The forgotten island of Santosha

Hello everyone- thanks again for all the emails. Once we leave here, I have a feeling we'll be much better able to respond to everyone from here on out. Anyway, here's a quick recap from a few weeks on Mauritius...........

The Good

-most everything about this island is good. Its about the size of Maui, and actually fairly similar geologically and floristically- volcanic mountains rising from the sea, carpetted by tangles of lush forest where the land hasnt been cleared for sugar production. The east coast is rain drentched, while the west coast lies in the lee of the central mountains and is fairly dry. The population is ~70% Hindu, and 15% each Islamic and Catholic. An interesting mix- there are temples, mosques, and churches lined up right next to eachother in places.

-we stayed on the drier west coast, in Tamarin. We were able to rent a flat from an Indian family- we had our own bathroom, bedroom, living room, and kitchen. Awesome. $11 a night. We were able to shop and cook all meals for ourselves. I never thought I would look so forward to cooking for myself again! It was as close to a home as we've had in almost five months, so it was nice.

-speaking of food, this place rules. In the cities, there are street vendors everywhere selling super good Indian food. Its really similar to Baja taco stands- they make a version of a tortilla here (though not corn based and not as good), then slap on some curry/masala beans and green stuff and Tapatillo spicy stuff, and there you go. About ten cents each. Maybe the best thing (at least for me!) is that they eat the same stuff breakfast-lunch-dinner. Yep, 7 in the morning you can go out and get some street food. Beth is less impressed by this than I am. We also had an Sunday dinner with a Indian familiy (the guy we dove with). No meat, but a really good selection of beans and vegetables in curries and masala and other rad spices, all slopped up with fresh tortilla things. Hmmmmmm.......

-well, by far the best thing here is the surf. Tamarin was made famous by the 70's surf flick 'The Forgotten Island of Santosha', after which it got really crowded and the locals (mostly French ex-pats) tried to keep people out by forming a wannabe Hui called the White Shorts. Well, I'll say one thing- the wave is worth protecting. It is one of the funnest left ever.Ohhhhh, so good. The wave itself is not particularly heavy, but the reef is extremely shallow- more so that the left I got in Madagascar. At low tide, when the locals dont surf, you can only take off on set waves, and even on those, the reef is dry in areas along the trough of the wave! Stay up high if you can- unfortunately, I got too high at one point, and spent fifteen minutes picking pieces of coral out of my palms. Ouch. Even at high tide, my feet would scrape against coral just sitting in the lineup. As for the local Burkarts, well, they actually turned out to be pretty cool guys. They just dont want a bunch of Rick Kanes' showing up. So I made like Turtle, staying low key, paddling out only when it was good, and just being mellow in general. And I didnt even need any help from Chandler.

-we were able to make a few dives also- Beth's first warm water diving experience. We got shitty weather- on and off rain, 30 kt winds.....and it was still unreal. Probably the best tropical dives I've done. Beautiful, healthy corals, cool little light purple soft corals, giant grogornians and sea whips, all the usual suspect tropical fish, and an alarming number of huge morey eels (which the guy we dove with liked to scratch under the jaw, and Beth even had a go at it!). Visibility was great- 50-60 ft- and the water was warm, although post dive boat rides back to Grand Bay in the wind were freezing! Anyone with a dive chart, maybe you could tell us- our second dive was to 82 feet for 45 minutes- what letter group does that put us at? Just curious...........

The Bad

-bad was the nightmare that constituted leaving Madagascar. Our original flight was cancelled. Ok, after much hassling and jostling in a semi-line, Air Mad put us up in a hotel with paid meals until the next days flight. Cool, we were down with free food. Unfortunately, after checking in for our flight the next day, we were informed it was cancelled again. They sent us back into Tana (45 minutes) to work out other plans. The office was crazy- people yelling, pissed off- even this group of midget nuns lead by this giant troll head nun were getting aggressive, threatening everyone. Apparently, old Air Mad was not paying their insurance, so they couldnt fly anywhere. Long story short- we ended up on a standby Air Austral flight to Reunion Island late that second day (after some more nun-wrestling in line), spent the night, and then got on a stand by flight the next day from Reunion to Mauritius. Jeez- three days to travel 400 km.

-its too bad there's not much remaining of this islands endemic wildlife. Biologically, Mauritius is most famous for being the former home of the extinct dodo- although it still adorns all types of advertisements and tourism brochures here. Most everything else has also been wiped out with the loss of the native forests. Two of the rarest birds in the world reside here though- the pink pigeon and the Mauritian kestral. The kestral is also a well known species- it was down to 4 individuals in the 70's. They were captured, captively bred, and now there are about 700 in the wild. Unfortunately, its a population that obviously squeezed through a real tight genetic bottleneck, and probably isnt in that good of shape. They are beutiful little birds though.........

The Ugly

-I dont happen to think this is all that interesting, but Beth seems to delight in this story to no end, so I'll let her tell you about it.......

okay, this is gross... We are sitting in the sun after an afternoon of body surfing and Ryan suddenly looks at his inner thigh. He looks at me and says, 'What the hell is this?!!!' I look, and, well, it is a boil about the size of the tip of an eraser head with a perfect little hole in the center. Looking closer I can see that whatever is under the skin is not just a blister but something larva-like....

So, without hesistation, we pack up our stuff and briskly walk back to our apartment. On the way back I kept telling myself (and Ryan) that it was just some loose skin that got sand in it. Yeah, right. So we get out the first aid kit and pull out the left over needles from my dysentary episode and a pair of nail scissors. Unfortunately our tweezers were stolen back in Madagascar. Ryan starts to cut away his skin while I look closely with my head light. I tried to warn him to be careful, but he punctures something and blood oozes -and its definately not his- all thick and black. We still couldnt figure out what it was, so I look through a hand lens (thanks Matt J.) and see the entire wound full of little white spheres. Whatever it was burrowed deep and layed lots of eggs. It was really really disgusting. Finally we cleaned out the wound and bandaged it up, but I didnt want him sleeping next to me for awhile.......

Well, I survived. The worst part of the whole thing is listening to her- 'Ew, your a carrier' or 'Do you need to be wormed today?' or 'Host, can I see a menu?'. Hahahafriggenha. By the way, any tropical doctors out there care to take a guess as to what it was?

-the final ugly deal is our upcoming weekend. We are heading to SE Asia, eventually ending up in Bali, Indonesia. Four days, four flights, not much sleep I suspect. It will be interesting............

Enough of all this spagetti western melodrama. This place is mostly good- in fact, we decided if we got rich (hahahaha- but someone has to win the lottery, right?) we might have to move here for awhile, maybe buy a computer and trade stocks or something. And surf Tamarin. Ahh, paradise................

PS- anyone who picked up on the North Shore references, well, I'm not sure you should be too proud of yourself. And I know you got them Eric.