i'm sorry baby, get in the water!

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 (7:02pm) - Port Louis, Mauritius

whoever said mauritius is the "spring break" of semester at sea is a dirty liar! clearly these people are NOT from usd... land of the TWO spring breaks. so this whole "one day" spring break is not gonna fly with me. mostly blaming it on all you past voyages that BLEW it for us! when sas first started stopping in mauritius in 2005, they stayed here for four days. now it's down to one because all you drunk bitches trashed the place so the government here will only allow us to stay here for a day. so thanks a lot for that! can't even call it a day... maybe 9 hours at most! but that still didn't stop me from having an absolutely FABULOUS time in mauritius!

so we had a little bit of an unconventional docking here in port louis. we actually arrived early yesterday evening. i figured out what was going on... a lifelong learner had a DETACHED RETINA!!! i didn't even know that was possible, but turns out it is. so we had to get here ultra fast so he could catch a flight to somewhere where he could find medical treatment. and after all my eye problems in high school, i have nothing but sympathy for this poor guy. so we docked last night, but because sas HATES us, we couldn't get off until this morning. at 6am. yeahhhh... no! so maddy and i got up and got breakfast around 8 (most important meal of the day... duhhh), then i had to come back to bed cus i didn't feel good at all. (i haven't had a cold in years, so this blows!). so we (maddy, michael, and i) got off the ship around 9:30. we took a water taxi for a whopping $2 a person to the city. we walked around for a little, stopped at a craft market and bought some jewelry, then got a taxi to go to the beach. real quick, for those of you who are having a hard time even finding mauritius on a map (don't feel bad, i don't think anyone in north america has even heard of this place), it's a small island off the east coast of africa in the indian ocean. caught up? good. so we took a taxi to trou aux beach. we were expecting it to be like a resort, where we could get lunch and a drink. turns out we were wrong, but it was one of the nicest beaches i've been to. the sand was like powdered sugar (i can't think of any other way to describe it). and it was SO warm! thank goodness. everyone knows all i really want out of life is skin cancer (okay, not really... but my level of happiness may or may not be directly proportional to my level of tan-ness... not sorry). so i was like, game on... let's lay out! so we did for a few hours, but my fair-skinned friends maddy & michael were like "yeahhh we're going to the shade." wimps. (they're so sunburned right now... jokes on them!). we spent some time in the water too, but it was a little cold for me so maddy was yelling "get in the water!!!!" at me and i was like "what is this, the notebook??" (google it, if you don't understand the reference. kinda makes me want to watch the movie right now, wah). so we decided that "get in the water" is going to be our new way of saying "pull yourself together" orrrr "fix your hair" for all of my AXO followers. i eventually did get in the water, so i can now say i've swimmed in the indian ocean. can you say that? probs not. anyways, so since my friends SUCK and get sunburned, i was like okayyy we can leave a little earlier. we had told our taxi to meet us at the beach at 3, but he came back around 1:30 to just hang out so michael went up and told him we'd probs leave around 2:15ish instead. thennn mr. taxi driver (yusef) goes "okay, but hold on"... then proceeds to pull out a bottle of rum and gives it to michael. everyone told me before mauritius that my only game plan should be to find the sugar cane rum that mauritius is famous for. everyone knows that if you put a trophy in front of me or give me a challenge, i'm going to win. now my prize is a bottle of rum!? game on. so michael was like "how much?"... then yusef said the best words a poor college kid could hear "no no, it's a gift from me, cus we're friends now." yes yusef, we are DEFINITELY friends now! so then we scrambled to find some coca-cola and the three of us DIVASSSS drank sugar cane rum and cokes while soaking in the rays in the indian ocean in mauritius. lyfe's roughhhh. once we finished the bottle (don't judge), yusef took us back to the waterfront. but not before we had to stop at the ralph lauren shop for maddy because turns out this is where the ralph lauren factory is. and if you know maddy, you know she was NOT about to pass up this opportunity. once we got back to the waterfront, we gave yusef any and all money we could find on our persons because he's the MAN! then we ran to get some food in us so we could maybe get on the gangway and not taken to the drunk tank since thankssss to all you previous voyagers, they were on the prowl for anyone who looked like they had a sip of alcohol. so we got some food (real chicken for once! i could've cried!!) then we hopped on another water taxi back to the ship. oh wait, biggest line EVER to get on the ship. it was about 5:30ish when we got back, on ship time is 6. and on ship time means you need to physically be on the ship, swiped in, and through security. in line doesn't count. so we were like "shit, we're gonna get dock time." (dock time means if you're late for on ship time, you have to come back early in the next port... i think if you're less than 15 minutes late you have to be back 2 hours early in the next port... sucks!). but by some miracle we got on the ship with a whopping 5 minutes to spare! maddy & i RAN to our room (but not before walking past the LINE of people heading to the drunk tank), showered, and are now in bed. it's 7-something. just one of those days.

overall assessment for mauritius is a win. pretty much just like any touristy-island. i think it's kind of like africa's hawaii... if that makes sense. this was our one port that we were like "culture... nah." so don't ask me about that... cus you know as much as me for the most part. wish we had more time to lazily lay on the beach, but i'll live. i'm all kinds of tan now, and that makes me one happy camper.

in other news, you know as a child when you would play in the sandbox and be like "i'm digging to china!"? (or was that just me?? awkward). well turns out, if you are in san diego right now and could actually figure out how to dig through the center of the earth, you would pop up pretty close to me right now. you would come out right near madagascar, which we sailed past a few days ago. so right now i'm as far away from home as i could possibly be. CRAZINESS!!!!

well, i miss and love you all. someone go watch the notebook for me.

"if you're a bird, i'm bird." ahhhh, breaks my heart. xoxo.