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American Spirit II - Day 288; Tour of Mauritius; Monday, October 20, 2014



Up at 6:30 AM; breakfast at 7:15 AM. Eggs, potato, chilled pears and French bread.

Like other mornings, our boat is covered with soot from a furnace in the harbor where sugar cane stalks are burned. I'm assuming that this burning is to generate electricity, not just to burn the stalks. In the Miami area in Florida, sugar cane stalks are just burned to get rid of the non-sugar product after the cane is harvested.

Dropped off our two empty propane cylinders before 8:15 AM; and Merlyn's of Poole's, also. They will be delivered to the refilling station by Rally control for pick up later today or Tuesday.

At 8:30 AM we boarded buses for a day long tour. Two busses. Before departing, Tom, from Alpheratz, as he got on the bus passed out Butterfingers candy pieces; followed by Cathy from Celebrate passing around some cashews. Who knew that the bus trip would start with 'breakfast?!'

Our first stop was to the Chateau Le Bordine, an old sugar plantation mansion that had been recently restored. The chateau is impressive, and the interior is quite beautiful, including one room where the wallpaper had colored/painted images of deer in a forest; all four walls. We weren't allowed to take pictures, a pity; and I presume that the reason is that they didn't want us damaging some art works by using the camera flash. Taking pictures without a flash would probably be OK, and I suspect that the museum would allow it if they knew the distinction. Oh well.

The next stop was to a museum about the history and harvesting of sugar, with equipment inside used in a sugar cane factory. The name of it was L'Aventure du Sucre, The Adventure of Sugar. For many years sugar was the life blood of he Mauritius economy. It's still big today, but tourism may have overtaken it in importance to the economy.

Lunch was at a restaurant where we didn't know what the food that was that was going to be served. Every 10 minutes the staff brought out a different type of fried food. Five or 6 different appetizers; followed by rice and fried chicken, or something like that. By the time the 'main course' came, you could stick a fork in many of us as we were 'done.' Ready to explode.

Our final stop of the day was the Botanical Gardens of Mauritius. I can't seem to remember its exact name, but it was, in my opinion, the best botanical garden we've visited in our trip so far. Maybe that was because our guide was so good and engaging. The different type of trees we saw, like the 'blood tree.' whose sap is the color of blood; the largest palm tree in the world, which flowers every 40 years and then dies (we saw one that was 38 years old); and a flower that looks like a Bird of Paradise but is called the 'Lobster Claw,' because of its red color with a dark red border - just like a lobster claw. And then there was a fruit tree that bears the largest fruit in the world. It's name escapes me, but the fruit can reach a weight of 16 kilos or 35 pounds. Not bread fruit, but something much, much larger. It hangs on tree branches a half inch thick. Our guide was not only extraordinarily knowedgable about the trees and plants in the garden; he was also an expert on Mauritius history and spoke a number of languages, including Creole, French, English, Italian and Spanish.

We were back at the Caudan Basin and our boats in Port Louis by 4:45 PM.

At 5:30 PM I talked to the rigger in Mauritius, and he advised me he had yet to order any parts. Mon Dieu! I think that's French for 'My God!' I won't go into any specifics, its too frustrating. I just told him to order everything I need, now; tonight! Very frustrating. The stress meter is rising again.

Around 7:30 PM Russ and Laurie from Nexus stopped over, and after sampling some high quality rum that Jeremy had bought, and 'hidden' from Joel and me; we headed out with them and Jeanine to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. We had to wait for a van for half an hour or so because there were six of us and a typical taxi could only hold 4 people at most. We got to China Town OK, but then kept wandering aimlessly around looking for the restaurant. The streets were deserted, not a good sign. It was Monday, so we began to wonder if the restaurant was closed like many are in the USA on that day. We were right. Closed. Back to the marina area, where we went to the hotel bordering the marina and had a light dinner - soup and salad; followed by a port wine or red wine after dinner; and a Havana cigar. Not me.

Back at the boat around 11:00 PM, then to bed.

Brian Fox



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