Seamail 16: Skip the Seychelles, Head to Mauritius Instead

Seamail 16

we left sao paulo, brasil on a Tuesday afternoon. From one of the largest countries in the world to one of the smallest in two days time. Our last few days in brasil were characterized by last minute purchases and errands. We figured we should try to buy anything we might need over the next couple months since prices would most likely double or worse as soon as we left brasil. We were right to do so. We traded all the books we had read, and tried to sell our portuguese dictionaries and such, and we bought a western europe travel guide, which is incredibly exciting to read. We also saw a couple movies (movies seen in brasil due to the cost of admission being about US$1.50: about schmidt, 8 mile, lord of the rings: the two towers, james bond: die another day, my big, fat, greek wedding, moonlight mile, chicago, the hours, adaptation, gangs of new york) and went back to the japanese food fair that was our first great food experience in brasil two months ago.

Final thoughts on leaving brasil: first impressions are not always correct, and brasil grew on us tremendously near the end of the trip. Portuguese became much easier; as it turned out we just weren’t giving it enough time at first. One of brasil’s strongest points is how easily you can travel, stay and eat for an extremely small amount of money. We feel that we really got our money’s worth out of brasil, as we averaged spending about US$35 per day for the two of us including travel expenses, transportation, lodging, food, entertainment, and anything we might buy like t-shirts, toiletries, souveniers, post cards/postage, etc. It was just incredibly cheap and we even allowed ourselves pretty frequent splurges on nice hotels, nice restaurants, ice cream, and the super-comfortable overnight ‘leito’ buses (seats that fold into beds, blankets, pillows, snacks, water and bad movies in english).

Our flight out of Sao Paulo was on South African Airways. We would cross the atlantic on a boeing 747 (our first time on a plane with an upstairs and three sections of seating across the plane!) to land in Johannesburg at what felt like 2 am to us. But in s.africa it was 8 am, and neither of us got more than 45 minutes of sleep. Our flight included 2 films, james bond, and jackie chan; two meals, dinner and breakfast, and an episode of frasier. We also got complimentary travel toothbrushes with paste, clean socks (we could take off our shoes without offending people), an eye mask, and a blanket and pillow. We only had an hour or so before our connecting flight to mauritius where we would stay overnight, so we walked around the airport, marvelling at the fact that everything was in english once again, and that we could understand just about everyone who was talking.

Our flight to Mauritius was uneventful, I sat next to some folks from Berlin, so I got to practice my German, got a terrible meal and watched ‘I Spy.’ What’s with all the spy movies? When we arrived in Mauritius (to Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam KT international airport - how’s that for a mouthful?), what we found was a bit of a nightmare. When we tried to pass customs, we weren’t allowed to because we didn’t have a hotel reservation or address in Mauritius (we rarely book hotels in advance because you can find much cheaper options once you arrive at a place by asking at the tourist office). So customs kept our passports while we went to the tourist info desk. We ended up going to the wrong desk; (the one marked hotel reservations...) they were only able to book certain hotels and the cheapest thing they had was 95 dollars per night. So after an initial panic of trying to figure out what to do we spotted just the regular tourist booth, and they found us a decently priced place. Meanwhile our baggage has been on the baggage claim belts for about 15 minutes, but we still had to clear customs and health services before we could pick it up. We gave our hotel address to customs, the health guy looked at us suspiciously when we said we hadn’t been to the amazon in brasil (apparently you have to have a vaccination if you have), but let us through anyway. Then we ran to find our bags, and lo and behold, only one of three is there. Since the belt had been empty for some time, my bag had been thrown to the floor and we started to freak out thinking that perhaps someone had swiped our other two bags while we were running around. This fear was compounded when the baggage claim people said they only had a missing report for one of our bags (they couldn’t even tell us which one...) They told us to hope that both bags would arrive tomorrow and that we were allowed to spend up to US$150 to replace the missing articles. We just had to show receipts. So we exchanged a bit of money into mauritian rupees and headed to our hotel.

the tourist office did a bang up job on the hotel for us, as our place was french-canadian owned and beautiful. Our room was a second floor room about 10 ft. from a perfect white sand beach punctuated by black volcanic rocks. There was an offshore reef which made the water very calm, and supposedly world famous snorkeling just a few meters away (unfortunately we wouldn’t get a chance to try this). The landscape was very like the galapagos, which made for fond memories, and the island itself from our different vantage points on the airplane, in the taxi, and now at our hotel, was absolutely gorgeous. Rolling hills of sugar cane leading up the sides of jagged green mountains which tower over some of the clearest, most bright blue water we’ve ever seen. By the time we arrived it was too late to do any shopping as shops there actually close at around 3:00, so we just walked around and settled across the street from our hotel for a small dinner. Mauritius being an island of many different backgrounds, they have quite a variety of different foods, and I had a fresh, white tuna curry prepared with coconut milk, and liza had a smoked marlin spaghetti. Absolutely delicious, especially the curry. Still, it was hard to enjoy all this with all the worrying about whether our bags would arrive, and whether we would be out a good deal of money since our eurail passes and our return airline tickets from mauritius to johannesburg were in one bag. It wasn’t enough to keep us awake that night, though, because we’d had little or no sleep in the last 38 hours.

we woke up the next morning to have a delicious breakfast (included in our hotel) on the verandah overlooking the beach. Then we headed out in a taxi to do some shopping. We had about 2.5 hours before we had to leave for the airport, so we really had to hurry to spend that $150. The only shopping within reach was in the tiny town of maheburg, ten minutes away, so the taxi dropped us on a street next to the market and we went at it. The shops were tiny storefronts to stay the least, all owned by folks of indian descent (most of the population seems to be of indian descent) who were quite happy to help us tourist types spend our free money. Nothing in the shops was on display so we had to ask them to show us anything we wanted, which made the shopping take even longer as they would always show us the most terrible clothes first, it seemed. Most of the clothes they had were imitation polo, or quicksilver, or hugo boss. Since the two bags that were lost contained every item of clothing that liza had with her except the few dirty clothes that I carry in my bag, the main concern was finding some shorts and shirts for her. Easier said than done in a country where most of the women wear either saris or long skirts at all times. Nevertheless we did find some things, and I even bought a terrible imitation polo shirt just because we had only spent about US$30, and we were running out of time to spend all our money. Liza got a couple tank tops, and a couple pairs of surfer style shorts. It was an interesting time, and we had to hurry back to our hotel to vacate our room by check out time and get a bite for lunch before heading to the airport in the hopes that our bags would be arriving.

The flight from s. africa that day didn’t arrive until 3:00 (or so they told us), but we went to the airport at 1:00 because we wanted to check to see if they’d heard anything about the other missing bag. Also, we wanted to figure out what we were going to do if the bags didn’t arrive. When we got there, they hadn’t learned anything new, except that the flight didn’t actually arrive until 3:30. When we handed over our shopping receipts for compensation (actually, receipts is a strong word, as usually the shops wrote on a piece of notebook paper the total amount of the purchase with no breakdown or signature or stamp identifying it as a legitimate receipt. We got some strange looks from the shop keepers when we asked for the receipts.), the lost baggage man said “I advise you to spend more.” He tried to tell us to take another taxi to a nearby shopping area, but we decided to go ahead and check in for our flight first, which was scheduled to leave at 4:30. They told us it would be very difficult to make the plane if the baggage arrived when it was supposed to, as it usually takes at least 25 to 20 minutes for baggage to actually be delivered to the baggage claim belts. Then, if our bags came out last, we’re looking at 20-25 minutes to get to the check-in area, get the bags on the plane and board. As if we weren’t stressed enough. We told them we would try as hard as we could, but if our bags didn’t arrive it was going to be difficult for us to leave because not only did liza have no clothing, we wouldn’t have our ticket to get back to Johannesburg. If that bag didn’t arrive we would have to stay in Mauritius in order to fill out insurance claim forms and to get that ticket reissued since south african airways has no office in seychelles. They told us they would change our flight to a few days later if this were the case, which was, all considered, quite nice of them. Then we went to talk with the south african airways rep to explain our situation with air seychelles and the missing ticket, and everything. He was incredibly helpful, authorizing the full US$150 compensation to be paid regardless of receipts, meaning that when all was said and done, we spent US$15 dollars of our own money is mauritius on meals, taxis, a nights lodging, and replacement clothes, it also meant that there was no need for the frenzied attempt to spend our remaining allotted $100. He also advised us that we should be pretty hopeful that both bags would arrive, and so we settled down to wait.

At about 3:35, the airport announcer announced the arrival of the South African Airways flight from Johannesburg. I stayed to wait for the bags while Liza went to talk to Air Seychelles again to let them know we were still hopeful and waiting. Again, they were helpful, allowing Liza to accompany a representative out onto the tarmac to look at the baggage as it arrived in order to facilitate a speedy transition. You should have seen her face when she walked into the baggage claim area proclaiming that yes, at least one of our bags had arrived, and it was, in fact, the one with the rail passes and plane tickets. Woohoo! Still, we had to wait for the other bag, where the vast majority of Liza’s clothing was. Five minutes later, behold! There it is!! We can leave! So we hurried up to the check-in counter, taking the shorter, employee route since we were accompanied by an employee, and everything went smoothly from there on out. The kicker was that our flight was delayed anyway, by 30 minutes, so we had nothing to worry about and we even got a chance to collect ourselves and rest before getting on the airplane.

The flight to Seychelles included an amazing view of Mauritius on take off, a gorgeous sunset, which only Liza got to see because I was on the other side of the plane, and the movie, ‘serving sara’, which was terrible but enjoyable for some reason. Since it was after dark when we arrived we weren’t able to see anything on the landing, but supposedly the flight in during the day is incredible. Again, we weren’t able to clear customs because we didn’t have a hotel booking, but we soon got one as this airport smartly put the tourist desk in front of the customs desk, and after changing a bit of money to seychelles rupees, we were on our way.

In Seychelles, if you don’t have lots of money (yes, we fall into this category), you stay at guesthouses. The cheapest of which are about US$60 per night, usually including breakfast. All hotels are licenced and monitored by the government, so there is no chance of staying cheaper by looking around once you arrive. The problem is that all cheaper guesthouses are not neccesarily equal. Our first guest house was called La Retraite, and was absolutely nothing special. It was the kind of place we would have thought twice about, or even haggled a bit over for US$20 dollars anywhere else we’ve been so far. In brasil, it would have cost about US$12. The room was fine, but small, the bathroom was dirty and didn’t have a sufficient window covering or opaque glass, or even a door to separate it from the rest of the room, and there were ants everywhere. To compound all this, the only fan it had was a small table fan with instructions in chinese, and seychelles was turning out to be certainly the warmest, most humid place we’ve been so far. There is seemingly no breeze, except around the few times when a small rain cloud might appear above the island. That night we were so beat from our day that we walked down the road to a take out chinese place, and headed straight to bed after long cold showers.

Being still on Brasilian time, I woke up at about 4:30 am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so my first glimpse of Seychelles was a beautiful sunrise over the Indian Ocean on the east side of Mahe Island. Immediately after the sun appeared, the oppressive heat returned, but there was no where to go since we didn’t have air conditioning or a decent fan. I sat in the tv room at the guest house, next to an extremely gross dead sea turtle. For some reason, I guess the owners thought this would make a nice decoration. It’s not stuffed, or preserved well, so it smells, and bugs (including at least one six inch long centipede with long, claw like legs) live in it’s empty insides. There is a decaying, yellowing preservative over the whole thing, and the eyes, which were never removed, have holes in them where they were eaten through by bugs. The worse thing about this horrible decoration is that it is probably illegal since trade or use of turtle parts of any kind is strictly prohibited by international law due to the fact that they are critically endangered. I suppose we can hope that they didn’t buy this from a poacher, but it’s not likely. What we can hope is that it wasn’t purposely killed to be used as a decoration. Hopefully it drowned or something first. Not the most positive sign at any rate for the sea turtle conservation scene here in the seychelles, and who would have thought that such an indicator would appear right at the hotel we’re staying at.

after a decent, though buggy breakfast we went to victoria, the only real city on Mahe, and the capital of Seychelles. The tourist office there set us up with a different hotel and the contact information for the leading sea turtle conservationist here (who is quite famous due to a pbs special which featured some of her conservation work here in the seychelles), we found a very expensive internet place and we got a bit of food at the grocery store. We also walked around the market, where immense quantities of huge fresh fish, fruits and vegetables and spices are sold. I bought some curry, which is a local specialty and I’m very excited to try it (the curry in brazil and costa rica does not cut the mustard in my view). The main feeling of the day was heat and thirst. Walking around in this sun and with no cooling breeze just takes it out of you and on the bus back to our hotel we both almost fell asleep in spite of crazy driving and windy, bumpy roads. That night we cooked eggs in the kitchen which seemed infested by very large cock roaches and thought how happy we’d be if only we didn’t have to stay in this hotel one more night.

The next morning, we moved to our new hotel, which was much nicer, for the same price. We had one lasting bad experience from the first hotel, though, as when we asked for a taxi to go to our new hotel, they didn’t call a real taxi, but their friend, who has a car. We thought this might be a nice gesture, until we were halfway to the new hotel and the guy told us it would be a US$15 taxi ride. It was less than a mile away!!! The only reason we didn’t walk it was because we had all our luggage. I bargained him down to US$10, but in a real taxi it would have cost about US$3. So much for the legendary creole hospitality we’d heard so much about.

Most of what we did in the seychelles was unremarkable. We went to the national botanical gardens, which were unimpressive aside from a small group of giant tortoises and the amazing coco de mer trees, the national symbol of the seychelles. Our hotel had a small beach beyond the backyard, where we snorkeled a few times. Our first try we saw a lion fish! But nothing else after that. We went to other beaches a few times. They are quite nice, with horizontal palm trees to provide nice, shady spots on the sand. Crabs are everywhere, and they’re always fun to watch. Our last day we went to probably the best beach on the island, and while snorkeling we saw a small hawksbill sea turtle!! This was really exciting, as it is our first hawksbill sighting in the wild. The hawksbill is an incredibly beautiful species, but are endangered mainly because of the use of their shells in jewelry, combs, etc. Whenever you see or hear of items that are made of real tortoise shell, it’s probably hawksbill turtle shell. This one let us follow above him for about 20 minutes before heading out to deeper waters. These amazing encounters never get old.

A couple days before that we took a tour of the national marine park on the other side of the island. It was extremely expensive (US$90 per person), so we were expecting quite a bit. Our first activity, after being picked up at our hotel and transported to the marina, was to board a semi-submersible boat. This is basically just a boat on top with a submarine, window area below. The guide got us hopeful of seeing turtles, but all we saw was zebra fish, and lots of them. The coral seemed really depleted. The next activity was snorkeling near an island in the park. The people on the tour with us were obviously ‘higher class,’ and obviously didn’t mind paying these prices. As we approached the snorkeling area, they started slathering themselves with greasy sunscreen. Presumably because they’d paid so much money for the tour, the guides didn’t tell them not to do this, but when snorkeling, you’re not supposed to use any sunscreen as the oils kill coral. There are non-greasy sunscreens that are ok, but these folks weren’t using that. As if this weren’t enough, one of the ladies threw a piece of trash into the water before jumping in, and we later saw her hanging on to the corals while peeking underneath to see lobsters (touching coral is another sure way to kill it). We were, needless to say, appalled at the lack of regulation/enforcement. The tour didn’t even have anyone in the water with us to make sure we weren’t breaking rules. Even the snorkel tours in mexico are required to do that!

After seeing even more dead coral and little life of any kind in the park, we were taken to an island in the park for lunch. We were given free reign on the island, where there were dozens of giant tortoises wandering about. The views from the top of the mountain were incredible, and running into tortoises in various parts of the island really never got tiring. Giant tortoises are so cool! Lunch was pretty good, all home-cooked creole food. And after a few hours on the island we were taken back to the mainland and then to our hotel. Overall, we thought, it was a good day. But then we thought about the fact that we’d paid $90 dollars each. That put a sour taste in our mouths, and it was no longer really a good day in hindsight. Not for that much money.

Seychelles is a very beautiful place in parts. What you’d expect from the country where ‘castaway’ was filmed: white beaches with granite outcrops and green, jungled mountains behind. But that’s only certain parts of it. The whole side of the island our hotels were on was actually a bit ugly. Land reclamation projects up and down the coast mean that lots of areas have huge sand bars blocking the views out to sea and of the other islands. This also means that artificial bays are being created, and huge sections of beach are being covered in ugly, imported rocks and sand in order to increase the size of the island. I guess the reason they do this is because the main island is actually quite crowded in the livable areas. There is plenty of open space in the mountains, but no one wants to live there, because there are no roads. We were expecting to see gobs of tourists everywhere, like we’ve seen in other places, but we actually rarely saw tourists outside our hotel and the beaches. Even at these places, tourism is never overwhelming. But there are a lot more seychellois than you might think, and they’re just going about their daily business making a living, which means that there has to be a considerable job infrastructure for them outside of tourism. It also means that considerable amounts of goods have to be imported, causing the usual difficulties around ports of sealife depletion and overall environmental degradation. One of seychelles main problems seems to lie in the kinds of ecological preservation vs. commercial and industrial interests conflicts that were pretty much nonexistent (outside of commercial fishing) in places like the galapagos. The problem is, there’s so much to preserve here, not the least of which are the habitats of our beloved turtles, but lots of people are trying to live here too.

Overall, most of what we’ve experienced in Seychelles makes it a hard pill to swallow. Everything is so expensive, and it’s not like your money goes a long way. The heat is incredible and inescapable, and the places we’ve seen just aren’t that nice. The only affordable restaurants on the island are greasy take out places, and even food at the grocery store is expensive. Transportation is difficult for those who don’t have the money to rent cars, as buses are overcrowded, unreliable, uncomfortable and infrequent (one time the bus was so full that I actually had to sit backwards on the dash board against the windshield. We would have waited for the next one, but we’d already been waiting over an hour and were about to die of thirst.) We were expecting untouched, undeveloped beauty like the galapagos (especially for these kind of price tags, which are actually quite a bit more), and great service in nice hotels for three times as much as we’re used to spending. Instead, Seychelles is developed to the point of having it’s own breweries (they actually brew guiness here) and plantations and a developed agricultural and industrial sector. It seems like this must be where our money is going. It’s a hard place to follow brasil, where our money went so far.

So we decided to shorten our time there even more than we already had (we had originally planned to spend over a month here). A few days after we arrived we changed our flight to spend only 9 days here instead of 16. So the other day, we flew back to Mauritius to wait here until our flight back to South Africa. Mauritius is a beautiful island. Certainly no less beautiful than Seychelles - though in completely differnt ways - and is much cheaper. We even find the people to be more friendly. In short, we just feel much more comfortable here. We could even afford to rent a car here if we were so inclined (we might do so), and it would be our first experience driving on the left side of the road!

We settled in a different part of the island than we stayed in for our transit night here, and it’s more developed, but still very nice. We have a small apartment with a kitchen for US$25 per night. And the people who own our hotel also run a travel agency, where they’ve promised us discounts on their many tours. Some of them look really nice! Today we took a bus to the world famous Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolan botanical gardens. They were beautiful, and affirmed our suspicion that Mauritians (isn’t that a little too close to martians?) love Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolan.

in a few more days we commence our journey to greece. It will, once again, be a two day journey, with a night’s stay in Johannesburg before we fly into Athens. We’re very excited to be out of tropical climates (CNN weather said it was in the 60's every day in Athens last week!), and to commence our travels in Europe, which is probably the place we’ve wanted to visit the most (possibly excepting the galapagos islands). We’ll most likely confine ourselves to greece for at least a month, as that’s the only place in Europe where we plan to visit turtle areas. The plan is to find a place to be near the important turtle nesting beach of laganas on the island of Zakynthos for most of our time there, though, of course, we’ll visit athens first, and possibly en route a few other places including the ancient site of olympia.

We have new photos on the website at lizamueller.tripod.com. And the world map showing our itinerary is very exciting at www.airtreks.com in the trip journal page.

Thanks for staying tuned, we love you and will keep you informed as always.

Liza and Jerad

Music pick of the week is REM’s New Adventures in HiFi, which i recently repurchased after my original copy becamse inexplicably damaged. It’s a great record for travel, and contains, I think, many of REM’s best songs. Highlights: Leave, Electrolite, Binky the Doormat, and How the West Was Won and Where it Got Us.