When I first saw the island at breakfast, I was reminded of St. Thomas. You could see the business center of the city, and then farther out you could see homes, and then even farther out where tall green mountains with nothing built on them. I was taking a tour with SAS through the scenic south.
Our first stop was an inactive volcano. It had been inactive for long enough that trees and grass overgrew the whole thing. It looked nothing like the active volcano in Hawaii. It was very beautiful. We were up at the top of the volcano looking down into it. At the bottom was grass, and all up the sides of the volcano were trees. In the opposite direction of the volcano, you had a beautiful city view with a mountain in the distance.
After this we went to see a gorge, and of course it looked just like the volcano with trees and greenery covering the whole thing. Off in the distance there was a waterfall, but it was nothing compared to what we were going to see later that day. The whole walk down to the gorge people were trying to sell us goods like jewelry, scarves, and t-shirts.
The group was then taken to see a temple. We were allowed to stop and get pictures of Lord Shiva. He was a tall statue (128 feet) made of cement. This is one of the most important gods to Buddhist people. The temple was right behind it. Outside, in a lake, were different statues of gods that the people worshiped. One was of the elephant God I wrote about earlier, called Ganesh. There was also a blue Shiva. He was blue because an evil man poisoned all of the fish in the lake so that it would kill the people. Lord Shiva found out and he drank all of the water of the lake, ingesting the poisonous fish, so they would not harm his people.
After we stopped at the temple, we went to see a beautiful waterfall and the 7 colored Earth. It is seven colors because when the volcano used to erupt, it brought with it minerals from underground. The minerals reacted with the lava to form the colorful sands. It is said that if the sands are moved around, they will eventually return to the spot they were originally at. What we see today is the same way the sands were millions of years ago!
Now it was time for lunch. What was supposed to be a short meal, turned into a 2 hour meal that could have fed 200 people, and not just the 40 of us. It was crazy. The food was delicious, but I could not tell you what it was. We had some fried vegetables, a type of potato salad, chicken, fish, salad, and rice. It was delicious. Because of the amount of time it took, we had to cancel our other plans to get back to the ship.
We were supposed to go to a beach for an hour, but we only got to stop for 5 minutes because of rain. The view of the mountain with the blue sky and clouds in the backdrop was gorgeous. The other place we were supposed to go to was a slave monument in the mountain.
Before the British took over and freed the slaves, life for a slave was horrible. They were expected to work in the sugar cane fields all day. When the British took over, they freed the slaves and also finished unfinished works. There were hundreds of slaves that had run away from their owners and hid in a cave in the mountain. They were standing at the edge of the mountain when they saw men in suits coming towards them. Because life as a slave was so horrible, they would have rather died than be returned to slavery, so they all jumped off the cliff. What they didn’t know, was that the men were there to tell them that they were free people. The story is so sad, and today there is a monument there in their honor.
We got back to the ship shortly before we needed to get there. On ship time was 6 pm. Normally, if you are a minute to 15 minutes late, you will get two hours of dock time, meaning that in the next port you will lose two hours of time there. Because they had so many extra crew members working at the dock, dock time for Mauritius was triple the time. If you were even a minute late, you would lose 6 hours in South Africa. There was a van packed full of people that arrived after we did, and they were not excused like my group was. We had been part of a SAS trip, which do not get dock time for being late. The people were so desperate to get off and avoid dock time they were forcing the doors open, and even jumping out of the windows. It was crazy to see. The internet has been spotty here, so I cannot attach any pictures for this port. I will try as soon as possible! ):
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