While in South Africa, Semester at Sea had to decide where we would dock next since Kenya was officially axed from our itinerary. On the fifth or sixth day in Cape Town, a white board was posted at the gangplank of the ship: “Next Stop: Port Louis, Mauritius!!” Where in the world is Mauritius...No one really had any idea and that was the best part.
Mauritius is a tiny island about the size of Rhode Island in the Indian Ocean a few hundred miles east of Madagascar. It’s India’s resort island the way Hawaii appeals to Americans.
The one class everyone has to take on the ship is Global Studies, which was every morning at 9 a.m. We were given crash course lessons on a certain aspect of the approaching country’s history, society or culture. We learned about Hugo Chavez before arriving in Venezuela, Brazil’s slave history before docking in Salvador and post-apartheid South Africa before arriving in Cape Town. Mauritius’s rainbow culture was our lesson during the few days at sea.
In short: Mauritius was “settled” by the French in the 1700s after the Portuguese and the Dutch decided it wasn’t worth their while. The island was completely uninhabited by humans
but was populated by dodo birds (relics of the bird are everywhere on the island – handbags, painting, statues, stickers, business signs…). Over the next century or so, the French “imported” Africans and Indians to the island as labor. Later, the Chinese were brought to Mauritius when it was discovered that the Chinese would work more for less than the Indians. In the early 1800s, the French lost Mauritius to the British in the early 1800s and gained total independence in 1968.Today, the African country houses a mixture of French, African, Indian and Chinese culture and traditions. The official languages of Mauritius are French and English, but many African languages and Hindi are spoken just as often (I’m sure Chinese is spoken by natives of China, but I personally didn’t hear anyone speak it). The cuisine on the island is menu of dreams – In the little town Grand Bay where we stayed in a condo on the beach for a couple of nights, there was a Chinese food restaurant next to a curry house near a bakery owned by a Tanzanian family. Since Mauritius is a tropical island, there also was a fruit stand near out condo with fresh pineapple and melons, and other exotic fruits that I had never seen before. One the beach, there was a fried rice “truck” resembling an American ice cream truck. I ate like a fat kid at the world’s all-you-can-eat buffet.
Geographically speaking, the Island is volcanic but very lushishly green. Sugar grows very well there and most of the island are either bustling towns or sugar plantations. (There’s a sugar plantation with a museum on the island where you can sample from twelve different kinds of sugar…). Imagine these igneous black jagged mountains jutting from vibrant farms and plantations and towns of ash-colored, square concrete buildings, some painted in every color imaginable.To conclude my own crash course on the island, I should let you all in on a very convincing secret – Mauritius is ridiculously cheap. A round-the-island buss ride was 80 cents and our beautiful beachside condo for two nights cost a total of $100. An elaborate dinner only cost maybe $15 per person for appetizers a main course and alcohol. If you can afford the plane ticket, jet over to Mauritius for your next tropical getaway (a mere $2000-$3000 round trip for a vacation in October). Unless Semester at Sea just unleashed a boatload of college kids, it’s highly unlikely you’ll see another American, yet the people on the island are very friendly and accommodating. All you’ll need is a wad of Mauritian cash, beach clothes, some flip flops and an open mind – you’re good to go!
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