November 2024 - Mauritius - Del I

 Time for a new destination and new adventures. As we find our priorities and planning for travelling changes a lot with a kid, Mauritius is probably not somewhere we'd pick just for the two of us - however, given the kind-of-reasonable travel time (3h + 10h flights), lack of tropical diseases, and small time difference (3h), this is where we ended up to get a dose of tropical-ness and escape from the Swedish almost-winter. And, I will say it was a good choice!

In total we spent two weeks on the island, and this first part will be for week one. Probably on the shorter side since we spent many days just relaxing on the beach or by the pool. This first week we had booked a small hotel in the North West part of the island, in the area Grand Baie. While not the most touristy area on the island, there were still plenty of hotels and a bunch of restaurants to choose from, while the local street food was slightly more sparse. Our hotel offered a nice breakfast with some local food options such as crêpe with smoked marlin, omelet with shallots and chili and fresh fruits and juices. We had a nice ocean view from our balcony, a warm swimming pool and a path directly down to the beach. Plenty of cute lizards and geckos and some curious birds visited our balcony (and sometimes room) along with the occasional cockroach and spider (much preferred the lizards, but they didn't really bother us so it was okay).

"our" beach

local birds very interested in our breakfast

the breakfast in question

During the first couple of days, the weather was a bit unstable (rainy and windy) due to a cyclone which luckily got downgraded to a storm before it passed a bit off the coast of the island. It was still good enough that we could spend mornings and afternoons at the beach and by the pool. While A had been unfortunate to catch a fever the day before we left, when she recovered she absolutely loved going swimming in the warm water (ocean around 26 degrees, pool slightly warmer) as well as playing on the beach, so it was easy to enjoy the days and take the opportunity to relax and get some well-needed rest.

For lunch we usually either went to the local super market to get fresh baguettes, cheese, fruit and vegetables (and some croissants from the bakery next door) to make sandwiches, or went over to the public beach to buy something from the local food wagons. Common street food dishes included fried noodles (mine frites), boiled noodles (mine bouille), fried rice, samosas, magic bowl (bol renverse - rice, meat and veg in gravy, and a fried egg placed in a bowl and then turned upside down onto a plate) and more, with seafood, egg, chicken and lamb being the most common types of protein (often in combination). Depending on the day of the week, sometimes other specialty food wagons would open up to serve boulettes ( kind of dumplings) and farata (roti/flatbread with some filling and rolled up). 

boulettes

bol renverse

As you can tell from the food names, the heritage from being a French colony is apparent in being one of the main languages spoken as well as some food items, while one of the main food influences stem from the big immigration of Indian population during the 1800s. As it was for a while a British colony as well, they are driving on the left side of the road which of course takes some getting used to.

During this first week we mainly did one excursion, to the Pamplemousses area where we visited the national botanical gardens, a big park with lots of different kinds of trees, as well as water lilies and lotuses. As with most nature areas trying to attract tourists on the island, there was also an enclosure for giant tortoises, once native to the island but now seemingly imported from Seychelles. While A appreciated any kind of animal we would show her, me and Valle were more excited about the (wild) chameleon which came walking across the path and we had the opportunity to admire briefly before it was unfortunately spotted by a guided group of tourists and then put on display on a stick.

Another rainy day, we drove along the North coast but didn't find any particularly amazing sights. We also spent an afternoon in the capital, Port Louis, where we went to the famous Central Market and walked around for a bit. The market was quite nice in that it felt like we were in South East Asia again with a very similar vibe. It did however feel like they sold almost exactly the same things, with the exception of all the dodo-related souvenirs as Mauritius is indeed the island where this bird existed once upon a time. When we walked around in the city, heading from the market up to the cathedral, there were a lot of local food places that looked very nice - if we hadn't already had lunch, we would have loved to explore these local eateries that felt much more authentic than the tourist oriented restaurants near the market and the waterfront.

For dinner in the evenings, we alternated between the available restaurants and had some very good Indian, Thai, and local food. We always opted for fish, seafood or vegetarian and had some really good curries.

That's about it for week one! Tune in for next post, where we did some more adventures and excursions being based on the East coast.