 12 cents a gallon. South Africa where apartheid ended just ten years ago and AIDS is ravishing the continent. And I don’t even know about India and Myanmar and Vietnam yet. Most people are friendly and not cliquish; in each port, I have traveled around with a different group (or groups), and they have all been really cool.
Oh yeah, and being out on the ocean, hundreds of miles away from the nearest shoreline is fricken cool. I have seen more amazing sunsets out here than in my entire life. Nature wins.
So, India, Myanmar, Vietnam, China, Japan, here I come. I am SO excited for Asia, I think being in these countries is just going to blow my mind. It will be unlike anything I have experienced before, I am sure.
OK people, love and miss you all, hope you are rocking the senior (or junior) year, and I’ll see you soon.
On the first day in Mauritius, I woke up at 7:30 to get some breakfast and observe the harbor before I went off on my SAS trip for the day. I was a bit surprised by the harbor; I had heard that Mauritius was a big tourist island with lots of beach resorts, but Port Louise was much more industrial than touristy. There were really no beaches in sight of the ship; I learned later that the resort areas were 15-30 minutes away by cab. Anyway, I got off the boat around 9 AM for a city orientation and a visit to the SOS Children’s Village, a village for orphaned and abandoned children.
The city orientation was pretty weak at best. The itinerary said that we would visit temples, churches, and mosques during our tour of the city; what it should have said was that we would drive past temples, churches, and mosques as we did relatively little in the city. We stopped at the site of an old citadel used during the time of British colonialism; that did give us a pretty cool view of Port Louis and the mountains in the background. After that, we stopped in the middle of the city for about 15 minutes. There was not a ton to do there, we just hung out in a park and visited a small local market. Then we drove back to the mall area near the ship, where we were given an hour of shopping time before lunch. What a waste; this mall was literally right next to the ship and we could have easily gotten there on our own. Lunch was at an American style steakhouse, where we were all given some chicken that was very dry and tasted strangely like fish. The “city orientation” was pretty disappointing overall; aside from the drive up to the citadel, there was nothing that we couldn’t have done ourselves by simply walking off of the ship.
The afternoon at the children’s village was a bit better. It was kind of hard to communicate with the children, as they spoke Creole, the native language that is a lot like French. I don’t speak a word of French, let alone Creole, so I smiled a lot, used hand gestures, and tried to do other stuff rather than just talking to the kids. SAS had provided paper and pens and crayons, so that was fun for a while. Then we played some soccer and I let them play with my digital camera, which they all loved. Everyone wanted to take pictures and have their picture taken and see themselves on the little screen. After about 2 hours there, we headed back to the ship. A quick shower, and I headed out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with some of the people I met on this trip. The food was really good, and we just spent the night hanging out at a few different bars right at the waterfront area.
I didn’t really have any concrete plans for the second day in Mauritius; I had wanted to set up scuba diving, but couldn’t since everything was closed on Sunday, and this was Monday. Friends of mine had tried to call a bunch of dive shops the day prior, but had no luck. So whatever, I planned just to go chill on a beach and relax. That morning, I met up with a friend of mine, Lizzie, and we just decided to get a recommendation for a beach from the travel agent on the boat and go. We ended up at a beach called Trou aux Biches, and decided to go parasailing. SUCH a good call. I had never been parasailing before, and this boat said that they could send us up 150 meters. Lizzie and I did a tandem parasail, so we were in the air together. It was such a rush; I was vaguely reminded of skydiving. I was definitely pretty scared; looking down at the ocean, I realized it was a looooong way down, and we were only clipped in by two small carabineers. No locks, no safety clips, nothing. That definitely added to the adrenaline rush. The view was amazing; we could literally see from one end of the island to the other. After we came down, we were so pumped up, and the boat dropped us off at a nearby resort. We chilled out there, had a cocktail, and soaked up the beach, still on such a rush from the parasailing. This resort was absolutely amazing; I definitely want to go back one day and waterski and sail and lie on the beautiful one sand beaches.
After a bit, we took a cab up to the north of the island, to an area called Grand Bay. Grand Bay was a pretty big tourist area, so we did a little shopping before dinner. We ate dinner at this little local restaurant, and had a view of pretty much the most amazing sunset I have ever seen, the sun just sinking into the water and the silhouettes of sailboats and fishing boats slowly fading into shadow. ARG. I need to put up PICTURES; damn this slow internet! Anyway, after dinner we cabbed it back to the boat, changed, and visited some friends who were staying at a resort in a part of the island called Flic en Flac. This was also an amazing resort; it was modeled after a colonial-style sugar plantation. I knew I was going scuba diving the next day, so I made it a kind of early night, and headed back to the ship around 12:30.
The last day in Mauritius, I met up with a group of kids at 8 AM and we drove off to a dive shop for a morning of scuba diving. I was so excited; scuba was the one thing that I wanted to do more than anything else in Mauritius. I was not disappointed. We did two dives that morning. The first one was a wreck dive on a sunken Japanese trade ship called the Stella Maru. The ship itself was very cool; it was probably about 80 feet long and was slowly being taken over by coral and animal life. There were tons of cool fish and coralon and around the ship. Things that we saw that stand out in my mind were trumpet fish, a moray eel in its hole chomping away, another black and white spotted eel, big schools of zebra fish, lots of brilliantly colored little tropical fish, and all kinds of cool coral. It was also just so cool to be scuba diving again; I love the experience of being underwater and looking up at the surface and seeing the sun above through the waves and just thinking “I am underwater and I can breathe.” Too awesome. We went up, took a break, and did our second dive on a part of the reef called The Aquarium. There were even more fish here than the first time. The divemaster brought down some bread in a plastic bag, and he gave it to us, and all of a sudden we were absolutely surrounded by fish, who would come up to you and peck at your hand and eat the bread. I had an entire school of zebra fish swarming me and eating out of my hand; it was so cool! We saw lots more of the same fish as on the wreck, but this time we also saw a lionfish, and a really skinny fish I think was a needlefish, and also the tiniest moray eel you have ever seen poking out of the sand. Scuba diving in the Indian Ocean. Check.After the diving, we had lunch at a little Italian café nearby, killed some time on the beach, and headed back to the ship. I spent a few more hours wandering around the waterfront area, and then headed back to begin our sail to India. All in all, a great three days in paradise before our Asian leg of the journey begins.
Seeing as we are at about the halfway point of the trip, I think this is a good time to offer some reflections on the journey thus far. Life aboard the ship is definitely not perfect. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I am sadly disappointed with the academic program. To put it bluntly, I think that some of my professors are worthless hacks, and consequently I put in little to no effort in their classes. I guess I just had pretty high expectations that I was going to actually learn something profound and interesting in these classes. With the exception of Global Studies (maybe), that is definitely not the case, and I have now made peace with that fact, so I pretty much tune out during class and really only go because they take attendance. Another sore point is the food; this food makes Stern Dining look like gourmet, if you can believe that. And my last complaint is that there is a certain group of people on the boat with a particular mindset that just really bugs me; someone accurately called it the “frat party at sea.” Instead of really taking advantage of this incredible sail around the world, these people get off the boat, and look for the nearest bar. Apparently, the more you drink, or the more you tell people about how wasted you were, the cooler you are. Don’t get me wrong, I like to party as much as the next college student, probably a bit more. But FUCK, being around certain SASers in port really makes me embarrassed to be an American. And some people have this superiority complex; they think they are somehow better or more important than the local people, and I have seen some behavior SO rude, it almost made me sick. These people should have stayed the fuck home.
Enough bitching. The three negative points I brought up are really only minor blemishes on an otherwise incredible experience. Every port I have been in has been awesome in its own unique way. The natural landscapes I have witnessed, the people I have met, the culture I have experienced have made this journey incredibly rich, colorful, and enlightening. I really believe that seeing all these different countries, even for just short periods of time, is teaching me more about our planet and humanity as a whole.
Lessons I have learned:
1. Talk to people. Cab drivers, bartenders, tour guides, dive instructors. Everyone has a story, and everyone wants to hear your story! Most people are friendly and interesting, and don’t want to rob you. Ask deeper questions; people don’t think you are rude if you are genuinely interested.
2. Eat weird food. It’s usually good, and how many people can say that they have eaten alligator kebabs or ostrich steak?
3. Poop.
4 Everyone, everything, everywhere is connected. I have read and learned about globalization before, but seriously, I am blown away by how small the world is getting. A simple internet café connections you to anyone, anywhere, anytime. There is KFC and McDonalds in MAURITIUS, a country I bet you didn’t even know existed before I told you about it. Cell phones are universal. In a township in South Africa, they were playing 50 Cent. The global village is not becoming a reality, is already IS reality.
5. Pictures are awesome. It really hurts me that I can’t upload pictures to this blog. I am gonna have to go through the thousands of pictures I have and make a Best Of slideshow. The digital camera is pretty much the best invention ever.
More to come later…
And, in terms of the shipboard community, there are a lot of people on the ship that are very cool and intelligent and with whom I can have great conversations. On the ship, I find myself out of my comfort zone a LOT. There are more hardcore religious people on the boat than I think I have ever seen in my whole life. Same with conservatives. And it is really good! I hear points of view and opinions that you would NEVER hear at Stanford, being argued clearly and consistently. There are a fair amount of liberals here too, but it never turns into a shouting match; people are open-minded and not judgmental. And all of this conversation happens on the backdrop of an incredibly complex global setting. Venezuela where some believe Hugo Chavez is a liberator and some think he is the next Fidel Castro, and where gas is 12 cents a gallon. South Africa where apartheid ended just ten years ago and AIDS is ravishing the continent. And I don’t even know about India and Myanmar and Vietnam yet. Most people are friendly and not cliquish; in each port, I have traveled around with a different group (or groups), and they have all been really cool.
Oh yeah, and being out on the ocean, hundreds of miles away from the nearest shoreline is fricken cool. I have seen more amazing sunsets out here than in my entire life. Nature wins.
So, India, Myanmar, Vietnam, China, Japan, here I come. I am SO excited for Asia, I think being in these countries is just going to blow my mind. It will be unlike anything I have experienced before, I am sure.
OK people, love and miss you all, hope you are rocking the senior (or junior) year, and I’ll see you soon.
posted by ehindman at 1:22 PM
6 Comments:
EVAN! this is maggie. your blog is fucking hilarious. colleen said it was brilliant, but i'm coming to realize you are kind of a genius. congratulations.
anyway, i'm sorry that classes suck and that some of the kids are douches- i'm sure they'll calm down and perhaps even be changed by these experiences. as for classes...maybe bring a good book to read? good luck, in any case. alright, keep on rocking it, international sailor style!
maggie
Words of wisdom from your older cousin who has been through college:
The geeks will inherit the earth.
All the kids that I knew in college who vomited thier few years of (academically) mind expanding experiences with last nights beers, who only cared about popularity, social status, and getting laid, are still doing the same thing today but now they have children, some kind of embarrassing social disease, or are brain dead.
The kids that took thier time in college, looked around, extracted all they could from thier experience, studied hard, (i.e. were totally geeky) are sucessful in almost every way.
I am trying to catch up to the geeks . Keep this in mind when you run in to the assholes.
according to babelfish translator, "Trou aux Biches" means "Hole with the Hinds".
riiight.
according to the dictionary, a 'hind' is a a type of female deer, a kind of fish, a household/ domestic servant, a kind of horse, a bailiff/ steward, a boor, a lad/ 'stripling', or the backside, or 'hind quarters', of just about anything.
so that's an interesting name for a beach...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
i had to laugh at this post, the things about the frat at sea and talking to cabbies, etc. i couldn't agree more, glad to hear that your on the side of the good guys.
what's so hard about putting pictures up? i know its slow, but its doable if you have a couple windows up at once and copy over your text in one and do the picture in the other.
you're probably leaving india soon. hope it rocked your world. hard not to.
glad i remembered to check this blog.
Evan!
I just got caught up on your blog from Brazil to Mauriartis. My reactions while reading were something like this: Amazon! Tarantula! Alligator! Pirahna! Africa!!! It sounds like you are having an incredible time (despite the crap classes-- you should just plan more blog posts during them-- and the crap frat shits at sea). I can't wait to see your pics eventually, and I look forward to reading about more adventures.
--Mimi
Post a Comment
<< Home