Spring Break Mauritius 2006

White sandy beaches. 88 degree waters. Palms and the wispy tall casuarina trees grow well in the sandy soil. Romantic hideaways and azure lagoons with rich bays teaming with local catches. This is Mauritius, the Hawaii of the Indian Ocean, created by the now dormant volcano Trou Aux Cerfs. One of the chain of independent islands called the Mascarene along with the Seychelles and Reunion islands, the Rhode-Island-sized Ile de Maurice is a nation paradise in the middle of the Indian Ocean near Madagascar. Mark Twain said that God created Paradise based on his Mauritius visit. Here at the end of the world, the people are as warm as the weather. Called the Rainbow Nation, the multicultural culture is made up of Indian, African, European and Chinese, well represented with a multi-colored flag. With over half of the population Hindu, the culture is Indian dominated, with the richest curries and Creole foods. The green hills and extinct volcanic soils dot the landscape with sugar cane fields that still cover the island since colonial times. The Dutch, the British and the French all claimed Mauritius as a stopping point and colony in the lucrative trade with the East, but the French had the longest influence. The colonists are long gone, but their influence and way of life remains—cars drive on the left here but French is the national language (even the island name Mauritius was taken from Dutch royalty). Now as we enter the middle of our voyage, the students went south to celebrate in Flic-en-Flac, and a group of us, 14 staff, headed north to the Grand Baie region, specifically a small fishing village called Mont Choisy. Here we celebrated our Spring Break with beach and pool time, alcohol and cards, Creole and Indian food, scuba diving and deep sea fishing. I refused to plan my time on vacation, but I found adventure and magic, luck and fun in my spontaneous travel in Mauritius.

Coral reefs surround the islands, making for some of the most beautiful and cheapest scuba diving of the world. For a mere $30, our patient instructor taught us the basics in a pool for an hour before a 40 minute adventure under the water. Blowfish, lionfish, parrotfish and triggerfish surrounded us and the corals. It was like a Disneyland adventure under the waves. I immediately wanted to go again, deeper and deeper into the coral reefs filled with anemones, moray eels, and stonefish.

Another day was reserved for deep sea fishing in the Indian Ocean. Mauritius is described as one of the top five fishing destinations in the world for marlin, sailfish, swordfish and other game fish like tuna. I joined five students on a full day fishing expedition on the west coast of the island for 8 hours. Although the fish were sparse, the company was entertaining, and, surprisingly, being out on the turquoise water was picturesque. We followed the birds with our lures and rods and drove the boat through flocks of birds feeding on the surface of the water. I asked when the last big catch—only two days ago an 800 pound marlin was caught on the same rout. In the end, the birds were more successful than us but it didn’t take away from a fun experience.

I visited both cities and beaches. Port Louis, our port city, is teeming with life, best seen through the bustling open air markets and bazaars selling produce next to wooden dodos. Dead as the Dodo never was more true. Sega, the national dance and music, was pumping, a music originally conceived by African slaves as a diversion from the daily injustice of their lives. The accompanying dance allows the dancers to let the music take over and abandon themselves to the drums—I heard the connections to the Caribbean calypso and music from Salvador.

On land, pink pigeons, tortoises and dodo birds are national symbols of another time in Mauritius, before the colonists. Behind the beautiful beaches and gorgeous mountains of the island are the scars of environmental degradation and extinction of dozens of species by colonists and, more recently, multinational textile and agricultural companies. The ironic story is that the extinct dodo is now ubiquitous in markets, sold to tourists and represented in wood carvings and salt and pepper shakers and on every t-shirt in the bazaars. Charles Darwin and the Her Majesty’s Ship The Beagle came to visit these rich, endemic nature populations in the 19th century. Cut off from the far away continent, birds, mammals and lizards took their own evolutionary path here. Rats, deer and mongooses came only a few centuries ago, preying upon the island’s lack of predators and eventually killing off the flightless birds like the dodo. Few native forests remain from before the 1500s, but Mauritius is now marketing itself away as an upscale eco-tourist get-away location, distancing itself from the textile industry of the past few decades. With national parks like Black River Gorges National Park and Sir Seewoosagur Ramoolam Botanical Gardens of Pamplemousses, the nature is as breath-taking as the pristine beaches. These gardens showcase the beautiful palms, some that flower once after 40 years and then die, and the sacred Hindu lotus flowers. Amazon waterlilies cover the water with 6 foot giant lilies with flowers that are white the first day and close red the next day.

I cannot mention a tropical island like Mauritius without mentioning pirates. In fact, in the 18th century, in the golden age of pirates, Mauritius was considered a pirate capital. Supported and hidden by local Mauritians and the French government, they thrived on attacking British traders coming back from India.
More recently, pirates are gaining strength worldwide and wreaking havoc in the maritime world. The International Maritime Bureau estimates that $13-16 billion dollars are lost each year from piracy around the world. Preying on slow moving ships like cargo freighters, fishing vessels and oil tankers, pirates steal from the small crews and specifically, the pursers and lucrative crew incomes. To make matters worse, fewer than 1% of pirates ever get caught, mostly due to collusion and bribery in many governments, but also international waters and national boundaries. Many navies, like Singapore, patrol the problem hot spots like the Straits of Malacca in Southeastern Asia or Hong Kong and the South China Sea, but they cannot chase the pirates when they flee into Indonesian waters or elsewhere into other countries’ waters. Other popular pirate locations like Somalia and the Caribbean Sea are havens because of the lack of order, like Haiti in the Caribbean or East Africa where Somalia is essentially government-less and run by warlords. Our ship, the M.V. Explorer isn’t a target thanks to its size, security (sheer number of people aboard), distance from ports and speed (it’s the fastest cruise in the world with a top speed of 30 knots). We will be traveling through the Straits of Malacca this month, with only security on our top deck, going full speed with escorts at our port and starboard sides through the narrow passageway. Even scarier, while most pirates are entrepreneurs themselves, others are gangs and organized or political terrorists. All are dangerous, proven by last year’s attack on a British cruise ship, the first attack on a passenger ship in 20 years.

Mauritius, with its mostly Indian and Hindi-speaking population, still oddly considers itself African. They compete in the African Football Cup and discuss African problems. Even with one of the highest per capita income and the difficulties of leaving the isolated, overpopulated (1.4 million people) island, many Mauritians visit France, the cheapest flights (29,000 Mauritian rupees or $1000) and balancing the overwhelmingly French tourist populations that visit the island on long vacations.

Between tourist, fun stops like the beaches, I chose the public transportation, the bus, around the island. Traffic is horrible, but the bus took me through the rural middle plateau of the island, passing small subsistence farming and squatters on small plots of land near sugar cane fields. This is the real Mauritius, and despite the reputation as a tolerant, accepting society, there are real disparities between the Creole French speaking and Hindu Indian populations. Nowhere was the Hindu faith more apparent than our arrival, when the extravagant rainbow colored Tamil temples had recently celebrated the Maha Shivaratri celebration or Shiva festival. Simpler temples were on some beaches, like Mont Choisy, statues to the sea, who is worshiped like a god our hotel employee told me.

Despite the beauty and relaxation of the island, I will probably never return. Mauritius’ picturesque beaches are simply too far around the world, isolated in the middle of the Indian Ocean, faraway for all but French tourists. Now we are headed to India, and we left port early to miss an upcoming cyclone speeding across the warm, summer waters of the South Indian Ocean. And so wraps up our Spring Break will the phrase that goes, “what happens in Mauritius, stays in Mauritius.”