Mauritius & Reunion

As it turned out, on Leg 11, our Russian friend Andrey and owner of ARABELA (which is actually a Dufour 52 not a big Beneteau) had promised his family a trip to Disney Land France and had to turn on his engine for 8 hours to be able to make his flight out and thus AURORA won the leg! Eilo and Captain Ken were happily surprised with that first but still felt it better to arrive alive than to score.

On arrival in Mauritius we tied up to the sea wall in a little harbor off the main commercial harbor of Port Louis and not long after we had the old girl tied up one of the yellow shirts (Cecelie, one of our WARC hosts and facilitator for this and many other landfalls)  put a big shot glass filled with Pink Pigeon Rum in each of our paws and we made fast work of those with delight.  It’s a super smooth and slightly sweet local rum which we highly recommend.  SANDVITA was not in long behind us and our Swedish friends rafted to AURORA because of the limited space in that small harbor:

It was really good to be back on land and better to be on that bit of land known as Mauritius.  It was dangerous being rafted to SANdVITA as that continuous party was now only one step away.  Mauritius is about 35 miles by 30 miles in size with about 1.3 million peeps on island practicing 5 different religions and all living in harmony.  Everyone on Terra Firma should try that trick.  Here is a view of the roof of a Tamil Temple - unfortunately getting crowded out by urban stuff but very colorful and detailed:

The port area of Port Louis, where the ARC boats were tied up, was a renovated old dock area where many of the old stone warehouses were repurposed and cleverly blended with new creating a very nice feel:

And the town was filled with bars and restaurants very cool – the diversity of cultures makes for great fusion restaurants everywhere -  which we put to great use. Does Eilo look unhappy waiting for her fare at this eatery?  I think not (and their classic French food was excellent):

Yup we had some stuff to fix on AURORA.  She took a lot of stress and strain on the Indian Ocean passage and had developed a few leaks where there were none previously.  The most annoying was a big leak through and around the hatch over the forward port berth.  That is a wonderful berth to use when thrashing and crashing around but not when using it means waterboarding the potential sleeper every time you ship a wave over the bow – which was often.  But we got them all sorted and had some time to explore.  Sandvita rented a car and invited us for a drive so we checked out a few spots.   Minding our own business we wandered upon this large Hindu shrine in the middle of the island:

There were shrines of the other religions (except Christians) at that same spot – but no matter, it was very impressive.   Traveled a little further to this small area of sand dunes with 7 different colors of sand – apparently the only place like it on earth:

We also took an ARC sponsored tour and went to their botanic garden – we liked the Amazonian Lilly Pads best:

… and the  La Bourdonnais Plantation.  Bourdonnais was the guy who sorted out the island for the French in the mid 1700’s and it appears he lived well:

… and aside from being recently well restored the plantation house was decked out with all of the original furnishings making it extra special (we like the hand painted "wall paper"):

So what made Le Bourdonnais so special and well liked?  Our guess is it was his high quality rum produced on his plantation which is still tasty today… but we could not take their word for it.  We had to try it for ourselves:

Of course we saw more waterfalls and beautiful beaches – but are we not getting bored with that stuff by now?  It was time to take off on leg 12.  A short hop of 135 miles to La Reunion island.  This time AURORA hit the starting line nicely with sails set and was across in third place.  The whole start was going to be filmed by drone and broadcast on local TV news that night except one of the ARC Yellow Shirts, Victor, was asked to hold the News Cast’s drone at the start before flying it.   One roll of the starting boat and the drone took off.  But what it took off was the end of Victor’s finger so they flew instead to the hospital for a little patch and sew.  We were having fun on AURORA until the wind died about 30 minutes after the start.  Some of the boats which headed north west managed to stay in a little wind and kept going.  We bobbed until the hull speed hit 0.9 knots and then we started the engine and ran for 3.2 hours before picking up the wind again.  It was an ugly leg for AURORA but more important is we arrived alive and rafted to ALTAIR in Le Port (a very industrial port in a very non-touristy town) on the very French Reunion Island.  After fixing a few more things on AURORA we dropped the Dinghy in the water and motored across the port to the town.  When they say non-tourist town they mean it.  Lots of bars and restaurants but none were open at lunch so we decided to come back for diner, which we did.  We found only one restaurant “open” but they were not serving food.  Yup, we were wondering the same thing you are.  If you have a restaurant or bar and never open it how can you make any money to pay the rent or mortgage?  Anyway the town was shuttered and it was getting dark so we bailed before the gangsters came out and so we had dinner on board.  Being rafted it is very easy for other ARC heads to board you should they smell a good time in the works and that happened to AURORA (again):

Lucky for us we had not provisioned yet so after drinking all the remaining beer and wine and a good portion of the spirits on board the foreign crew (represented by Scotland, England, Sweden and Texas) headed back to their own berths.  We rented a car for a few days and did manage to explore the island and that was well worth the effort.  The map one gets with a rental on this island is deceiving because it looks like there are numerous secondary roads that cross the island.  In fact there is only one.  The rest of the roads are not roads but are hiking trails up through the mountains but we did not know that.  So off we go to cross the island and took a breather at about 6,000 feet.  The islanders love to picnic so there are thousands of road side picnic tables like Eilo’s:

In the background you can see the Indian Ocean but can’t really see the beaches or reefs which all look very inviting.   The big issue is there are more shark attacks and shark related deaths on Reunion island beaches than anywhere else in the world so we decided to give beach days a pass.  Though there are beaches were the reefs protect you from sharks (at least theoretically – Ken – behind the reef, margarita close by, poised to post this blog):

We got to the top of the road and it ended at a very steep drop off (a cliff about 3000 feet high).  We could see a village at the bottom as well as the start of the walking trail to get there.   We passed on that trek and opted instead to go find this highly recommended mountain town called Cilaos.  The road to Cilaos went up through a valley with very steep high walls (up to 7,000 feet in places) until the valley ended.  The rest of the road was carved into mountain cliffs.  This valley made Yosemite valley seem small.  Here is a shot out the car window taken about half way up the mountain to Cilaos:

Cilaos rests at about 7,000 feet.  The air there is refreshing - dry and cool.  We were told to get there early as the clouds come in early in the afternoon almost every day:

We poked into a ‘general store’ in the mountains to see what the locals survived on.  We noticed a lot of sugar cane fields along the way and if you looked closely at the old barns on the farms along the road, in almost every one you could spot a still – and some looked to be over 100 gallons in size.  They really get into distilling their own rum as well as making sweet red wine – although we saw only a few small vineyards along the way.  Their results were proudly displayed in the general store:

We got to town before the clouds and checked out the main street:

The top of the mountain in the background is over 9,000 feet and occasionally has snow on it.    The town was thick with shops, bars and restaurants and a large Catholic church completing the set.  After a bucket load of exploring we sat down in a lovely little place for a French Creole lunch.  We highly recommend you check out any of the creole restaurants next time you are in Reunion.  Still not realizing the red “roads” on our map were not roads we took off to find a short cut back across the island.  We found a few dead ends before realizing the red roads were hiking trails.  You can see Cilaos in the background, as the clouds arrive, from one of those dead ends:

What you can’t see and really don’t want to see is the roads and hundreds of switchbacks carved into the sides of mountain cliffs – you really have to pay attention driving those roads.  The bus drivers that negotiate these mountain roads are fearless and talented but getting stuck behind one makes you think it would have been smarter to have had a few more shots of local rum before leaving our lunch stop.   The ARC sponsored a tour of one of the most active volcanoes in the world.  The Furnace volcano (nice name - huh) was not active when we arrived.  It last blew in July.  Signs near it translated to – “Be Careful – Eruption is Likely”. The older generation of locals will not go near the place and the younger generation sees them as being scared.  We see that split more as having wisdom Vs lack of wisdom.  Here’s a shot taken from about 7,500 feet looking down at a recent blow hole in the middle of a lava field:

Note all Those Lacking Wisdom” milling about – waiting to get vaporized should the mountain choose to exercise. Luckily that did not happen and we lived.  We visited one more waterfall which had a huge pool below it – ice cold spring fed water.  Very nice.  We were alone except for a mom and 3 French daughters.  Had a lovely swim and shower and on the 20 minute hike back to the road we must have past 50 people on their way down to the falls. 

 We are off to Richards Bay, South Africa in 2 days - wish us luck.