How we slept on that first night on the Isle de France!. For that is what Mauritius was known as by the French who had to give up this serendipitous island after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and where the inhabitants speak a quaint creole French patois but can understand and speak continental French too.
It’s only two hours difference between Italy and Mauritius but a night spent on a plane did not give us much thought for sleep and the two films we watched on the in-flight entertainment ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ didn’t help. Moreover, we were delayed by over two hours attempting to land at Dubai where an angry storm was raging. Yes, it sometimes rains there too and when it does it’s a veritable deluge.
(Since writing this we found out how lucky we were to get out of Dubai when we did just as dark clouds were enveloping the gulf. The heaviest rainfall for over seventy five years produced mass flooding, over twenty deaths and thousands of air travellers grounded at the international airport for over twenty hours without food because of the unprecedented situation the country found itself in).
It’s amazing how much digital technology has helped expand the variety of sounds and sights on a plane. In the music selection, for example, there was even a section dedicated to Renaissance music.
We were met at the international airport and driven to our hotel, the Causarina resort and spa. In the descending twilight I could just make out the extraordinary dragon’s teeth silhouettes of Mauritius’ central mountain range.
This first morning we were delighted to see how low-rise, indeed picturesque our hotel is. We were temporarily accommodated in a rustic bungalow pending a definite location.
As we were told that in the afternoon our stay room would be sorted we decided to go to a nearby beach where we could turtle-watch on a glass bottomed boat.
We set off with a family from France and two other couples. Would we see these adorable creatures of the deep?
Yes! And here is one of them.
My wife took some better pictures but they will need to be downloaded. We even managed to get into the incredibly turquoise sea and follow these ancient and very large reptiles.
We returned to our hotel walking along the coast road and admiring the flora flanking it.
We are now in accomodation which we will be able to keep for the rest of our stay.
We are very happy with our first day on the island and look forwards to more adventures in this amazing part of the world. It’s truly a melting pot of east and west and we have already been able to use three of the languages we speak: English, French and Hindi ,to communicate with the locals who we have found out to be very courteous and helpful.
