MAURITIUS *SPRING BREAK*

sorrry its taken SO long to put these up! the internet on this side of the world is pretty much non-existant!!! miss you all so much!!!! xoxoxxo

MAURITIUS - *springbreakkkk = )*

After 5 more days at sea, we arrived in Mauritius on Saturday! I really didn’t know what to expect from Mauritius because I had heard it was pretty much just like a spring break for us. That’s exactly what it ended up being too. When I got off the ship on Saturday morning, a group of us took the water taxi from the ship straight into the city of Port Louis. We did some errands, went to the ATM/bank, did a little shopping and then ate a quick lunch. We had to be back at the ship at noon to catch our taxi. A group of 12 of us rented a villa on “flic en flac” beach about an hour away. The majority of Semester at Sea students rented villas on this beach or another beach around the island. Our hour long taxi ride was interesting. We got to see a lot while driving through the city and then towards the ocean. The mountains are absolutely gorgeous and the city is CROWDED. As you could guess, there is a LOT of traffic! The taxi was made for 11 passengers and we had 12. Oh well! Nothing we could do. One of the kids sat backwards on the floor of the taxi and two guys sat in the front seat next to each other. Plus we had all our bags that were packed for the next four days! Like I said, it was an interesting cab ride. Once we got to the villa, we unpacked and quickly went to the supermarket to get some necessary goods. The villas ended up being much better than I thought they would be. We had three of them for the 12 of us which was MORE than enough room. Each villa had three bedrooms in it, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a huge living room.
After getting settled in, we went to the beach. It was just like being in Cancun or somewhere like that for Spring Break. When we walked onto the beach it was packed with all semester at sea students and a couple locals mixed in. After staying there for a couple of hours, we went back to the villa got ready and headed into town for dinner and then to the bar afterwards. There was one bar that everyone went to from Semester at Sea called Shots. It is a strictly tourist bar so the locals weren’t allowed in. The villa included breakfast all three mornings so we woke up to them cooking breakfast for us. After that we headed back to the beach for a couple of hours but it was way too hot to even sit out there the whole day. Who would have ever thought that I would leave the beach early because of it being too hot?? I would have loved to stay and just stay in the water but we couldn’t leave our stuff on the beach and go in the water. So we went back to the villa and hung out all day in the pool there. After getting ready and stuff again we went to dinner at this restaurant called Chez Pépé. It had REALLY good pizza and awesome Italian food too! After dinner we went back out to the same bar as the night before.
We had breakfast made for us again on the next day. Instead of staying around Flic en Flac beach for the day, Julie, Ananda, Kourtney and I wanted to rent bikes. We walked around for almost an hour trying to find somewhere but they were all sold out everywhere! We did, however, see that there was a waterpark across the island. So we decided that we wanted to go there. We took the hour long taxi ride and arrived at this waterpark. When we got to the parking lot, we quickly realized that it wasn’t a very popular place. There was only about one car in the whole parking lot! The four of us were pretty nervous and joked around about it, but we decided to go check it out anyway. We got our ticket and went inside. We were about four of 12 or so people in the whole park! One of the slides was broken and there were only three others. We went down the slides a couple of times and then went in the wave pool. After about a half an hour of going down the same slides over and over, we decided it was time to go. Luckily, our taxi driver was awesome. He made a few phone calls and set us up to go on a speed boat ride to an island for the afternoon. Once we were on this island, the people made us a meal of fish, chicken, and this homemade coleslaw stuff. It was actually really good! After finishing the meal, we went back on the boat to another island that was very touristy. It was beautiful though. We laid on the beach for the afternoon until the boat came back and picked us up. The taxi was another hour ride home. After getting back to our villa, we made some dinner, and got ready to go out to the bar again. The bar that night, was closing down and having a private party for MV Explorer students only! That was us!!! It was packed with all Semester at Sea students. It was so much fun! The next morning we woke up and did some shopping then all 12 of us got back into the taxi van and made our way back to the ship. Once back in Port Louis, we did some more shopping and walking around, sent some post cards, and then went on the ship before we departed for INDIA! Well my spring break was really fun and now I can’t wait to get to India (furthest possible point away from home! EEEEE)! MISS YOU ALL SO MUCH! LOVE YOUUU xoxoxo