Getting the right balance!
A holiday for me is a tricky balance! Although rest and relaxation is always required - I often find suddenly having 24 hours free quite difficult to contend with! Now if I was a self certified sun worshipper who could tan at a flick of a switch it might be easier! I could lay out in the sunshine soaking up the rays reading a good book! Unfortunately I was blessed with the fairest skin and together we don't mix that well with a whole day of sunbathing! Don't get me wrong I love the sun and hate being cold so I will sit out in the sun for a short while (normally caked in factor 50 and with options for shade readily available), but it doesn't fill a two week holiday for me! This creates the need for balance or as Garry says creates the need to entertain me! Luckily for Garry the hotel had lots of things like T-Shirt painting to keep me quiet!
When booking a holiday we therefore look for two things! Somewhere we can chill and somewhere we can get out and explore! Mauritius seemed like a perfect choice for this.
Now before heading off on holiday I did a lot of research into where we should visit whilst we were here! It is really important to me that we get to see what's behind the hotel and to get out there and explore. We decided to do two very different types of day trips whilst we were here - the first being a trip to the colourful south of Mauritius and the second being a trip out to a beautiful beach. We booked these trips prior to leaving the UK so we could spread them out across our holiday!
There are pros and cons of booking the trips in advance. It certainly gave us the security of knowing we could go, but upon arrival we found out it might have been easier to visit the colourful south via taxi instead of a large group. Upon reflection I will 100% be waiting to book trips once I reach the destination! For information purposes the trip per person cost £85.00, but if we had hired a taxi it would have been around £80.00 in total. We would have had to have paid to get into some attractions, but it still would have been cheaper and more flexible to go via the taxi route. Despite this the trip was amazing!
SO THE ADVENTURE BEGINS......
Trou aux Cerfs was out first destination - a dormant volcano! They are keen that this stays dormant as well! Although I am sure everyone thinks that about every volcano! In this case if it started to erupt it would potentially destroy up to five towns which now all surround the crater.
In all honesty this was probably one of the more uninteresting stops on our tour! I even feel the photo may do the crater more justice than it looked in real life. I think the idea of seeing a volcano is sometimes more exciting than the actual thing! A volcano to me is erupting, lava spilling everywhere and quite dramatic! Although not so dangerous the dormant variety just aren't quite dare devil enough for me! I must be slowly taking after my Great Auntie Edna - she was always visiting active volcanos!
After taking a look at the basin there was little to do at this stop! The view from the top was slightly cloudy for us, but on a clear day it would have offered views of the whole island. We did enjoy some of the fruit the locals were selling though - some of which we believe were Mauritian Guavas.
For those of you who have been on similar trips before - there is always a stop included where you have to visit a museum or a factory. The main aim of this is to entice the tourists into buying something to support the local community! This trip was no different and we were quickly whizzed off to a mini ship building work shop.
We were taken on a tour of the workshop which only took around ten minutes. Now a place like this makes me think my job is easy! It was quite an intense working place with each individual having a small, but specific task to complete. Every section of the boat was split down into sails, masts, cannons. The workers certainly had a lot of patience as it took hours to make the final creation below. Despite how impressive this was we were not fooled into signing up to purchase a boat to bring home to the UK! They were quite persistent that we could fit it into our hand luggage! Can you imagine! We politely declined and fled the workshop.
Now this statue of Shiva was incredible! For two reasons really! The sheer height of the statue was immense. At 108 ft tall it is one of the tallest statues of this specific god in the world! To double the impressiveness they are building a further statue and a lion across the road. This one is going to be even bigger!!!!
The second point is the road that leads up the the statue! It is bigger than some of our motorways in the UK! The width of the road is huge and its purpose is to fit in all the pilgrims that visit every February. They walk and travel from all over the island to worship at the Ganga Talao. This statue marks the end of the road before getting to their destination. I don't think the photo has necessarily demonstrated the sheer size of the statue, but I can guarantee you it is HUGE!
Now it had been mentioned that we might be lucky enough to see some Macaque Monkeys! So I was delighted when we bumped into this little fella!
He was chilling at the entrance to the Ganga Talao. I think he believed it was a good spot to encourage the tourists to leave him some food. Saying that he seemed quite disinterested in the banana that someone tried to give him!
Ganga Talao was the main temple area where people came to give their offerings to their gods. It was a very colourful place with strong smells of incense hovering in the air. It was bustling with people, both sightseeing and attending to worship. A number of people we were with went into the temple to be blessed. As part of this you end up with a small red symbol on your forehead. We had to keep reminding some of the ladies to stop rubbing their foreheads after as they were spreading the dye everywhere.
Outside the temple were a series of the gods being worshipped. We spent a section of time visiting each one before starting to look around the lake. We noticed that people coming to worship would bring gifts and fruits for the gods. It now became very clear why the monkeys thought this was such a great place to hang out. They certainly would not be going hungry at this location. The fruit, incense and gifts were scattered around the main lake which you could walk around subject to having enough time. I think it would have taken roughly 40 minutes to circle the whole lake. Unfortunately we didn't have time on the tour to do this, but we noticed that there were steps to the left side of the lake. After exploring and hiking up relatively quickly we realised these steps took you up to a higher temple. This temple was actively being used, but provided a great view of the main lake and lower temple. It was certainly worth walking up all those steps in the midday heat!
The next series of photos all come from around the Black Gorges National Park and Charmarel area. I wanted to share these as the South of Mauritius is so different to that of the North and the East coast. It's full of leafy green lush trees and beautiful flowers. The total opposite from the crisp white beaches and blue seas we have been already experiencing. We knew that it was going to be different but were really surprised by how breathtaking some of the views were.
One of the main attractions for the day was considered to be the Seven Coloured Earths. I am not going to lie when we first got there I wasn't really sure what all the fuss was about. From the initial entrance it looks like the earth is all just different shades of brown! I was not really feeling it, but I would strongly recommend walking around to the furthest viewing point. It was totally worth it as by gaining some height and a different angle the view was really quite impressive. The colours began to dance in the earthy sand when the sunshine reflected off the mounds. It was like a rainbow. I felt a bit sad that a number of people from our tour didn't embrace the extra view points as they certainly missed out on something quite spectacular.
We also met some amazing new friends here! There were five big tortoises! They were letting people stroke their heads and looked in heaven! They seemed in their element having all the attention. If you want to get up close to a tortoise this is the place to do it as although the botanical gardens have more they are not as accessible.
The journey home certainly reinforced the need to travel via a taxi rather than an organised tour. Although we got to stop for a few amazing photo stops on route it took a really long time to drive up via Port Louis back to our hotel. This is because we had to drop off lots of people at different hotels - this encompassed with rush hour traffic led to a slow end to the day. We certainly will be embracing this way of exploring when we head out to seek the sandy beaches of the north and the botanical gardens next week.
Despite the long journey home we had a fantastic day out exploring - It certainly was a nice break from the hard life of sunbathing and drinking cocktails.........