Geographically-minded as our friends and family are, we've gotten quite a few "where exactly are you?" questions since arriving on Mauritius. The answer is that we're on a teeny tiny island in the Indian Ocean, a bit east of Madagascar, a while still west of Australia. (It was a 4 hour flight from Jo'burg to here; it will be a 12 hour flight from here to Sydney.) Officially part of Africa, the population of Mauritius is majority of Indian descent, followed by Creoles (the descendents of Africans originally brought here as slaves), Chinese, and a small number of Europeans, mainly French. There are no indigenous people here-- I think the first place we've ever been where that's the case-- and there seems to have been something very evening about the fact of everyone being an immigrant, as the culture is syncretic in every realm, and the Mauritian identity seems to be stronger than any separate ethnic one. Which is not to say that the island's history isn't full of the same bad stuff as so many other places: it was the subject of battles between colonial powers, going from Dutch to British to French; it was built on the labor first of African slaves and then of Indian indentured servants; and it was long taken advantage of in the colonial model as a producer of sugar cane for its European rulers. But since independence in 1968, Mauritius has had free, multi-party elections every five years, educated a highly literate and largely bilingual population, and developed its economy in a diverse manner.
Our first several days were spent in Mahebourg, in the island's southeast, which is relatively undeveloped for tourism. The town itself was sleepy and relaxed, although the streets were packed with holiday bustle on Christmas Eve. One of the highlights of such a mixed population is, for us, the food: many restaurants serve Indian, Creole, Chinese, and French dishes, or a mixture thereof, in addition to others that specialize in one of the same. We rented bikes for easy rides to the beach, tried to visit a long-running cookie factory (they were closed, so we just had to buy the cookies in a supermarket), and visited a nature reserve called Ile aux Aigrettes. The latter is a small island just off the Mahebourg coast, where the Mauritian Nature Conservancy has gotten rid of all exotic species and replaced them with native species, including ebony, palms in different shapes, the large Aldabra tortoise, and the very rare pink pigeon. We got a glimpse of the pigeon, which was not as excitingly bright as we had hoped, but did have a definite pinkish hue. We also went for a hike up Lion Mountain, the most prominent natural landmark in the area-- or I should say I tried to go for a hike, and Erik actually did. Not far into it, we encountered a stretch of vertical rock that required climbing, not hiking; I made it up that one, but when we immediately ran into another, I gave up, dizzy already. Erik kept going, climbing more than hiking for much of the way, and was rewarded with gorgeous views. I sat looking at the ocean and sang myself Christmas carols (a little sadly, I'll admit).
On Christmas Eve we joined our hotel owner at a Catholic service, all in French, which may have served to make us more homesick rather than less. We went for Chinese food that night, which made me feel a bit more at home in the spirit of a wonderful New York Times piece I remember from 15 years ago, "Erev Christmas"-- about all the Jews in New York gathering at Chinese restaurants (the only thing open) on Christmas Eve. Our hotel had placed a little Christmas tree in our room, which we decorated with flowers that had fallen off a tree, and Santa did manage to find it, even putting an orange in Erik's dirty sock. We spent Christmas on the beach, which we certainly can't complain about, but it sure didn't feel right. It helped, though, that the beach was packed with Mauritian families, for whom a sandy Christmas picnic WAS the tradition. So for a day, we tried to pretend it was ours too-- and also talked a lot about past and future years, at home.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment