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Four days after departing Cape Town, we arrived at Port Louis, Mauritius for a brief visit. I woke up in time for pulling into port at sunrise around 6:20am and it was worth it. We pulled into the harbor surrounded by green lush mountains and a beautiful sunrise.
Our stay in Mauritius was only for about 10 hours, and so we all knew that it would go by quickly. I went for a run with a bunch of students from the "in port running club" as soon as we could get off the ship. Mauritius is humid and hot! It was really muggy and hot there so we got a good sweat and work out.
The rest of the day turned out to be just eating lunch and walking around Grand Bay, a northern costal town on the main island. Unfortunately, my plans to go surfing with a couple students didn't pan out as one of them ran into some ATM card issues which ended up seperating us. It turned out okay though because I had a chance to walk around some of the local streets with some SAS students, interact with some locals, and get some gelato in town. I did also go for a brief swim in the Indian Ocean. The water was very blue, clear, and warm but there weren't much of any waves that I saw...or surfers.
Mauritius seems to be quite poor in many areas. A lot of dirty small houses, huts, and run down old buildings. The island is about 80% people of Indian descent. It had an interesting mix of south asians, africans, and a substantial amount of chinese people on the island. Especially interesting considering it was closest to Africa. Our cab driver on the way back to the ship was half chinese half Mauritian and we got to hear about his experience growing up in Mauritius.
Overall, we got a very brief glimpse of the island and before we knew it we were back boarding the ship. It would have been nice to stay a bit longer and hike some of the mountains and do some surfing, but we had to be on our way to India. It was definitely weird to get back on the ship after only a few hours to explore.
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