Mauritius

We arrived in Mauritius on Thursday, April 7, approaching Port Louis from the west after crossing from the east over the north end of the island. The city is on the west side of the island, facing Africa. The island is volcanic and closely resembles Papeete and Hawaii in profile. The French ran this place for most of the 18th century. With the Napoleonic Wars, Britain eventually took over in 1812. I would imagine the Suez Canal and the British possession of East Africa made this island not terribly important as a coaling stop. Mauritius is named after Maurice, a Dutch prince. So it is the nation of Maurice. Maurice sounds like a prenom, and I can’t think of many other countries with such a designation. Everyone knows of St. Moritz, but that’s a city. Only Mauritania, how strange! This calls for some research. At any rate, we took a walk around the downtown, visited the market, found a fabric store, and the church of St. Louis. The people on the street were mostly ethnic Indians, with a minority of black Africans. There is quite a bit of recent development on the waterfront and the shopping offered a wide selection of up-scale clothing. The market displayed bountiful supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the prices for these locally grown goods was similar to prices at our local price-chopper. I include a statue honoring their first French governor. The people speak French and English and a local dialect. The post office dates from 1868. There is international banking here and of course, high-end tourism. The next day brought us Reunion, which is about 150 miles southwest of Mauritius. A landslide prevented us from visiting the main town, St. Deny. So we traveled in the other direction to a beach town, St Giles. Reunion is part of French overseas department and is sincerely French. The island resembles Maui, the roads are excellent, and there is even an active volcano. For Frenchmen who want a tropical paradise with their croissant, this is it. No hula here. Your pension can be generated in Paris and your Euros are pumped out at the local ATM here. It probably takes as much time to get here from Paris as it does, NY to Honolulu. You don’t hear much about Reunion but it seemed very nice. I wanted very much to visit the main town, but this will have to wait. From here, it’s still 1500 miles to Durban, South Africa. All pictures today are from Mauritius.