Mauritius continued...

Once again we boarded our buses to head to the Chinese pagoda. At this point we were simply exhausted already and quite hungry. However, we had two more stops to go before lunch. The Chinese pagoda was rather small and was decorated on the exterior with Chinese characters and red paint. The interior was overwhelmingly filled with gold products and gold leaf. One woman was inside doing her devotions and we created quite a commotion. I felt bad because this woman did not know that a group of 40 SAS people were going to be tromping through during her prayers. HOWEVER, the side of me that loves to see religion in action was incredibly excited to watch the woman and observe her as she moved from altar to altar.

The main altar was set up with a table up front on which candles and incense holders were set and behind the table was an area for statues. This entire pagoda was not very big, so there was not much room from the table to the area with the statues. At one point during the woman’s prayers she circled around the table 3 times while talking quietly, so at some point I would like to find out more about why she circled the table. On the left side was another altar which was a miniature version of the central altar with different figured behind the candle and incense table. Near the entrance on this same left side were what looked like mini tombstones with Chinese writing on them. I have no idea what they actually represent, so there’s something else I should look into! Near the right side entrance there was a bright red gong which the woman rang before she left the pagoda. This right side altar was much more vibrant than the other two. There was bright yellow and green paint and an altar which had more bright gold Chinese characters. As we exited the pagoda, there was the cutest little dog on the front steps and so of course most of us avoided the warnings of Dr. Matt and we petted it a little bit. Rabies here we come.

Our final stop before lunch was on the top of a mountain that looked down over all of Port Louis. From up top we could view the pagoda, the mosque and just the beautiful sights of Mauritius. The water was bright cerulean, the sky was the clearest baby blue and there was another mountain across the city from where we were. That mountain was lush and green and had these great natural terraced rock steps up to the peak that we could see with our zoom lenses!

I do not remember the name of the restaurant at which we dined for lunch, but it was this great open air restaurant with a rustic feeling. It was set back in the woods and we had this great rice and chicken meal. Jon, the editor for our voyage DVD, was with us and was the lone vegetarian at our table and got the same meal we received, just without the chicken and less rice! It was a little spicy, but boy oh boy was it good! We quickly finished our meal and then we headed to the river we had heard running during our meal. There was a little waterfall, and we had to cross a little wooden bridge to get to the prettiest part. HOWEVER, we quickly remembered the downfall of natural beauty when we were absolutely covered in mosquito bites that began to itch immediately!

We visited an enormous home quite near this restaurant that was home to some rich Europeans. It was beautiful and it was old and contained many antiques, but I was slightly bored. I know this was something important to the history of Mauritius, but I just didn’t care much. Call me cultureless. Haha We then drove to our final stop of the official tour which was an Indian Cultural Center. We first walked through a museum which described the first Indian settlers to Mauritius and the second floor contained a photo gallery of Hindu religious festivals and I became incredibly excited when I saw a picture of Holi, which is a festival where lots of powders of colors are thrown in the air and all over! To be honest, I do not remember what the festival is for, but it just seems so exciting and festive!

After walking through the museum we sat outside at some picnic tables because we were just tired! It had been a long day of simply walking around a lot of places, and anyone who has been on a bus tour before can attest to how tiring it can be! Another little animal graced our presence at the picnic tables: a little cat! One again, we ignored Dr. Matt and enjoyed playing before we were shipped over to the performance center to view some Indian dances. We were shown three different varieties of dances by instructors and students of the cultural center. Afterwards several of us were interested in going to the Eucharist that Desmond Tutu was preaching and celebrating back in downtown Port Louis at St. James Cathedral. There were 5 students and 5 adults who wanted to go, so we commandeered one of the three minibuses that had provided our transportation throughout the day!

Kate and Giles Wayland-Smith, Lois and Mark Helland and Arnie the ship shrink and five of us headed back into town and just made it to have seats in the back of the cathedral! There was massive media coverage and people were quite dressed up for this affair! I sat next to two girls from Mauritius named Zohra and Azraa. They were 13 year twins from Port Louis. They were born in India, lives in England and now reside in Mauritius. They are actually Muslim, but their father wanted them to hear from Desmond Tutu, and so he brought them. Zohra and Azraa and I talked the whole time before the service and then before they left, we exchanged email addresses! I never thought I would meet a pair of cool teenagers when I wanted to go to Desmond’s service!

The Archbishop of the Province of the Indian Ocean was there as well as several other bishops of the region and other religious leaders from the Island. The Archbishop of the Indian Ocean was awesome and he was really funny. He made a joke about when he goes to Lambeth Conference in England with all of the other bishops of the Anglican Communion, he gets to say that he has a whole ocean to himself, which no other bishop can say! While everyone else wondered what Lambeth was, I giggled quite a bit. Haha The only downfall about having Desmond Tutu on our ship is that we have heard all of his stories 3 times over and I heard many of the same ones again at the service. Nonetheless, it was an amazing experience! He danced out during the processional which was fun, and it reminded me of back in the day when Bishop Grew would dance out of convention Eucharists.

After the service we all decided to go out for dinner since we had not yet eaten after the craziness of our day and it was approaching 9 o’clock. I had missed meeting up with my friends to go out to dinner, so I was glad to be able to still go out and eat some food. We finally settled on an Indian restaurant called Namaste. I had the same dish we had had earlier in the day for lunch, but I still can’t remember the name of it for the life of me! It was good company and good conversation and enjoyable. Halfway through the meal, some of my friends appeared from the next room to use the restroom and it turns out they had come to the same restaurant to eat dinner! How funny. They finished before we did, so I decided to stay with my dinner party and eat my wonderful naan! After we finished our meal, we walked back to the ship through the mall area and saw our crazy crew and students drinking at the bars. I almost stayed out when I saw my friends, but I was just tired and decided to be a party pooper! I relaxed, got some froyo and went to sleep! Oh and I contacted Elise and Jen and decided to spend the next day with them!

Day Three: Seeing the Island with a Random Taxi Driver!

Bryan, Jen, Elise and I were scheduled to go around the island with this taxi driver that the three of them had met the first day in port and had arranged for him to meet them again on our last day. Bryan ultimately decided not to go, but we still had quite the day full of random adventures! Our first stop was a scenic overlook of a volcanic crater site that was now a lake and of the beautiful view all over. There were a ton of SAS kids with personal drivers too who we would continue to see the whole day through. After this we continued our drive to the waterfall, but we stopped at the biggest statue of Shiva that I have ever seen. It was simply enormous. I have a picture of me standing beneath it which truly shows its height.

Our next stop was a Hindu temple on the shore of a lake on the island. There was a series of steps leading down to the lake where there were several altars in the water, where people hiked up their clothing in order to wade in and present their offerings and prayers. There were also a lot of monkeys simply roaming free around the area which was both and scary when they were bare their teeth. At the entrance to the interior of the temple was a Shiva linga which was a popular altar that had people lining up to pray. We began to walk inside and forgot to remove our shoes so someone promptly reminded us. There were people performing pujas all over the interior, even though it was quite small. One man was placing the dot on everyone’s forehead and Jen and Elise went and got one. I went back and forth and I ultimately decided to not receive one. Most of the tourists were not doing it and I did not know if it was disrespectful or not to do so, so I just opted not to. We also saw some of the cutest little kitty cats as we walked back up the steps to our cab and we resisted the temptation of playing with them, for once heeding Dr. Matt’s advice.

We then went to this amazing waterfall site, Alexandra Falls, which people on the ship had been raving about. We had to walk along this long path and we first found a little waterfall-ish area, and almost stopped, but we decided that there was no way people were in love with this little waterfall, no matter how beautiful it was! We continued down this path, and we passed a bunch of native Mauritians who were dressed 80s style and carried this great boombox with them. Haha it was like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or something! We finally found the waterfall and my oh my was it pretty! It was a fairly long drop even though the volume did not seem to be enormous. It was just surrounded by forest. We were on the opposite side of the valley, and so it gave us this great overlook to the forested valley below and the entire length of the waterfall. This cute couple speaking French took pictures of us on the overlook and we took pictures of them….they looked pretty touristy, so I don’t think they were from Mauritius, and we spoke in broken English and broken French to each other trying to be gracious and friendly. Haha

Our driver then took us to the over side of the valley which was the side the waterfall was on. It was much more touristy, but still pretty fabulous. There a lot more monkeys and people would give the monkeys what was left of their pineapples. The monkeys became pretty fierce and we stepped back quite a few times when they started growling. Monkeys are not nice animals…don’t trust the curious george writer!

To end the day we stopped at a bank to get money to pay our drive, who did not give us a set price. He just said, pay me whatever you think the day was worth. He really was a wonderful driver and took us to all of the places we want to see, so we each gave him about twenty dollars worth of rupees. And Jen says I must not forget to say that I fell asleep on the way home in the cab. Haha I got one final picture of the Mauritius Molasses Company drum that was by our ship and made the air smell so sweet. After that I stayed on the ship and caught up with friends and then we departed the wonderful world of Mauritius after locating several of our shipmates! Au revoir, Mauritius!

So Mauritius, So Delicious

Day One: What the hell is there to do here?

I did not wake up early in the morning to view arrival into this port because….we didn’t pull into the port until later in the day! We were scheduled to arrive at our usual 0800, but the previous night we were warned that we might not pull into port until close to 1600. However, we arrived at a happy medium of 1200 but all of the field office activities for the day were cancelled and refunded. When we disembarked the ship, our first task was to find where the water taxis were located to take us over to the main part of Port Louis. We were told at pre-port that it was a fairly long walk into town from where we were ported, so the water taxi was the way to go.

We headed to the right off of the gangway and walked for a few minutes and thought it was going no where, so we headed back toward the ship, only to be herded again in the direction we were originally headed! The water taxis were the ricketiest little motor boats ever…you had to jump over about a foot and a half of open water in order to get to the steps that led you down to the dock where the water taxis were waiting. We had to pay $1 each to make the 5 minute trip across the water and we were let off right at the front of this shopping mall. There was everything from restaurants to Burberry stores and other designer labels. It was as if we stepped off into a designer outlet mall. I started off the day with Jen, Elise and Bryan and we just started wandering around. The goal of most people staying in Port Louis the first day was to find some markets! We saw the post office when we first came out of the mall and then it was just a wide expanse of city! We did not have a map so we just started walking! We found a market that was all food and vegetables on the first floor…it was really exciting because the part we were in was mostly where local people were buying their produce and hanging out and talking. We wanted to find a travel agency to see about a villa or just hiring a driver for the day, and we ran into Jeff, Brianne, Ashley, Cristie, Janet, Jika, Brad and Brandon. (haha or I think Brandon was there now that I am looking back!)

I split off with the bigger group and we wandered our way through the back streets of Port Louis. We found some other really great small little markets and they were all little local ones for the neighborhoods we were in. We stopped by a travel agency again so Brad could try to arrange travel, but it ended up not working out. We walked back toward the ship and stopped at a restaurant right by the mall to get some drinks. I was going to try one of the local beers, but I decided to get a chocolate milkshake instead. Haha typical me. I tried some of the beers my friends ordered and they were okay…I mean, I hate beer, so they were palatable. We took the water taxi back to the ship and ate dinner on the ship. I decided not to go out on the town because I didn’t want to be exhausted after Mauritius. I stayed on the ship and went to the 7^th deck with Bryan and we talked a little bit about life on the ship and then I just went back to my room to read and to sleep.

Day Two: It’s a good thing I like learning about religion…

This day was spent on a Semester at Sea Field Program called “Rainbow Culture and Religion.” Mauritius is one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the world. We began our day at a Tamil temple. The tour guide just simply kept saying Tamil temple and not mentioning that Tamil was Hindu. I was lucky and saw several of the statues and knew we were at a Hindu temple, but many people were confused as to what sort of religious place we were visiting. It is called a Tamil temple because the people who began and still worship at the temple were from the Tamil Nadu region of India. The port city of Chennai is in Tamil Nadu. Tamil is also a language. In many ways, it seems as thought Tamil is really a distinct culture among Indian traditions.

The temple from our vantage point at the entrance consisted of a long red walkway with golden poles on either side down the aisle. There was an entryhouse type of building which was decorated with many circular paintings and a few statues of gods and the same red aisle in the middle. Before we entered into this building we were required to remove our shoes, and we left them outside of the gate that guarded the building. There was an absolute life giving force that was exuded from the paintings and decorations and we were not even looking at the main temple yet! The top of this initial structure was covered with carvings of the different Hindu deities They love Ganesh in Mauritius, and Ganesh is the elephant headed god. He’s pretty fabulous looking.

We circumnavigated the temple and took the opportunity to stop at the shrines to the various gods around the temple structure. I recognized many of my American Religious Pluralism course with Ellen at BW and so that was nice. Our tour guide was friendly enough but not very informative. It felt nice that I could explain the very little that I knew. I was very excited to point out Lakshmi and I don’t really remember why. Haha There was a school group there and they were being shown around the grounds by their teachers, but they were speaking Creole, so I couldn’t gain any extra information from listening into them. One must be a Hindu to enter the main temple, so we could only peer in from the outside. Like the first building we saw, it was colorful and out side posted on the wall, I found what I think might be the name of the temple, but the rest of the writing was in Tamil, so this is what I think the name is: Hindu Maha Jana Sangam. We walked around a little more, but then boarded the bus to head to our next location.

We arrived at a Roman Catholic Church. We were not told the name of the church and I could not find the name anywhere. I am still hunting through other blogs to see if anyone else found the name. There was a service in progress while we were there, so that made it slightly awkward to be the Americans in the back gawking and taking photographs. They were singing some hymns in French and I believe another was in Creole so I took some video hoping that would be better than the flash on my camera and I really wanted to get some of the chanting! It was a beautiful church. I am not an expert on religious structures, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t gothic. Haha And then before we knew it, out buses were leaving and that was it. Haha

Our next stop was a Muslim Cultural Center. We were told we were going to be visiting a mosque and many of us were a little disappointed when the only spaces for prayer in the whole place were a room for men and a room for women. These rooms were just off of the main lobby and had green carpets and prayer rugs in the corners. The room for men was much larger than the room for women and the room for the men had a fan. It’s so bad, but one of the girls on the trip kept saying she was going to move the fan into the room for women!

After waiting for half an hour for our tour, we were taken up to this incredible air conditioned room. Yes, that is what I remember first, because we were sweating our butts off! We viewed a short film about the history of Muslims in Mauritius and of the center we were currently visiting. After the film he took a few questions. A lot of the questions were about Islam in general because we had not discussed it much on the ship yet. Once again American Religious Pluralism had given me enough background to know what the heck I was seeing and hearing. After the film our guide took us to the library on the top level of the cultural center. There was an amazing view overlooking Port Louis. There were many beautiful copies of the Koran and several volumes of other books that created beautiful golden phrases in Arabic when placed together in order. There was also a section with modern magazines for Muslim teenagers. It was interesting to go through and read some of the Muslim “Dear Abby” sections and see what this organization was recommending to the readers. There were three different magazines that fell into this category if I remember correctly and they were three distinct viewpoints. One was very hardline and would probably fall into Islamic fundamentalism, one was middle of road, and one seemed nearly secular. We were led back downstairs and given juice boxes before we left. Guava juice boxes are not so hot. Just trust me on this. Okay…I’ll finish Mauritius soon, so this should tide my family over so they leave me the hell alone! I am working 40 hour weeks, taking 9 credits and babysitting 10 hours a week, so I am a little busy to update!!