Mauritius Day 4 (Day 42)

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Scuba diving this morning was AWESOME. I would say it was the best two dives that I've ever done, beating out Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. We saw a ton of tropical fish along seemingly never ending coral reefs. I doubt I can name more than 3 of the kinds of fish that I saw but David took a ton of pictures with his underwater camera (enclosed in a water tight casing). The
fact that the dive shop never asked to see our licenses but rather just asked us how many dives we've done made us a little nervous at first, but other than that they were very professional in making sure we were all safe while we were under and that we had adequate time in between dives. So it was two dives, each about 20 meters deep, or about 60 feet(i think?).

After scuba we headed back to the ship to shower up because the others had already checked out of our villa. We took the water taxi (or ferry) over to the waterfront this time. We really should have done that all along since it was only $2usd and takes about the same time as a regular taxi to get to the waterfront. Also, grabbing a taxi there would yield much lower prices than one right outside the ship. We then took a taxi over to a place called the central market a few minutes away to check out what they all had. We got there just as everything was closing but there was a lot of little shops with textiles, poultry and other food, and some other craft type of stuff. Not exactly what either of us were expecting so we went back to the waterfront to meet up with everyone else who we were in the villa with for some food.

We finished dinner a little later than we were initially planning so we hurried back to the ship. At this point I still hadn't bought any postcards or even stamps for my South Africa postcards. Somehow, we found a shop open while we were on our way to the water taxi that was selling stamps and postcards. I really wasn't expecting to find any since it was past 8 and most all of the shops were closed. Extremely lucky! Anyway, once we got back to the ship I had about 15 minutes to write 10 postcards and put stamps on all of them before our mail went out. So my apologies specifically to Mom, Dad, Jessica (and Matt), Melissa (and David), Kat, Ed and Anitra who all got one or two words written on the back. I'll be sure try to find postcards before the mail goes out next time so I'm not rushed :)

Just a few side note, the local beer in Mauritius is called Phoenix and Blue Marlin. Neither of them are especially good. I would prefer the Blue Marlin over Phoenix but a lot of American beers before either of them.