Saturday, May 4, 2024

Port Louis, Mauritius 🇲🇺

Land ahoy! After seven sea days, Port Louis was a welcome sight ! With our fellow shipmates, we were eager to walk off for just a couple of hours of sightseeing and shopping on terra firma, while Onward refueled for our journey to Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about 2,000 kilometers (1,100 nautical miles) off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. The once dominated sugar plantation-based colony became independent in 1968. Mauritius is diverse in ethnicity, culture, language and faith. It is the only African country where Hinduism is the most practiced religion and is recognized as the only one fully democratic. A welfare state, the government provides free universal healthcare, education, and mostly free public transportation. It is consistently ranked as the most peaceful country in Africa.

Known for its biodiversity, the island was the only known home of the dodo, 🦤which became extinct soon after human settlement. The poor flightless bird is now the symbol of the country, on the currency,and national emblem but is hardly extinct in the ubiquitous souvenir shops.

The poet Hilaire Belloc included the following poem about the dodo in his Bad Child’s Book of Beasts from 1896:

The Dodo used to walk around,
And take the sun and air.
The sun yet warms his native ground –
The Dodo is not there!

The voice which used to squawk and squeak
Is now for ever dumb –
Yet may you see his bones and beak
All in the Mu-se-um.

We really wanted to purchase this Dodo crystal sculpture, but even if we consumed the contents… it is a heavy flightless bird after all, so it stayed in the duty free shop!

On May 3, we enjoyed a fun evening aboard photographing the gorgeous sunset and a dinner and show under the stars — simply fantastic!