Port Louis, Mauritius

March 2, 2023

This Morning we arrived in Port Louis  Mauritius.

Mauritius is an Island in the Indian Ocean with a population of 1.2 million.Mauritius is a former UK Colony which gained independence in 1968.Mauritius is famous for Beach holidays because of its variety of beautiful beaches. 

Today we didn’t book any tours. We decided to head into town with the provided shuttle. When we got off the ship and walked over to the shuttle pick up, there was such a long lineup of people waiting in the very hot sun. We decided to go on foot to town instead of waiting for the bus. Carol wasn’t sure if it was safe to do that, but we decided to go for it. The area we walked through was a little sketsy, very much industrial. We came up to an intersection , not sure where to go but there was a policeman parked there. We asked him for directions and he offered to stop all traffic on a very busy road, so we could cross safely.(nice guy)We started to notice that on each sideroad we crossed there was a cop parked, so much for a safe neighborhood. Beside the road we walked on there was a deep ditch with flowing life sewer, you can imagine the smell with this hot weather.

After a 40 minute walk we reached the City. We decided to follow the waterfront towards some high rise buildings that looked like Hotels. There were numerous modern stores and restaurants in that area. I was still in need of one more set of pants and Carol needed a few clothing items also. After we got our shopping done , we sat down at a small restaurant for lunch, just to get out the heat. After lunch we wandered around the harbour some more till our legs were telling us to call’r the day. We managed to find the shuttle pick up point and took a ride back to the ship.

Port Louis looked like a modern City on one side of the highway and considerably more poor and lots of older buildings and houses on the other side of the highway. In hindsight we should’ve taken a tour away from the City to get a better idea of what the island looked like.

“Of all the books in the world, the best stories are found between the pages of a passport.”

Cheers