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Port Louis, Mauritius |
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So we left La Possession and it was just a quick overnight, a little over 150 miles, to Port Louis, Mauritius. This island, unlike Reunion, is an independent country. It was first discovered by the Portuguese in the early 1500s but it was never settled. The Dutch then colonized it, and were followed by the French who named it the Isle de France and eventually ceded it to Britain through the Treaty of Paris in 1814.. Mauritius became independent in 1968. Mauritius is also the only piece of land on Earth which is known to have been inhabited by the now extinct Dodo bird (the Dodo is assumed to have ceased its existence somewhere in the mid-1600s). Another tidbit for you trivia-buffs! Since we were not spending a whole lot of time on Mauritius, and since the one time before that I had been there, the ship I was on, the Swan Hellenic Line's Manerva II (another old "R" ship, it is now with the Princess Lines). Well, the Minerva II was exchanging passengers in Port Louis over a two day period of time, so I had been able to see much of the island, and I had even traveled offshore to see the giant turtles on some of the protected outlying islands. |
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And I wanted a ship. A model ship. Mauritians (as opposed to Martians - or even moonsians from Reunion's Plaine des Sables) ) are famous for their meticulously hand crafted ship models. So off I went in search for the perfect model ship with which to sail off into the green-spotless sunset (and off the edge - ker-splat!!). Mauritius, is almost identical, geographically, to Reunion in that it is actively volcanic and it has an extremely rugged interior, and, therefore, it is primarily inhabited along the coastal regions. The dock area of Port Louis, is very much like the dock area in Cape Town, in that it is modern, very cosmopolitan, and truly a shoppers delight with newly built and renovated upscale shops and boutiques in old warehouse buildings directly adjacent to the pier.. This is a view of the port and the following picture is a view of the beautiful mountains rising directly behind the port. (to me, it looks very Bora-Bora-esque).
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