Mauritius: Feb 27

                Mauritius is a small, small island off the coast of Southern Africa, not to be confused with Madagascar.  The island was first discovered by Arab sailors and was originally completely uninhabited.  Its national bird is the Dodo, now completely extinct though indigenous to the island thanks to the Dutch.  In between these two settlers, the Portuguese also discovered the island, but didn’t feel the need to invest in it.  The British also took over at one point, as well as the French, and with the British came Indians seeking work.  It is now a democracy, and globally rather irrelevant, however the history has created a very diverse population ethnically and religiously, and though there have been struggles in the past is now praised highly for their observance human rights and cross-ethnic cooperation.

                While I was only there for a day, I did notice a very unique type of architecture that I haven’t seen anywhere else, most likely as a result of such integrated diversity.  Since we were only there for a matter of hours, I followed the lead of many Semester-at-Sea-ers and booked a spot on a catamaran with other people from our group.  We sailed around the island for 4 hours (most of the day) with lunch grilled on board, and an opportunity to swim off of a deserted beach.  The views on this island were actually unbelievable and I kept expecting for a movie set or something to be revealed.  The sky was beautiful and clear, the water was a bright turquoise color which made it look like it was a shallow pool for a bad movie set, when it was in fact not only just that color, but so clear that when we dove into the water, we could clearly see about 10 feet deep…even all the way to the bottom I would estimate.  I had a great time and met a bunch of amazing new people that I wouldn’t have otherwise.  In light of this, I’ve written a limerick to conclude my time in Mauritius.

When I went to an island, Mauritius

Well, the timing was rather auspicious

     I got some good sun

     And had some good fun

With views pretty enough it’s suspicious!