Saturday, June 03, 2006
...Mauritius Part I...
Yes folks, here's the long-awaited account of my fantastic Mauritius trip!! =)
Day 1We flew by Air Mauritius and had to do a transit at KL. This resulted in a 9hours plus flight... totally gruelling!! BUT, being young and crazy, we decided to be photo whores on the plane! hahaha.. much to the amusement of the guy sitting behind me. look:
We touched down at about 1.35pm Mauritius time. Btw, Mauritius is 4 hours behind Singapore so that's like 5.35pm Singapore time. By then, we were all super shagged from the journey, but i managed to snap a shot of the airport.
We got up the airport transfer shuttle bus and began a 1 hour and 10 mins drive to our hotel. Yes, it's that far.. haha.. but I guess usually beach resorts have to be far from the city, isn't it? hee.. so along the way, we all got bored again and starting snapping photos of our surroundings. Sugar is one of Mauritius' main exports and hence, everywhere you go, you'll see sugar cane plantations. It's a really beautiful sight coz I've never seen a real sugar cane plant. The ones that I see are those in the hawker centre waiting to be made into sugar cane juice. haha.. that's one of the perils of living in the city... u'll miss out on such naturistic stuff.. These sugar cane plants actually flower and the flowers look very much like lavender plants (the 3 of us were unanimous on that! haha)
Mauritius is still a very much undeveloped place. There is only 1 main road running around the island. This main road has no street lighting and the roads are "treacherous"... haha.. sharp turns, steep slopes, bumpy roads etc... you need REALLY good driving skills man! So we finally reached our hotel, Hotel Ambre, on the east coast after a long and bumpy ride. After doing the necessary check-in stuff, we caught a cab to the nearest town called Belle Mare to have a look and to stock up on drinking water. Cabs there don't work on a meter system. You negotiate the cab fare outside the cab and when both parties are happy, off you go! While at Belle Mare, all 3 of us did some shopping and we eventually lugged a 5 litre bottle of mineral water back to the hotel for our 5 days water supply. hahaha...
By then, we were all very hungry.. but dinner will only be served at 730pm Mauritius time! That's 1130pm Singapore time! To forget those hunger pangs, we munched on biscuits and played 'dai dee' and 'join bones' (this is a new game I taught the girls.. haha). Time really crawled by... but eventually we got our dinner and went to bed early in preparation for tomorrow!!
Day 2We woke up at a decent time (considering the fact that none of us will be awake at 7am when we're in Singapore.. haha) and headed down for breakfast. After which, cameras were all whipped out to capture nice scenes of the hotel and the beach. The hotel is really beautiful and the beach is pictureque! Gosh, it might as well looked as though it's being ripped outta some travel magazine.. my camera isn't that pro and my photography skills are lacklustre.. so here's the best that I could capture and it really doesn't do the place justice:
These are photos of the hotel itself. Beautiful, isn't it?
We spent the entire day at the beach, just relaxing and soaking up the sun. Something really memorable happened though: Alicia signed us up for some mini olympiad on the beach while Geri and I went back to the room to call up the tour agency regarding some matter. When we got back, Alicia told us about the mini olympiad thingy and handed us this green ribbon for us to tie on our wrists to symbolise that we're from the green team. Together in our team were 2 guys from France and 1 other Italian guy. Starting to look like fun! haha.. we lost some games and we won some games. It was really fun, laughing and cheering others on. The most memorable game was the tug-of-war. We came out champs!! hahaha... All 6 of us pulled with our might and the climax came when the referee starting chanting, "Singapore! Singapore! Singapore! Singapore!" We felt like we have become part of Team Singapore (hahahahaha...) and all 3 girls pulled like crazy albeit the images we were portraying (hair all over the place, fats wobbling from the stomach, falling hard on our butts when we got thrown off etc)... haha.. it was a funny sight and i suffered from rope burns but it was all in the name of fun and well worth it! We won and after that, almost everyone on the beach knew that the 3 of us are from Singapore. One couple even went up to Alicia to ask how was Singapore as they were planning to go there for honeymoon! hahaha.. funny!
After the mini olympiad, we changed from Team Singapore to Singapore photo whores.. hahaha! We couldn't help it, the sand and the sea were just so inviting! The waters are so clear and blue!
Various shots of the beach... The green stuff that you see in the photo on the right is actually seaweed. The beach cleaners sweep them away each morning but they never stop forming on the beach...
Yup, that's us.. the photo whores.. hahaha...
So that's just what we did on Day 2 - nothing but relaxing, lazing and photo-taking.. haha.. i know you folks are envious of us.. the beautiful beach, breath-taking scenes and the carefreeness... just dun tell me to wipe that grin off my face.. haha.. it's a well-deserved summer break!! Part II coming up next..
Kel ♥
4:59 PM
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We touched down at about 1.35pm Mauritius time. Btw, Mauritius is 4 hours behind Singapore so that's like 5.35pm Singapore time. By then, we were all super shagged from the journey, but i managed to snap a shot of the airport.
We got up the airport transfer shuttle bus and began a 1 hour and 10 mins drive to our hotel. Yes, it's that far.. haha.. but I guess usually beach resorts have to be far from the city, isn't it? hee.. so along the way, we all got bored again and starting snapping photos of our surroundings. Sugar is one of Mauritius' main exports and hence, everywhere you go, you'll see sugar cane plantations. It's a really beautiful sight coz I've never seen a real sugar cane plant. The ones that I see are those in the hawker centre waiting to be made into sugar cane juice. haha.. that's one of the perils of living in the city... u'll miss out on such naturistic stuff.. These sugar cane plants actually flower and the flowers look very much like lavender plants (the 3 of us were unanimous on that! haha)
These are photos of the hotel itself. Beautiful, isn't it?
