Mauritius

We only stopped in Mauritius for 2 days and it was basically just to refuel. I’m disappointed with how Semester at Sea handled Mauritius. Usually the week leading up to a port we have seminars and learn about the country. Then 2 nights before we arrive, we have cultural pre-port and the night before we arrive we have logistical pre-port. They combined the cultural and logistical pre-port and didn’t have any other seminars. During the pre-port meeting, they basically told us that Mauritius doesn’t have any culture and we should make this our spring break. A couple professors spoke that night and kind of made fun of Mauritius. They told us to go to the beach, party and get drunk. Semester at Sea has issues every year in Mauritius because the majority of the students on the ship rent villas for the night and trash them. The villas in the city of Flic en Flac don’t allow Semester at Sea students to stay there anymore. This time everyone stayed at the Intercontinental hotel. The next day they all rented catamarans and drank as much as they could. People were being carried back to the ship because they couldn’t walk and a couple people are now on crutches thanks to alcohol related injuries. It was ridiculous and I was embarrassed that this is the way they are representing America in foreign countries.
Anyway, I had a great time! The first day, Sheriess and I decided we wanted to have a nice relaxing beach day, do some shopping, and find interenet. That’s exactly what we did. We went to Grand Baie and spend the day on a beautiful beach with crystal clear water. It was gorgeous! The water was calm and perfect for swimming. We laid out and swam for most of the day. We decided to get some lunch around 3 pm and we found a cute little café and ordered delicious Hawaiian pizza. After lunch, we decided to walk around the town for a little while and we did a little shopping. We were really just looking for postcards and magnets. Eventually we made it back to the ship and grabbed our laptops to go find internet.
The next day I went scuba diving! Brittany, Jeff and I were picked up from the port and we went to Tamarin Bay. It turned out that we were the only 3 people on the dive trip that afternoon. It was awesome! There were 4 crew members but only 3 of us. The first dive spot was at a drop off. We were told that we wouldn’t go off the drop off because it was deep and none of us had been down that deep before. When I got in the water, I couldn’t see anything. The visibility wasn’t very good. We used a rope to get down and it took a while before we could see the bottom. I hate not being able to see the bottom so I was kind of freaking out but we made it to the bottom and I was fine. The man leading our dive ended up taking us down to 100 feet! That’s about as deep as you can go when scuba diving. It was exciting but we didn’t realize how deep it was until after we came up. The visibility was better the deeper we went. There were lots of beautiful fish and an awesome coral wall.
The next dive was my favorite. The dive was a lot shallower and there was bubble coral everywhere! Bubble coral is my favorite coral and I’ve only ever seen it at aquariums. It’s light pink and looks like bubbles. I even got to touch it. We also saw several lionfish and eels as well as a lot of colorful fish. It was a great dive! When we finished diving, they took us to an island where they cooked lunch. It took them about an hour to prepare the food so one of the guys took us out on the boat to go snorkeling. I saw some huge trumpet fish and Jeff found a starfish! I was so excited because I’ve never found a starfish in the ocean before and I’ve always wanted to. I picked it up and it kind of wrapped itself around my hand. It was so cool! We went back to the island and ate a delicious lunch before heading back to the waterfront. At the waterfront, I looked frantically for postcards and stamps but I was in a hurry because I didn’t want to be late getting on the ship and get dock time in India. I made it on the ship with half an hour to spare. We’re only a few days away from India now and Dad is meeting me in Delhi so that should be fun.