With just three days to go we did our first (and probably last) bit of exploration and left the hotel for the first time (on land) to take a coach trip around the south of the island.
I have been feeling very lethargic and tired and lacking in energy for a few days and wondered if it might have been because of our basic inertia. It's possible. I felt a whole lot better today, which was lucky as it was a long day of sight-seeing. The bus left at 8.30am and didn't get back until after 6pm and they crammed an awful lot in in that time, but I really enjoyed all of it.
Mauritius is really, spectacularly beautiful, especially in the south where much of the landscape remains unspoiled (although apparently about 80% of the island is given over to sugar cane, which suggests that some of it is more farmed than it appeared). We saw beautiful gorges, amazing waterfalls, the crater of the volcano that this island once was (and could possibly be again), the strange nobbly mountains left behind and a bizarre natural phenomena called the Seven Coloured Earth, where seven shades of soil lie in strange mounds next to each other. Personally I would have preferred the colours to be a bit more distinct as they were mainly variations on brown, but you can't have everything.
We were shown around by a trilingual tourist guide (who spoke Creole, French and English) called Angela, and were part of a group of six - a French couple, A Finnish couple and us, so her language skills were most useful (The Finns spoke English luckily).
We went to a glass making factory where you can see the hand print (in glass) of Nicole Appleton and Mark Lawson. Not just them, unfortunately. If it was that would make this surely the best museum in the world. They could call it "The Mauritian Museum featuring the Glass Hands of Nicole Appleton and Mark Lawson AND NO ONE ELSE!" In fact all the celebrities who had visited the attraction had been asked to have their hands cast (and I think they make a clay version first, though I'd like to think they had to plunge their hands into molten glass). I was a little affronted that no one asked me to do a hand print. Do they not get "Servants" in Mauritius? Do they not get the schools TV programme where I played the voice of a spider (although the tape "went wrong" so they had to get someone else to do it in the broadcast show)? My tiny hand would have looked good up amongst all those others. They could pretend they had got it off an elf.
I had been hoping to see a dodo - it was the whole reason I came to this bloody place initially, so you can imagine my disappointment when Angela told me that the bird had died out in the seventeenth century. What a gip!
Apparently the dim-witted bird had been wiped out by Dutch sailors who hunted it for sport (though probably not for meat as most reports say it didn't taste too good) and also introduced rats to the island who ate all the dodo eggs. Bye bye dodo. Thanks a lot Holland.
The Dutch were also blamed for destroying the indigenous population of giant tortoises, which they apparently they boiled down to make sun tan lotion and it took about 20 tortoises to get a thimble full of the stuff (I am pretty sure I've got that right).
Later on Angela told us the Dutch had introduced a palm tree to the island that was a traveler's friend as it had a supply of fresh water at the top (possibly rain water collected in its leaves - I had had quite a lot of beer and some rum by this point). They dotted them around the island so they'd always have something to drink. I thought "Phew, at least the Dutch did something to help!" But Angela wasn't finished informing us that the trees' roots destroyed all the indigenous palm trees. "Blimey, I wouldn't like to be Dutch right now," I remarked and the Finnish man behind me said, "I was just thinking that." We had been united in our hatred of the Dutch.
And maybe that's what has allowed the Mauritian people to get along so peacefully and despite their many religions, races and cultural backgrounds. They all fucking hate the Dutch so much that none of the rest of their differences matter.
I think the rest of us could learn something from this.
Muslim, Jew, Christian and Hindu, unite in your disdain for the dodo killing, giant tortoise boiling, tree uprooting Netherlanders.
Is Georgia Dutch? I know for sure she's not English. So let's say she is.
Other Giant Tortoises have been shipped in to replace the extinct ones (though of a slightly different species) but the dodo wasn't found anywhere else so that is gone. We saw a few of the giant tortoises at a nature reserve we visited and got up close and could say hello to these strange freaks. I could only think of that bizarre video I had seen in Newcastle last July where a Giant Tortoise tried and failed to mount his partner for about 15 minutes.
I didn't try to mount the tortoise though.
And anyone who says I did, or that I tried to make a hole in its shell is lying.
Some idiot tourists were sitting on one of the tortoises for photos and Angela, who I liked more and more, went and told them off. The twats.
It was a full and brilliant day and it blew the cobwebs away and cured me of my maladies.
For a second I regretted not getting out and seeing more. But only for a second, because it's been great to just rilll (or chillax as idiots would have it) and I think we appreciated the jaunt all the more because of our inactivity.
You should come to Mauritius. It's brilliant. And according to a Hello magazine that my girlfriend was reading (honest) Prince Harry is on holiday here at the moment. Though I haven't seen him.
The only person I have talked to is that Finnish bloke, who hates the Dutch as much as me.
