Islands of the Indian Ocean with Stan's trip reports

Islands of the Indian Ocean

After leaving Malaysia, we had over a week of island hopping around the Indian Ocean, starting with Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylan). We booked a walking tour in Colombo for the morning. It was a bit confusing finding our guide at the port gate – the confusion was where the port gate actually was. We went through two checkpoints but with not English spoken, they’d just point. It doesn’t help that there are a couple of different gates where cruise ships might dock. At any rate, after actually walking past our gate, we managed to connect. Our tour company arranged a small bus (we had 12 participants) to pick us up at the port gate rather than having to get ourselves to a point in the city. This was very helpful though a few of our group stayed in town and walked back to the ship. We had a very informative tour through the early part of the city, settled by the Dutch, including tea and cookies high in a hotel looking over the city and waterfront construction projects for major hotels, etc. We then were picked up and taken to the spice market – what a crazy place. Harold called it organized chaos, but wow! It appeared to be more of a wholesale market, with big trucks carrying everything imaginable in big sacks to deliver. Maneuvering the trucks was a whole group project – we had to blend into the walls to avoid being squashed – fascinating to watch. Then came the vegetable market, with a number of unknown items and packaged spices I’d love to have taken home but we didn’t have shopping time. After seeing the outside of a unique red and white mosque we headed to a local restaurant for a Sri Lankan meal – very nice but a bit too spicy for some. Then back to the ship to relax for the afternoon.

Three sea days until the Seychelles were wonderful days (we quite like the sea days). Beautiful waters and gradually cooling temperatures were great. At the last minute we decided to do a sailing and snorkeling excursion using some On-board Credit. It turned out to be a good choice, nice time on the water, a bit of nice snorkeling, then a few minutes to visit a tiny island beach. All in all, a very nice day.

We had an unexpected (but scheduled) two more sea days until Mauritius Island. It was our “do-it-yourself” day. I had seen directions to go to a colonial house hotel in the hills outside Port Louis in a town where the president lives (or did) and a walk to a waterfall. So we took the shuttle from the ship to a commercial waterfront area (I guess nice shopping, but we didn’t check that out), then got directions to the local bus station and with the help of locals found our bus and off we went. It wasn’t all that far – about 12 km, but a local bus takes a while. We weren’t really sure of our stop but checked with the bus conductor about half a block late and they let us off. We wandered back and found a number of the ship’s tour buses there. It was a small place, so we just stayed on the fringes, then looked at the waterfall trail. At first it seemed quite innocuous, but that belief was soon dispelled as we saw the stairs. It wasn’t a huge hike but was down very irregular stairs in damp soil through the rain forest. We knew that the “ship” folks would have discouraged such an adventure. Oh well, we were on our own for the day, so we carefully made our way down. It was a very nice waterfall and the hike was actually nice if a bit challenging. By the time we got to the top the tours were gone and we were able to wander around the period rooms on our own, then wander up to the town before finding our bus back to town. We thought we’d wander further into the center of  Port Louis before going back on the shuttle, but just managed to find shelter in a gazebo before the clouds let loose. We waited a bit before wandering back out but ultimately were very, very, wet before we got back to the shuttle bus.

Next day was Reunion Island where we had an all-day excursion to the volcano with another couple from our Cruise Critic Roll Call group. Our driver-guide was a bit concerned when he found that we needed to be back by shortly after 3:00. It’s a long drive even going against rush hour and on the new four lane freeway – took 3 ½ hours with a couple of brief photo stops and a 5 km section of extremely rough gravel road. Once we saw that the ship’s tour buses were behind us, we could relax and not stress about the tight schedule. We elected to skip a lunch stop and tour some of the west coast of the island – several lava sea formations created great crashing breakers, some black sand beaches (actually kind of grey), and a really fun blow hole. Our guide took us along the original island highway between the beach towns – two lanes that must have been impossible during rush hour. Even now, he felt we’d better head back rather than stopping at other sights just because traffic can get very heavy and he didn’t want to risk getting us back late. There was time to visit a couple of souvenir tents and see an ox-cart (we didn’t know the significance of it, though) and see some local dancers. A long but very scenic day.

While I think of these last three islands as Indian Ocean islands, they are often referred to as African islands. They were very distinct even though much of their background is similar. Now on to Africa and the end of the cruising portion of our trip.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eVtaVweEwBVnD9GDjFZa6qyi3iKhS2N8/view

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NW0qClLG1O7RB48C9c7oZVZTpZZIf5Ck/view