August 7, 2010: Trip to North Mauritius

, Finally the weekend. I was better prepared for this one. My colleague from Singapore, Derek had reached here on Thursday. So it was decided that we would go out to explore some part of Mauritius. We decided to take a tour of North Mauritius

We arranged with our taxi person for the tour. A tour of North Mauritius is about Rs 2,000/- while that of south is Rs 2,500/-. So the itinerary was to check out the beaches of North Mauritius, some garden, etc. let me describe one by one

I started from home at about 9:00 AM, picked up Derek from his hotel. Then we went off to Port Louis first. We visited the Aparvasi Ghat at Port Louis. This is the place where the first laborers from India landed. This was the immigration point in the 19th century for the start of the new experiment of using workers instead of slaves in the sugarcane fields. The laborers were kept in the Aparvasi Ghat for a period of about 2 weeks to make sure that there is no contagious disease etc among the travelers. Post which they would be taken to the sugar cane fields to work. Aparvasi Ghat has been declared as UN heritage monument in 2006. Manmohan Singh had visited the place and a monument has been built for the occasion. (I am not able to upload the photo here, hence uploaded at my picasa album at http://picasaweb.google.com/georgeckuriakose/Mauritius)

After this we went for the beach trip. None of us bought the beach wear and hence the trip was more to see the beauty of Mauritius than to jump into the waters. Anyway every place around Mauritius is a beach. I think this is what separates it from places like Kerala or Singapore. This is Goa where you have numerous beaches in which you can get into the water. So we started off with Troux Aux beach, Grand Baie and Cap Malheurex. The Troux Aux beach (I think) had a Hindu temple by the beach. (Now I am confused with the names and the description of the beaches)

Grand Baie is the tourist spot on the North side. There are a number of shops and restaurants around the place. The place is also very costly. Paid MUR 1700/- for lunch for 2 and that too without any starters, desserts or drinks. Cap Malheurex is the northern most tip of Mauritius.

The difference in the beaches in the North is that they are very calm as compared to the ones in the West (Flic en Flac). The surfing is done on the western beaches, while the beaches in the north is good to laze around. Best thing to do with your family would be pack your car with the picnic goodies, find a good spot on one of the beaches, park your vehicle and laze the whole day. Wow, what a life . Will do this once I take a car on hire.

After the beach visit, we went to the botanical garden. The garden has a lake with the giant water lilies. The leaves are round in shape and can grow upto 2 m in diameter. But as this was not the season, they had not grown to that size but were still huge. Even a bird could sit on the leaf without it sinking. The garden also nurtures a number of large tortoises. These tortoises can live for more than 100 years

Since, it was just about 4 and we had the taxi for 2 more hours, we were wondering what to do. That is when Derek suggested that we go to Eureka Creole Mansion. This is one of the oldest French houses in Mauritius and there is a waterfall next to it which is very beautiful. So we went off to Creole Mansion. It is about 200 years old but still well maintained. The things inside the house were just fabulous. The most interesting part was the backdrop of the mountain behind the mansion. Check out my picasa photos. About 100m from the mansion is the beautiful Eureka waterfalls. What a lovely sight. We could see 3 waterfalls one after the other

So that brings us to end of a lovely day. Too tired to do anything else for that day. So I went back home, had a nice bath and went off to sleep.