Both Charles Darwin and Mark Twain referred to Mauritius as heaven on earth, arriving at its shores. Both great men visited the island in the 19th century, but they are cited again and again by the tourism industry more than a hundred years later. I do not believe that there is such a thing as heaven on earth, and installing a bar that will always disappoint you. If your destination meets your basic whims, you must come to terms with the imperfections you may encounter.
My list of things that I need for a country as a place to live: beautiful beaches, a warm climate, a respectable amount of modern infrastructure and consistency, which is pretty easy to get. Mauritius seemed to have passed the litmus test for all my basic criteria, although in retrospect the information I could gather on the Internet drew a too rosy picture of my future home. As far as I know, I could be the first to deviate from the formula!
Only to place itself, Mauritius is an independent African democratic nation in the Indian Ocean, consisting of the large main island of Mauricia, several uninhabited islets and Rodrigues, an average island 350 miles (560 km) to the east. The nearest country is Madagascar, which is 500 miles (805 km) west of the main island. To the south is La Réunion, a French island territory. Mauritius is a popular destination for Europeans, in particular, many flights from London and Paris. This is not so well known in the rest of the world, and your journey will be quite long, usually through a major European airport, Johannesburg, Dubai or Kuala Lumpur. It is a rather crowded small country, where about 1.3 million people, almost all are crowded with the main island. Port Louis, the capital and largest city, is a dirty city, with crumbling old buildings rubbing shoulders with glittering coastal towers (Mauritius is an offshore banking haven). The best beaches are located on the west coast, north of the capital. The island is a mixture of plains and mountains, with a central plateau. The largest number of people is concentrated on this plateau, where the climate is several degrees colder and more humid, in a section of the city stretching along the main highway leading from Port Louis to the only airport on the east side of the island.
I came to Mauritius as part of the Investment Council (BOI) program, which provides three-year stay permits for professionals, self-employed and investors. There are quite a lot of documents there, and you need to undergo a complete physical examination, and also put 50,000 rupees (one US dollar costs about 33.8 rupees today) at a local bank (plus 10,000 per dependent). The application itself costs 10,000 rupees and is not refundable, but if you follow all the steps to the letter, there should be no problems with obtaining resident status, since your income, when you live in Mauritius, is more important to them than the previous story. You will need to meet the minimum income and / or investment requirements for your permit class in the first year, or resident status will be canceled. Fortunately, the goals are small.
Mauritius has a rather sad history. It was uninhabited until the Dutch established themselves in the 17th century. They left the colony in 1710, but not to the extermination of the poor Dodos, the flightless birds that appear in effigy everywhere in modern Mauritius. Only five years later, the French declared their territory, bringing with them a large number of African slaves to grow sugar cane. In the early 19th century, Mauritius became an important pirate base used to pursue British ships in the Indian Ocean. The British put an end to corsairs, slavery, and French rule, invading Mauritius in 1810. These were the British, who bought in large numbers indentured workers from the Indian colonies and who descendants now make up the bulk of the Moorish population and dominate local politics. Today, French and English are official languages, but Creole, French patois is what everyone they say. Many Indo-Mauritanians also chatter in Bhojpuri, a dialect from their ancestral country. Indian culture is omnipresent in Mauritius, manifested in a sari, usually worn by women, numerous Hindu temples and Moorish food. Afro-Mauritanians make up about 35 percent of the population and are concentrated in the southern part of the main island and are the dominant race on Rodrigue. The negroes introduced many key cultural icons, such as Creole, cuisine, and symbolic music and Sega dances. However, blacks do not share equally in the wealth of the country, which has the highest per capita income in Africa. Mauritius is still the poorest country, despite extreme poverty, in no way as intense as in any other African country.
Wanting to live close to the best beaches, I rented a furnished townhouse in Mont Choisy, the district of Pamplemous, which was added to Tru o'bish in the northwestern corner of the island. The beaches here are mostly white sand and shaded by slender fig trees. The warm sea reaches the barrier reef that surrounds most of the island and breaks up large ocean swells. Unfortunately, almost all of the coral reef is bleached, the desert underwater spectrum, which ironically the ocean, which is the turquoise color that tourists so crave. Despite this, a lot of marine life remains in the remaining small patches of coral and in sea grasses. I almost daily dived on one of the quieter parts of the beach in Trou aux Biches, crossing everything from the big sea turtle to the octopus. I also had close encounters with numerous commercial water skis and hang-gliders, who were fast approaching the coast, not paying attention to the many tourists jumping up and down in the water. Complaining to the coast guard of Mauritania will not do you any good, since they deny that there is any problem.
While Mont Choisy looks idyllic due to the large number of painted new buildings, it turns into a dark cemetery at night, since there is almost no street lighting and basically no people outside the peak period, which coincides with winter in Europe, Shortly before My wife and I first met the modern pirates of Mauritius. Thieves slipped through a window into our house at night after we left for our bedroom. I was alerted by the noise and stepped down the steps before I came to my senses and retreated to the second floor. Apparently, this was enough to scare the thieves who slipped away into the night with my wife's laptop, which she left in the dining room. It was in the following days that I discovered that almost all foreigners living in the area destroyed their homes by brigands, often four or five times, despite the fact that they resorted to guard dogs, flood lights and alarm systems. Soon after, I found myself part of the neighboring hours, patrolling in total darkness on the part of the Moorish neighbor, sometimes at two or three in the morning! However, it was not just paranoia, as one night someone jumped onto our balcony and had to run when we ran up and warned my wife's bell. “Theft is also a job,” picked up Subash, a store owner in Mauritania next door, causing the crime to sound like an institution.
Sugarcane still manages the island’s economy and pyromania. On any given day, huge columns of smoke rising from the cane fields are preparing for harvest when the flash is burned. Ash constantly blew into our house, and I will never forget the day when Grand Baie, a tourist town, was completely covered with smoke. Moorish people do not just burn sugar cane, they also use fire to clear trees and debris. Garbage is also a problem, as in many poor countries. Any given Sunday, the usual Moorish people descend in hordes from Port Louis or plateau towns and go to the beaches, especially in Mont-Choisy. Unfortunately, when Monday rolls around, copious amounts of trash cans on the beach and in the ocean. Ordinary people are not the only polluters, as construction companies, some of which with European partners, are doing their share in environmental damage on this fair island. I waged a small war with one such consortium that built luxury condos on the Mont Choisy seafront. Several times a day, tractors dumped heaps of abandonment of a plot into a large empty plot, surrounded by expensive houses and apartments, just around the corner from our own abode. Soon he became the mountain range of failure. When I asked one of their masters why they did not take their fragments to a more suitable place, sometimes to a legal dump, he casually replied that they had permission from the lot owner. I placed a few calls and was really connected to the environmental police, who promised to intervene. Soon they came and ordered the attackers to move the garbage. They submitted, but the victory was short-lived, since they simply folded it along the coastal road ahead of the project.
Keep in mind that Mauritius has a lot of good. Of course, the sea, world-famous five-star hotels and tropical weather are a big part of the attraction, but there are a few things inside the country that you are unlikely to see anywhere else. Despite the excessive population, on the central plateau there is a significant area of forests inhabited by monkeys (steppe) alternating with reservoirs that quench the thirst of the island. The obligatory route includes a view of the Montenegrin gorge, which seems too huge to be found on a simple island, on the Alexander River and at the Chamarel Falls. The latter is a perfect cascade of a picture that falls into a deep rounded crater. However, what impressed me most was Lac Sacre (Sacred Lake), which, according to local Indians, contains water from the Ganges. The lake is surrounded by colorful temples and statues of gods and swarms of fans. Directly above the hill stands the golden statue of Shiva. The Hindu faith sacrifices visual aesthetics, and there are many difficulties extending throughout the island, and all of them are worth a visit to appreciate the complex detail and the bright colors of the reliefs found inside and out. There are no problems for tourists to enter Hindu temples and photos, but be more careful if you decide to visit any Muslim places of worship, including Jummah’s great green and white dream in Port Louis. The rocky southern tip of the island has several of its own attractions, including a breathtaking view leading along the coastal road until you reach Le Gris gris, a high cliff where you can look down on 40-foot waves stumbling off the rocks. Another interesting stop is the beach at Le Morne-Brabant, an ominous rocky mountain sitting in the middle of a land point in the shape of a hammerhead shark. Runaway slaves once hid on the top of this rock and jumped to their death to avoid possession.
Even the dirty Port Louis has some decent attractions. One of them - the so-called French citadel overlooking the city. The other is the Caudan project, a waterfront redevelopment project that includes a shopping mall, a casino and a luxury hotel. Directly across the road from Kaudan is the Archaeological Square, with its rows of tall palms and monuments, ending with the statue of Queen Victoria and the great old civilian building. Then there is the previously mentioned Jummah Mosque and various Hindu temples. If you decide to visit the bustling market, also near Caudan, think about pickpockets. In addition, anywhere on the island, get tired of two guys on a motorcycle, as the guy on the back may well be the one who grabs your shoulder bag when they speed up. As Subash noted, theft is alive!
Taxis are usually expensive in Mauritius, so many travelers and expatriates prefer dirty, but cheap buses that cross the island. A word to the wise: wait until the bus reaches a full stop before getting up, because the Mauritian transit drivers love to slam on the brakes and send you to stretch! There are also a wide variety of travel companies offering day tours of the mini van, many of which leave from Grand Bay. The bids look like a deal, but they know that the operators are paid by local companies to capture them. One tour we took dragged us into half a dozen stores in plateau cities before arriving just before closing at the zoo and the main attraction of Casela. The list of stops was quite creative, calling the expensive jewelry store "a precious museum of precious stones." However, the visit to the miniature boat factory and shop in Floreal was very interesting. Mauritius offers many impressive sites, but the tourism industry insists on promoting some of the most exciting so-called sights. For example, the obligatory stop is the small austere crater of Trou aux Cerfs in Curepipe, which is not like a volcanic crater due to the heavy vegetation growing in it. The other is Colored Earth, half of a football field the size of volcanic sand in different shades of red and purple, surrounded by a wooden walkway. Then there is the highly touted island of Ayios Surfs, a small island that offers a golf course, several water sports and a small tourist trap market. This is good, but the beaches and activities at your hotel are probably better and probably cheaper or even free. One of the highlights of a typical Ile aux Cerfs tour is lunch and a Sega show on an isolated beach, which can be reached by boat. It was really fun, but guests should use wild mangroves in the back of the dining room as toilets. Not entirely sanitary or ecological! If you want deserted beaches, you must go to Rodrigues, which has so far escaped the destruction of mass tourism, which caused damage to the main island of Mauritania.
Hotels tend to have an all-encompassing five-star view, some of which, such as La Plantation, are world famous. Economic housing is difficult to find, except in a dorm or shack. One of the notable exceptions is Villa Jorico, a large beautiful bed and breakfast in Pointe-aux-Sable, south of Port Louis, where you can get a huge room with private bathroom for $ 45 per night. There is nothing to do in Pointe Ax, Sobol, and beaches are bad, so this is a place that can only serve your purposes if you have a business in Port Louis. Buses run along the coastal road right in front of the hotel. Note that if you were just staying at a luxury hotel and not trying to live here, you could really feel that this is paradise. This Mauritius, however, is not a luxury hotel with beaches that care for postcard perfection.
What finally killed our reserve in Mauritius was not the insecurity we experienced after the invasion of our home. It was water, or rather lack. Now I understand how stupid it was before signing a lease agreement, so as not to notice that all private houses had huge water tanks (and bars on all windows). Then again, the prestigious South African real estate agency, which represented the owner and charged me more than $ 700 in contracts, did not inform me that water is a rare commodity that flows only one hour per day during the dry season to provide numerous hotels with an adequate supply. At first, we suspected that the reckless young couple of Australian doctors in the townhouse, attached to us, sucked the whole dry one. When the well was completely dry for two consecutive weeks, and I resorted to pulling the dirty water out of the pool to wash the toilets, and we used wet wipes for bathing, we decided that this experiment could not go further. I have already invested a lot of money in this adventure in exotic life, and I was not sure that everything will be better if we throw it out. We returned the keys to the agency, who agreed that this is an exceptional situation (and kept their fees), sold a few things that we purchased, packed our bags and left paradise!
Mauritius can be a paradise, depending on which Mauritius you are on!
