Just after midnight, early Friday morning, after a long day of sightseeing, we had now packed up all of our belongings, and prepared to head out to the airport. We woke up the girls who had fallen asleep and said our final goodbyes to Jayant and Kamalika, and again thanked them for everything they had done for us over the last few weeks. We had an absolutely wonderful time with them for the prior 3 weeks. Saying goodbye to friends is always hard, but it is even harder when they live 9,000 miles away. At about a quarter to one, we headed to the airport for our 4:00am flight.
I must say, my experience with airports in India has not ever been that they are the most efficient places. This morning proved no different. One would think with a 4:00am flight, the airport would be quiet place. Not so much. We arrived to find a line winding outside the the terminal, and on down the driveway. On top of that, we remembered from New Delhi that we could not get into the airport without our boarding pass. We had e-tickets, so we did not have boarding passes yet. Also, I needed to change my rupees, as these are generally not exchangeable outside India as far as I know. I loaded up two trolleys with our bags, and we tried to find the end of the line Natalie ran ahead to see if we needed to have the boarding passes. I went to the money changer near the line, and left the girls to watch the luggage, and follow the barely moving line. The money changer required a passport, which I didn’t have because Natalie was trying to find a way to get our boarding passes, so I got back in line. Then Natalie came back unable to find a ticket counter where we could get our boarding pass, and we decided to simply use our e-ticket receipts hoping that was enough to be allowed into the terminal.
Now that she was back, I grabbed the passport, and headed back to the money changer. As luck would have it, the line into the airport began to move, but the currency exchange was slow. The girl processing my request sensed my urgency and tried to move quickly, but the bureaucratic forms that needed to be filled out made this difficult. I continued to look over my shoulder every 10 seconds to see how far Natalie and the girls got. They were getting closer and closer to the door, yet the girl behind the counter kept giving me more and more forms to fill out. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she provided me with US dollars for my Rupees. I grabbed them and began navigating the crowd like an ambulance driver, and caught up to Natalie as she was 2 people away from the door. Just in time.
Inside the airport, there are tons of people offering help to get you where you need to. The trick is, they will all want a tip. Even though they have badges that make them look more official, they are still motivated by tips. One such individual “offered” to help us, and grabbed our trolleys, and headed into bring us to our gate. When we got to the check in desk, he unloaded them onto the scale, and then sat waiting for his tip. I pulled the last 2 10 rupee notes out of my pocket and handed them over. He gave me a look somewhat similar to what I’d expect if I had just pooped in his hand. I told him “sorry, those are all I have left.” He slinked away very disappointed.
We made it through security and got to the gate by about 2:45. (though not without a bag search, which I believe was the third of the trip due to a hole puncher Kalyssa has with her pencils in her carry-on bag). When we walked up to our gate, there was a truly amazingly loud sound of someone snoring in the seats waiting for the plane. There were 3 rows of chairs and about 12 seats each row, that were completely full. As we walked up, the look on a few peoples’ faces in the front row was just priceless. It was a mixture of shock and horror at the decibel level of the snoring, and likely the fear that they may be sitting next to this guy on the plane. I burst into laughter, half at the snoring, half at the look on these peoples faces. I noticed a few people waiting whom began laughing at my laughing . Fortunately for us, there were no seats at our gate, which necessitated us finding another gate to sit at, sans any chainsaw like snores….
We boarded the flight at 3:30am and promptly attempted to go to sleep. The flight was roughly 6 hours long, but about four and a half hours into it, they turned on the lights, and a bunch of activity woke us up from any sleep we were getting. At about 8:30 local time we landed in the small island country of Mauritius. Mauritius is relatively unknown, especially to Americans. It is east of Madagascar and is about 40 miles wide by 60 mils tall. Its only true claim to fame, is that it is the only place in the world, where there is evidence of the extinct dodo bird having lived. The people living here have an interesting mix of Indian, African, and French cultures. French seems to be the most prevalent language, with many people also speaking English, and ethnically, it seems Indian is the most dominant lineage, though it goes back some time, and has been diluted by the African and to a lesser extent, French.
Along the way, Rajen provided an interesting background on the island, and much of the scenery we were viewing. Clearly the agricultural foundation for the island is sugarcane, as it is everywhere. Behind the flowing fields of sugarcane, were the towering green mountains of the island jutting sharply upward in very distinguished shapes. Rajen describd many as having nicknames based on their shapes, “the Lion’s Face”, the “sleeping lady”, the “nose”… The scenery was absolutely striking. Rajen’s guesthouse is on the opposite side of the island from the airport, so we were able to get a brief cross country tour. Once we exited the main highway, we began to snake through some of the towns. The towns weren’t particularly attractive. The streets are cramped, and barely have room for two cars to pass each other going opposite directions, yet, there are cars parked here and there, and large busses that occasionally need to squeeze through, creating fairly common traffic jams. The residential areas, are a maze of courtyard walls, as all of the houses are surrounded by a courtyard with a 7 foot high masonry wall. The commercial areas are no more open, as the streets are lined with a hodge podge of small shops with steel roll-down doors that are closed after hours, and only a narrow sidewalk as a buffer from the streets.
We brought all of our bags up to our room, and then decided to spend the afternoon at the beach. First however, we stopped at a beachside restaurant for some lunch.
Alexandra was exhausted and laid down, where she stayed until the following morning. I was using my laptop, and Kalyssa was bored. She was very eager to meet the girl that lives at the guesthouse, named Athena (which is coincidentally Kalyssas middle name). After a period of time, I heard Kalyssa chatting away, and another voice in the dialogue as well. This continued for 15 minutes or so that I noticed, and then up comes Kalyssa, who lets me know that she found Athena, who is 13, they’d already introduced each other, talked about school, Kalyssa showed her her YouTube video of her playing drums with a band in Nashville, and they played a round of Uno. Once again, Kalyssa is obviously the “shy” child…..
At 6:30 happy hour began, and Rajen started passing around drinks. I started with a beer that is manufactured in Mauritius called Ti La Biére. After this, Rajen provided a cocktail, and once dinner was served, he poured the wine. One other family was staying in the guesthouse at the same time. It was a French husband and wife celebrating their 50th anniversary with their son, who was roughly my age. As the meal of Mauritian sausage, a noodle dish, and several other sides was served buffet style, Rajen and Sandy’s son came from work to join us as well. His name was Kingsley, and he is a 20 something year old graphic designer. I spent a good deal of the evening talking with him.
After dinner was finished, we continued to mingle with each other, as Rajen continued to serve some after dinner aperitifs. Around 10:00, I was exhausted and turned in for the evening.
I must say, my experience with airports in India has not ever been that they are the most efficient places. This morning proved no different. One would think with a 4:00am flight, the airport would be quiet place. Not so much. We arrived to find a line winding outside the the terminal, and on down the driveway. On top of that, we remembered from New Delhi that we could not get into the airport without our boarding pass. We had e-tickets, so we did not have boarding passes yet. Also, I needed to change my rupees, as these are generally not exchangeable outside India as far as I know. I loaded up two trolleys with our bags, and we tried to find the end of the line Natalie ran ahead to see if we needed to have the boarding passes. I went to the money changer near the line, and left the girls to watch the luggage, and follow the barely moving line. The money changer required a passport, which I didn’t have because Natalie was trying to find a way to get our boarding passes, so I got back in line. Then Natalie came back unable to find a ticket counter where we could get our boarding pass, and we decided to simply use our e-ticket receipts hoping that was enough to be allowed into the terminal.
Now that she was back, I grabbed the passport, and headed back to the money changer. As luck would have it, the line into the airport began to move, but the currency exchange was slow. The girl processing my request sensed my urgency and tried to move quickly, but the bureaucratic forms that needed to be filled out made this difficult. I continued to look over my shoulder every 10 seconds to see how far Natalie and the girls got. They were getting closer and closer to the door, yet the girl behind the counter kept giving me more and more forms to fill out. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she provided me with US dollars for my Rupees. I grabbed them and began navigating the crowd like an ambulance driver, and caught up to Natalie as she was 2 people away from the door. Just in time.
Inside the airport, there are tons of people offering help to get you where you need to. The trick is, they will all want a tip. Even though they have badges that make them look more official, they are still motivated by tips. One such individual “offered” to help us, and grabbed our trolleys, and headed into bring us to our gate. When we got to the check in desk, he unloaded them onto the scale, and then sat waiting for his tip. I pulled the last 2 10 rupee notes out of my pocket and handed them over. He gave me a look somewhat similar to what I’d expect if I had just pooped in his hand. I told him “sorry, those are all I have left.” He slinked away very disappointed.
We made it through security and got to the gate by about 2:45. (though not without a bag search, which I believe was the third of the trip due to a hole puncher Kalyssa has with her pencils in her carry-on bag). When we walked up to our gate, there was a truly amazingly loud sound of someone snoring in the seats waiting for the plane. There were 3 rows of chairs and about 12 seats each row, that were completely full. As we walked up, the look on a few peoples’ faces in the front row was just priceless. It was a mixture of shock and horror at the decibel level of the snoring, and likely the fear that they may be sitting next to this guy on the plane. I burst into laughter, half at the snoring, half at the look on these peoples faces. I noticed a few people waiting whom began laughing at my laughing . Fortunately for us, there were no seats at our gate, which necessitated us finding another gate to sit at, sans any chainsaw like snores….
We boarded the flight at 3:30am and promptly attempted to go to sleep. The flight was roughly 6 hours long, but about four and a half hours into it, they turned on the lights, and a bunch of activity woke us up from any sleep we were getting. At about 8:30 local time we landed in the small island country of Mauritius. Mauritius is relatively unknown, especially to Americans. It is east of Madagascar and is about 40 miles wide by 60 mils tall. Its only true claim to fame, is that it is the only place in the world, where there is evidence of the extinct dodo bird having lived. The people living here have an interesting mix of Indian, African, and French cultures. French seems to be the most prevalent language, with many people also speaking English, and ethnically, it seems Indian is the most dominant lineage, though it goes back some time, and has been diluted by the African and to a lesser extent, French.
As we exited the airport, we found our driver, whom I later realized was actually one of the owner’s of the Pallagino Guest House we were staying at, named Rajen (and blamed the lack of awareness on a shortage of sleep). As we walked towards the vehicle, we quickly noticed how wonderful the weather was here. It was low 70s and not very humid. This was a wonderful change from the upper 80s/low 90s and heavy humidity we had been dealing with up until this point. We jumped into the van Rajen had arranged, (he was not actually driving, he was just accompanying the driver, and we drove across the southern part of the island to the village of Flic en Flac.
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| Lion's Face |
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| Sleeping Lady |
Along the way, Rajen provided an interesting background on the island, and much of the scenery we were viewing. Clearly the agricultural foundation for the island is sugarcane, as it is everywhere. Behind the flowing fields of sugarcane, were the towering green mountains of the island jutting sharply upward in very distinguished shapes. Rajen describd many as having nicknames based on their shapes, “the Lion’s Face”, the “sleeping lady”, the “nose”… The scenery was absolutely striking. Rajen’s guesthouse is on the opposite side of the island from the airport, so we were able to get a brief cross country tour. Once we exited the main highway, we began to snake through some of the towns. The towns weren’t particularly attractive. The streets are cramped, and barely have room for two cars to pass each other going opposite directions, yet, there are cars parked here and there, and large busses that occasionally need to squeeze through, creating fairly common traffic jams. The residential areas, are a maze of courtyard walls, as all of the houses are surrounded by a courtyard with a 7 foot high masonry wall. The commercial areas are no more open, as the streets are lined with a hodge podge of small shops with steel roll-down doors that are closed after hours, and only a narrow sidewalk as a buffer from the streets.
As we continued towards Flic-en-Flac, the sky in the distant horizon began to develope a horizontal line in the middle of it. Below the line it grew at first slightly darker than the sky above. Over the next 10 minutes, this became more and more clear, until as we approached the city limits, it was now apparent that we were watching the ocean.
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| Pallagino Guest House |
We finally made it to our destination, and were greeted by Sandy, Rajen’s wife, and the chef. As is custom in the highly French influenced Mauritius, we were greeted with a kiss to either side of the face, and were then provided some glasses of fruit punch while they gave us the rundown of our stay. The home is a lovely home with much of it being open to the outside. The dining room opens out to the patio, which allows for additional dining, and there is a very large kitchen with commercial grade cooking facilities for Sandy to work her magic. Our bedroom was on the second floor, and had a bathroom next to it. A fairly crude wall with a door had been constructed just in front of the door to the bathroom and our bedroom creating a hallway between the two, and effectively placing the bathroom in our unit. Outside our bedroom was a common area with a few orange leather couches and a large TV, and a large walk out terrace overlooking the pool below. There are also some additional rooms on our floor and upstairs, though we did not see these. Most of the common areas were open to the outside, with metal gates for doors, but no glass.
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| View from the Guest House |
We brought all of our bags up to our room, and then decided to spend the afternoon at the beach. First however, we stopped at a beachside restaurant for some lunch.
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| Lunch at White Shell Restaurant |
The beach was a very short walk of about two blocks from our guest house and had stunning white sand, and azure waters. At first the water felt very cold, but it only took a couple minutes for our warm skin to get used to it and realize that it was actually very nice. The girls began scouting the sand for shells, or other items. They found several unusual things fairly quickly: a small terra cotta jug which would hold about half a pint of liquid, and a couple small statues of Hindu gods. Rajen later explained that people will set up small shrines on the beach, and provide offerings, and leave them for the tide to take them away. We spent a few hours there (enough for my back to get a little pink….) and then headed back to the hotel.
Alexandra was exhausted and laid down, where she stayed until the following morning. I was using my laptop, and Kalyssa was bored. She was very eager to meet the girl that lives at the guesthouse, named Athena (which is coincidentally Kalyssas middle name). After a period of time, I heard Kalyssa chatting away, and another voice in the dialogue as well. This continued for 15 minutes or so that I noticed, and then up comes Kalyssa, who lets me know that she found Athena, who is 13, they’d already introduced each other, talked about school, Kalyssa showed her her YouTube video of her playing drums with a band in Nashville, and they played a round of Uno. Once again, Kalyssa is obviously the “shy” child…..At 6:30 happy hour began, and Rajen started passing around drinks. I started with a beer that is manufactured in Mauritius called Ti La Biére. After this, Rajen provided a cocktail, and once dinner was served, he poured the wine. One other family was staying in the guesthouse at the same time. It was a French husband and wife celebrating their 50th anniversary with their son, who was roughly my age. As the meal of Mauritian sausage, a noodle dish, and several other sides was served buffet style, Rajen and Sandy’s son came from work to join us as well. His name was Kingsley, and he is a 20 something year old graphic designer. I spent a good deal of the evening talking with him.
After dinner was finished, we continued to mingle with each other, as Rajen continued to serve some after dinner aperitifs. Around 10:00, I was exhausted and turned in for the evening.
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