Mauritius Week Two

Outside the Market

                                                                                

Park commemorating Mauritian history

Old Immigration Depot

                                                                               

Cathedral with citadel on hill behind

Mauritius Week Two

July 10 2016, at home

We continued to enjoy being in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius. The tourism office and sites are not advertised very well so it took awhile to track down some of the more interesting places. I guess most people are on tours.

There is a Unesco World heritage site along the harbour called Aapravasi Ghat. It is the former immigration building where the indentured workers first disembarked and went through their few days of getting checked in. It has been rebuilt as a museum. When the British government abolished slavery in their colonies, they chose Mauritius for what they called the "Great Experiment", ie the use of indentured labour to replace slaves. Its success there led other colonial powers  to adopt the system.

We spent a morning reading all the details and history in the museum. The museums have been free which I enjoy because you don't feel you have to read everything in one day. There was some abuse of the system over the years, but pressure from abroad kept improvements happening. Most of the population of Mauritius arrived this way between 1834 and 1920.

We also visited a small natural history museum. There were many displays of the fish, insects, plants, animals of the area. There is a citadel on one of the hills in town built by the British. The climb to the top gave a great view of the city. Today it overlooks the horse racing track. Being a Saturday, we watched a few races. We have walked enough streets now to have found the Chinese and Indian areas, and seen much of the old colonial architecture.

During the week other boats were arriving from Rodrigues. We enjoyed visiting and sharing info during  several "happy hours". The day we left was the last day of Ramadan and all the stores were closed so no last minute shopping. I enjoyed seeing all the beautiful Indian dresses being worn around town. At 5:15pm we took the last bus to the airport, an hour and a half trip to the southeast.

The four boats in the BPO are to sail to Reunion Aug 30. Two of them have still not crossed the Indian Ocean. The consensus now is to do the trip to Durban about mid Sept. From there we would work along the coast whenever the weather allowed to Cape Town. On average this takes about a month. Rob and I haven't decided yet whether to spend Christmas in Cape Town or Brazil. Lots of water under the keel before then.