MAURITIUS IS A PART OF AFRICA CONTINENT.
I booked my ticket on phone. Can you believe that??? Yup and after the payment was done, I came home flying with tropical mauritian air in my head. Till now, I didn't know anything about foreign exchange, who provides it and what are the conversion rates. I was told by my travel agent that I should carry USD. (United States Dollars, in short, $). I understood lot of things in my second lesson.
FOREX STANDS FOR FOREIGN EXCHANGE.
I SHOULD START PAYING ATTENTION TO ANY CONVERSATION WHICH TALKS ABOUT RUPEE VALUE COMING DOWN OR GOING UP.
As days progressed, we started visiting frequently to malls and started piling up clothes for trip. (Not a single dress should be repeated, said my Wife. Women are women!!) After fighting and deciding on different beach-wears (Here beach wear for me refers to t-shirts and 3/4ths with bright colors which you usually would never wear in day to day civilization.) The credit of single yet big travel bag for both of us should undoubtedly go to my wife. With all baggage done, we had passed one more hurdle.
Now comes one more unknown territory, visa. My third lesson was quite simple and straight forward.
MARITIUS HAS VISA ON ARRIVAL.
I checked it again and again on Internet and verified with Agent. So, till we were safely outside mauritius airport I had a strange lump in my throat, 'What if they reject the visa?' Mediocrecy takes time to go, you know However the visa processing went as smooth as it could ever happen. As we came out of the Airport, we faced a small crowd, each individual was holding a board of the agency it belonged to. None of them carried name of my agency. But before I could shed some sweats, a guy approached and announced that we belong to him. He pointed us to the counter of Thomas Cook which said 'Foreign Exchange'. I was like, 'Dude, I know, I have bought USDs'. But he surprised me by saying, 'Get some Mauritian Rupees there'. I remembered the golden words of my Indian agent (who ironically had never come to Mauritius) and thought foolishly, 'How much mauritian rupees would I need?? I have USDs' I took Mauritian Rupees for 10 USD. It was like around 300 MRU. Lession number 4.
ALWAYS CARRY THE LOCAL CURRENCY RATHER THAN USD UNLESS YOU ARE IN U.S.
After coming out of waiting area, my eyes were searching a big Volvo bus but there was none. And then the agent pointed us towards a minivan. "Are we going by this?", asked my wife. I could sense the disappointment in her voice. 'There must be some explanation', I started thinking. 'May be they will be picking some more passenger from another location.' ''Which location?', my evil half asked. 'May be some other airport' 'Not a chance' 'Then railway station?', my mediocre half showed his inability to defend himself anymore. "Rahul, lets get in", my wife made her peace with that small non-AC vehicle and I noted down a point to mention this disappointment in Feedback form. Eventually, we started our journey from south to north. It seems the airport was in South Maritius and our resort (once you are on islands, all the hotels turn up into resorts!) was in extreme north. If I have to explain this as an Indian version, I would say, we booked the hotel in Delhi and landed in Chennai. Thankfully, the distance between Mauritian Delhi and Mauritian Chennai was just 2 hours. Needless to say, we crossed the boundaries of the whole nation within 2 hours. As we were on the way to resort, the 'Travel Guide' introduced us to the tour itinerary. He was quite fluent, not only in his English but also in his jokes. The mechanical way in which he cracked some of them, I felt he must have mugged them up. Anyways, he told us how to get the sim card and water bottles. Yes, you read it correct. We were supposed to buy water because the one given in the hotel was quite costly. We stopped at one of the shops on the way where the shopkeeper lady could speak hindi. She helped us with the items and again we started back on the route. Even though Mauritius was colonized by France, many migrants from South Asia, mostly India have moved here. So, basically we were not getting that 'Foreign' feel. Moreover the driver started the radio and it played some old bollywood song. Me and my wife gave a nauseating glance at it. Still there were other things which made us feel that we are out of India. For example, the roads were extremely clean, not only the ones which were in cities but also countryside roads. I really wish we should follow that discipline in our country. Here were us, trying to feel the foreign touch, and there was our travel guide who had his notion that unless he speak in Hindi, we won't feel connected with him. So, every now and then, he was cracking some joke in Hindi. Let me tell you one more thing about this travel guide. He was like an HR in IT company, on your first day in a company, you rome around with your HR who becomes your buddy, but from second day onwards, you hardly see him and generally never interact. So, this travel guide who told us that he will be our single point of contact and we should call him for any damn thing, never came back to us. We saw him for the first and last time during that journey.
Ok, so finally we reached the hotel 'Le Grand Bleu'. Yup, it spells Bleu and not Blue. By the way, we came to know about actual accommodation just 2 days before our departure and the pictures of this resort were quite few on internet. But when we actually went inside, it was quite a good resort. We were welcomed by Watermelon juice. After completing the formalities, we were allotted rooms. When we entered the room, the spaciousness of the room stuck us like a blow. It ended even before we could walk more than 5 steps. We immediately went to the reception and exchanged the room. After taking a bath and freshening up, we decided to take a walk over hotel's private beach. The only problem with that beach was it was separated from resort by main road and was mostly rocky. We wandered over the beach in the evening light and took some photos. By evening, we had dinner. Till then we got friendly with other two couples with us. Joking about hotel arrangements and knowing everybody's marriage story, we spent rest of the evening. Next day was our actual sight seeing. I had my fingers crossed.
Next day morning, we packed our extra cloths, as it was the water sports day and were waiting at reception as we were told by our driver a day before that 'we have to be one time'. He was not there. Suddenly, someone told us at reception that 'resort provides with towels for beach activities, for free.' Last two words stuck us like lightening. Being Indian, we kind of think of it as moral responsibility to make use of any free service. We went down to rooms area to get the towels and we missed our so called punctual driver's guidelines. He came into the resort area, calling our names and our mobiles simultaneously. We rested our case by saying that we have been waiting in reception area for long time but he treated us as badly as any teacher treats a student who turns up into class halfway through. Sulkily we followed him outside to the same vehicle. This time, 3 couples were already sitting inside that small van. We practically stuffed us in and our first day started. He took us to the Palmer beach where there were lot of sport activities. That was the most clean beach I have ever seen in my life. There were people but there was so much space. I mean if you go to Goa or by that matter to any public beach in India, there are so many people around that you can not take a photo of beach without half nude unwanted people in it. But that was not the case here. All the photos we took had only us in it. The water was beautifully blue and transparent near the beach. On the sunny day, we found number of resorts alongside the beach, may be there were some houses. We envied them with all our heart. After enjoying the watersport activities like kayaking, para sailing, we were taken to a platform on the middle of ocean where we were going to do undersea walk. It was an awesome experience where a large sphere made up of glass is put on our head which supplies you oxygen and also pulls you down to the sea-bed. There were trained professional which took us to detour of 100m and showed us the marine life. They took our photos there. Though it sounds like the one shown on the discovery channel, it was not that high quality but definitely awesome experience. After coming out of water, driver took us to another location from where we were about to ride in speed boat and would go to an island called Ile Aux Cerfs. On the way, he tried to brainwash us by asking us to order food which would be 200 Mauritian Ruppess (400 INR), but we had plans to skip the lunch after heavy duty breakfast in the morning. The couple friend ordered the meal and while we were waiting for speed boats, there meals came. It was rice, daal and one curry in a plastic container. It was such a backstabbing betrayal by that driver, thought all of us. Finally waterboats arrived and all of us jumped in. To increase the excitement, we sat on the front side of the speedboat. It was such an awesome experience. Winds flowing through hair, we were riding into the Indian Ocean. The speedboat driver gave us brief information about a waterfall we were going to visit before reaching Ile Aux Cerfs. We could see our speedboat cutting sharply through the blue waters till we reached the backwater area. Once we entered that area, greenery was on both sides of us. Suddenly, the boat driver pointed his finger to sky, we saw a white bird in the sky Paille-en-route which is actually symbol of Air-Mauritius. We awed at it. Suddenly I remembered number of events during Kanha-Kisli trip with my friends were I used to 'aww' for no good reason. Anyways that is one different story. Finally we reached the waterfall. It was one shameful waterfall.
It was so small that in rainy season, Mumbai-Pune Highway has many such. But as this one could be visited only through sea-route, it was special. We enjoyed the waterfall from the speedboat and started our journey to the most hyped island in Mauritius, Ile Aux Cerfs. The moment we reached there, I realized why has it been so praised and hyped in all the travel forums on internet. It was the most beautiful island I have ever seen, just like any hollywood movie. Here for the first time, I felt like a foreigner, all the french crowd on the beach, people were sleeping on the beach, playing in the water and how can I describe the cleanliness. There was not a single piece of garbage, neither was there any signboard mentioning fine for putting garbage, otherwise in India, such sign boards are the perfect examples of irony. Small kids, I mean unimaginably small kids were trying to learn swimming with their parents. Kudos to that attitude of European/Americans. We were allowed to stay for only 1.5 hours which was such a small span of time, I mean it took us first 10 minutes just to gulp the notion of being on that beach. We spent most of our time in water and finally came back near our boat on time.(Remembering the morning fiasco) On our way back, the chatted with other 3 couples and came to know that they were here from last 3 days and today was the most fun day for them. This news saddened us, I mean if only today was the fun which we did enjoy thoroughly, it was only 1/3rd of our trip. What was going to happen for the rest of the trip, I wondered??
TO BE CONTINUED...
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