Mauritius ? Our Mini Paradise Spring Break

         Our plans for Mauritius were slightly different than what actually happened, but it ended up being an even better time than we had planned! When we pulled into port the first morning, it was raining, but it didn’t matter because the port was beautiful. It was even better than I had imagined, just like what I imagine a Caribbean island to look like.
        When the ship was given the all clear, 14 of us piled off the ship, rented a van and headed to the absolute other side of the island from Port Louis, Blue Bay. When we arrived at our hostel that Thomas’ mom found for us, we were pleasantly surprised. This was not the type of hostel that we were imagining. This hostel was part of a host’s home. It had four floors. We never saw the first or last floor, but the second and third floor were wonderful. The second floor had two hang out rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a few bedrooms. Our rooms were on the third floor, which was just a floor of rooms, each spotless with air conditioning, bunk beds, and a bathroom. It was perfect for us! We headed immediately to the beach, which was a ten-minute bus ride away. Once at the beach, we had a delicious lunch at a beachside restaurant. I had been craving pizza for a ridiculous amount of time (pathetic right?) so this was perfect for me; I was so excited!! A few of us had also really wanted pina coladas, which they had as well. The pizza was delicious, yet the pina coladas are nothing like the sugary drinks we have back home, they are made of fresh fruit and are definitely not as good.
        After lunch we headed to the beach to snorkel. We rented a glass bottom boat, haggled down the price, and set off into the water. I was so excited; I’d never been snorkeling before! It was fantastic!! We went to two different spots and saw so many different fish! At one point I was snorkeling near the boat when all of a sudden fish swarmed me. It was a little nerve-racking at first, but then I calmed down and it was so cool! I had no idea why that happened until I came up from underwater and the boat driver asked if I wanted him to throw more bread in the water. He did it again and again and the fish were literally swimming right into my mask. After two hours we headed back to the beach and walked around a bit. We found a field where soccer practice was going on so we headed over there and watched that until it ended. I have never seen men that age in such good shape in my whole life. I didn’t even think it was possible for people to have abs like that, it was nuts! After it ended we headed back to the hostel to wash up before finding a place for dinner.
        Our taxi driver had recommended us a restaurant that we didn’t think was too far so we decided to walk over there. When we had been walking awhile, we stopped to ask a nice restaurant for directions and ended up completely lucking out. They were connected with that restaurant and had called a shuttle to pick us up and bring us there. It was incredible because it was a free service AND the restaurant was WAY further than we had thought – oops! The restaurant ended up being really good, they had great bread and even gave us a round of shots of this incredibly smooth rum. Right as we were finishing up eating, the Dutch people we had met at our hostel showed up to hang out with us. We had originally planned to go to the bar upstairs and hang out there, but it was a Tuesday and apparently the bar was only open on Wednesday. We had no idea what to do now and the restaurant told us nothing would be open on a Tuesday at this hour so we headed back to the hostel.
        When we got there, the Dutch people seemed determined to find alcohol so they talked to some locals on the street and before we knew it we were right around the corner from our hostel buying beer from a man right out of his home. I’m going to be honest, it was pretty comical. We were bargaining back and forth with this man to get a good deal and ended up filling a large box with way to many beers and walking it down to the beach that was right there. There was this cute little pier that had a gazebo at the end that we hung out on and talked with our new Dutch friends for the rest of the night. As it turns out, they too were on a ship going around the world. Theirs however was for a Dutch TV show and they were crewmembers of the ship.
        The next morning I got up ridiculously early and caught the end of the sunrise and then went downstairs to use our host’s computer to Skype. I had came online to try to Skype my dad because I had missed him the night before but he wasn’t on so instead I got to Skype Laura for over an hour!! It was awesome and made my month!! I think that is the longest I have ever gone without getting to hear her voice or see her face. I was definitely having some withdrawals from her so that was an incredible way to start my day! After the computer died and I came out to find the cord, I found there was line of people waiting to Skype so I couldn’t keep talking to her. Instead, the host’s sister cooked us breakfast of eggs and bread with jam. It was so delicious! After we all ate we headed back to Blue Bay. We had planned on splitting up, a couple people were going to scuba dive, a couple were going to hang out on the beach, and a couple of us were going to go wind surfing. As it turns out, the boys missed the time to go scuba diving and our wind surfing guy Ben stood us up! We were all a little bummed but decided what the heck, let’s just go snorkeling again since we all had such a blast. A blast it was for sure! This time I snorkeled at the first stop and then spent the whole second spot just jumping off the boat like a little kid. I had the best time ever just playing around and even having a cannonball contest with the boys! It was a great way to spend the day.
        When we finished with snorkeling we grabbed some ice cream and got onto the public bus to head back to Port Louis. It took a bit longer than we thought so once we reached Port Louis we needed to book it to the ship. The quickest way there was to walk to the water taxi and take that to the ship. On the way we stopped twice to get post cards and then for someone to get a flag. We hopped onto the water taxi, which was filled with SAS kids. Everyone was freaking out because it was after five and nobody wanted to get dock time (the penalty for being late to on-ship time at 6 p.m.). The kids were being so rude to the driver, yelling and screaming at him to hurry up and get us back, it was really embarrassing. When we saw the line to get onto the ship, we were really nervous that we were going to get dock time, but we got on with ten minutes to spare and all was well. Mauritius was so much fun, I really wish we had at least one extra day there! I would have loved to shop and spend more time on the beach.