Have been wanting to visit Mauritius for ages and finally managed to work out a dive vacation down here to see this part of the world. Such a long flight from England though. Our flight left late on a Thursday night and arrived the next afternoon later. We were fortunate to be in business class but there was a baby in there too. I'm so past the age of traveling with kids that any children in and around my seating area just puts my teeth on edge. I've been in the planes with the screaming children and get such a headache because the non-stop screaming and whaling and whining goes right through the head. So seeing a baby on board close to my seat made me quite apprehensive on how the flight might be. Luckily for once, this was a good baby and this child chose to get up early the next morning, much earlier than I wanted, but there was no shrill screaming so - Good Baby!
Mauritius airport was awesome. It is beautiful built, with waterfalls, as you are heading to your luggage and immigration and quite pleasant. Then, what a surprise, they had dedicated lines for the business class passengers. Ooohhhhh. would that all airports do this! AND they had many immigration officers. There were 5 set up for the business class people and as the economy class people began arriving, more and more officers came out of hiding to check them into the country. wow. how nice is that. so very impressed and we've just barely checked into the country.
We've made arrangements for an apartment in Flic En Flac, on the opposite side of the island, so we're getting a car. Thought very specifically that I had rented a car that gave me a free second driver but messed up here. the rental company pointed out on the contract that it said "second driver is $__.__ a day." Pooey, that means, I'm the driver because my husband hates driving in foreign countries. At least they drive on the left which I am quite used to doing since we currently live in England. Hoping into a small Hyundai, we head off with hubby being the navigator and stop right off the airport grounds at a small gas station that sells SIM cards. We're set. Car, local phone number, GPS (sort of - in his phone) and on our way to paradise. We called our hotel as we're running around an hour late. No worries!
Phone GPS's are a bit harder to follow than the Garmin or TomTom of cars. For one thing, this voice would only tell me when to exit a round-about once I was right on top of the exit. So I missed a couple. At least it didn't tell me to "ASAP, Made a U-Turn". Nope, this one just happily re-routed me. worked out ok though, only took us 3 wrong turns, wriggled down a couple of single track roads, and finally seeing our hotel sign quite by accident so follow it to our lodging.
Our apartment is very nice but it's all electric including the stove burners. So we have to remember to turn this switch for the A/C, that switch for the hot water, another switch for the stove top, and so forth. We have mosquito burners to plug in but nothing for the wasps that seem to love to wing their way into the flat when they see an open window. Have had to be a wasp killer on occasion.
We passed a Monoprix (French grocery store) on the way into Flic En Flac so we set off to get some groceries and while gone, our dive shop called to give us the pick up time for the morning. YEA! Diving.
Now, are we going to do anything this afternoon, as in "other stuff"? Nope, by the time we had done all the grocery shopping, unpacking, checking out the apartment and switches, it was after 6 p.m. and both of us are flagged. Usually I don't get jet lag but getting up at the equivalent of 3 a.m. with the Baby on Board this morning, I am ready to eat and hit the hay before diving tomorrow. So a nice dinner of cheese and crackers and some fruit, we are in bed and reading our kindles and asleep shortly. But we felt we had a really good first 1/2 day here.
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