Sunset the night before docking in Mauritius, March 17.
The weather has cooled off a bit as we head south, which seems odd but since we're now below the equator it's how it is. The seas are a bit wavy but the days are beautiful, and we docked in Mauritius for about 8 hours to refuel and see what we could in the short amount of time. Basically, our day consisted of a snorkeling outing which went off great.
Ellen booked a group of family and faculty for eight of us on a small boat, and we ended up pairing with another family/faculty group to share a van. A 45-minute drive, and about 5 minutes navigating from a sharp turn into a tight alley to the beach, and we were at the boat. Most of the Semester at Sea students were off to the beach, and we saw some large catamarans headed out loaded with students, so alas for our plans for solitude. No problem.
Mauritius is a small island country, and we're essentially done with our tour of Asia. In my mind, India qualifies since, well, it's part of the continent which takes its name. We've traveled south and are now going to African countries, and Mauritius is the first. The island is fairly small, about the size of the smallest of the US states, not too far from the the much-larger island of Madagascar. We could see Madagascar but couldn't dock since that country doesn't have safe or adequate dock facilities, so Mauritius it is. The island has a creole vibe with French, English, and other languages appearing on store names and street signs.
We got in about an hour of snorkeling, which was probably about enough. There were a moderate number of fish, less than I've seen snorkeling in Hawaii, but by far the most fantastic coral I've ever seen. Mauritius is practically encircled by a huge coral reef, so we saw many types of coral. What was really interesting to me were the erosion channels off the small uninhabited island rock we sailed to for the snorkeling trip. Water evidently rushes off the steep island rock and has carved out deep gullies, pits, and a lattice of wormlike channels in the lava rock underneath the coral formations.
Here's the small island rock where we snorkeled. As we approached, we could see what sort of looked like George Washington in profile on the left side just above the sailboat.
The water was about 20 feet deep, and I can only dive about half that far, but I saw some beautiful sights. Jasper and I swam together for a bit and observed slender eel-like fish about a meter long with eyes way back on their bodies, very sleek and fast when approached. There were also lots of zebrafish and clownfish, a few elephant fish like the ones we ate in Vietnam, and plenty of sea urchins buried in the worm-channel cutouts close to shore. Unlike the snorkeling trip I took to Hawaii in the mid 90s, this time I kept my distance and didn't step on any of the spiky bastards.
Jasper and Ben collect and compare shells and coral as we wait for lunch after our excursion.
Some catamarans in the shore area where we re-boarded our van to head back to the MV Explorer on our short stay in Mauritius.
Because the day in port was so short before onship time, we cut back from snorkeling and had a nice lunch of grilled meat and Marlin on the shore and saw more students sunning and swimming. Next, a short van ride back into the port city and capital of Port Louis where the ship was docked before heading out.
Next stop is South Africa.
No comments:
Post a Comment