Between Mauritius and South Africa

The days after Mauritius and before South Africa have been busy! Also, the internet has not been working particularly well, making it difficult to access the blog. We enjoy reading the comments people leave on the blog, but for some reason we are unable to respond to them. Each time I try to leave a comment, the whole blog goes topsy-turvy.

Several of the kids have had birthdays on the ship, and Sam's party was the latest. The kids had a great time eating cake and going on a ship-wide scavenger hunt.

Our interport lecturer, Michael Williams, who joined us along with his family in Mauritius, is the head of the Cape Town Opera Company. He is fantastic! He staged several scenes from South African musical theatre shows, many of which he wrote himself. The students loved working on them and presented them on Africa Day. Barek enjoyed playing the dead body.

I did a presentation on Athol Fugard, South Africa's finest playwright, for Africa Day. A number of students, lifelong learners, and our interport family from South Africa, did a great job presenting short scenes and monologues from Fugard's plays. Known primarily for his plays that illuminated the apartheid situation in South Africa in the 80s and 90s, Fugard is still an active writer and director at 77 years of age. The Fugard Theatre just opened in Cape Town in his honor, and his latest play, The Train Driver, will be playing there while we are in port.

On the floor in front of the Africa Day sign the kids made is a giant card for the crew that everyone signed for Crew Appreciation Day.

The kids go swimming each day after PE, and I live for Amy the Registrar's yoga class on B days. She teaches a fantastic class on the upper deck--and this last B day, the full moon rose as we finished up.


Crew Appreciation Day ended with the Crew Talent Show. Everyone went wild to see their favorite steward, waiter or chef dancing and singing their hearts out. The show was definitely one of the highlights of the voyage!

The short videos are:

Barek rehearsing his Dead Body pose.

The South African musical presentation.

Preshow excitement at the Crew Talent Show.

One of the crew bands entertaining the crowd.

Mauritius

We landed in Mauritius, an island 800 Km from Madagascar and 1800 Km east of Africa. Discovered by the Arabs and the Portugese, Mauritius was first settled by the Dutch in 1598. It was taken over by the French in 1715 and the British in 1810. Mauritius became its own republic in 1992. The European settlers opened sugar cane fields and imported slaves from Africa and workers and indentured workers from India. Today, the population, in order of numbers, is comprised of Indian, African and European people. English is the official language, although a majority speak Creole and Hindi, with the newspapers published in French. The island is relatively prosperous, with sugar cane giving way more and more to computer-related industry. The literacy rate on Mauritius is very high.

We only had two days and one night in Mauritius, so we decided to book a hotel in Pointe Aux Piments, a village up the northwest coast about 30 minutes away from Port Louis, the capital city where we docked. There are loads of 5 star hotels on Mauritius, which is a holiday destination for Europeans and Africans. Our hotel was more modest, but still included snorkeling, kayaking, pedal-boats, a lovely pool, and a trip on a glass bottom boat to see the coral reefs and snorkel from the boat. And we were right on the beach!

Our hotel had two eating areas and lovely coconut trees everywhere.

After a morning of snorkeling at the beach and swimming in the pool, we had lunch.

In the afternoon, we headed out on the glass bottom boat and saw colorful fish and some beautiful reef areas. The water was crystal clear.

Dinner was an Indian buffet.

The breakfast buffet included a lovely tropical fruit bar.

After a morning of snorkeling and boating, we took a cab back to Port Louis, passing the sugar cane fields along the way. In Port Louis, we ate lunch at the harbour.

Friends of the Phoenix Theatre in Indy will know all about Mauritius, as the Phoenix produced a play called Mauritius last season! Mauritius was the fourth country in the world to produce printed stamps, and we went to the Postal Museum to see the valuable stamps on display. The most prized stamps on display were the Penny Black, produced in 1840, and four other stamps produced in 1847 and 1848.

The streets of Port Louis were alive with markets and shops.

We went to an interior market that contained produce on one side and textiles on the other.


The town is a fascinating mixture of old and new and contains several mosques, Hindu temples and Catholic churches.

The sun was extremely hot, so we headed back to the ship. Our ship was docked in a new location, and the quickest way to get there was via taxi boat.


We wished we had more time to explore the interior of Mauritius, which is known for its mountainous region.

As we rounded the corner of the MV Explorer, we saw one of our crew members touching up the blue paint!

The process of entering and leaving a port is always fascinating. The boat in the first photo is helping guide us out of the port. We passed many ships along the way--and people from the boats in the second photo all called out and waved as we went by.

The third boat is coming alongside the MV Explorer to pick up the Mauritian pilot, who had been on board to guide us out of the port. By law, a local pilot must always be on board when entering and leaving an international port.

The first video is of our welcome to Mauritius as we walked off the gangway. One of the main forms of music and dance on the island is the Sega, which was devised by the African slaves as a way of blowing off steam from their difficult lives. Like the Hula in Hawaii, the Sega has now become a tourist attraction, and the main hotels in Mauritius have Sega shows. This group was doing an abbreviated version of the Sega.

The second clip is taken from the balcony off our room as we left the Port Louis harbour and headed towards Africa.