"Treasures of Cruising the World" with Bill & Mary Ann: Report # 82 Sailing Towards Port Louis, Mauritius March 21, 2014 Friday Partly cloudy, 82 degrees

What a surprise....dolphins

Jumping high

Today and tomorrow will be lazy days at sea, or so we hope. After the fun-in-the-sun port of Victoria, Seychelles, we need these resting up days. On a side note, Maureen, our crafts buddy, mentioned that the folks in Victoria told her that few ships stop in the Seychelles these days, due to the pirate activity reported there over the last few years. News like that hangs around for a long time after the fact.

Beautiful skies

No rain yet

Perhaps it will rain tonight

The hardest job we had today was filling out the Mauritius Immigration embarkation and departure cards. There will be a mandatory face-to-face passport inspection with the officials the day we dock in Port Louis. It has been nine years since we last visited this island, and we sure do not remember doing this. We did have a nice surprise to find that our number to be called that morning to the checkpoint was the letter "S". Normally, that is reserved for President Club members, and deck seven folks. Recently, the five star Mariners have been included in this "special" group. This means that we can go to the inspection anytime between 8am and 9:30am. Since we will not be on a tour, it really does not matter a whole lot to us. But we do like being included with the priviledged group. Tell you a secret......we have always gone when we wished, and nothing has ever been questioned. It's basically crowd control, and as long as everyone does not go first, it does not matter. What matters is that everyone has to attend, or no one will be allowed off of the ship.

Barbara H. gave a talk on the upcoming ports of Mauritius and Reunion. Most everything will be closed early or not opened at all in Mauritius, because we happened to be stopping there on a Sunday. Equally bad timing is the port of Reunion, where we will visit on a Monday. Barbara said Mondays are almost like Sundays, so much will be closed. We doubt we will have trouble finding a restaurant opened and some of the marketplaces. Sometimes these less than perfect stops cannot be avoided, since there are few options out in the middle of the Southern Indian Ocean.

A new guest speaker has joined the ship by the name of Dr. John Palmisano. A marine biologist, he gave a lecture on the major groups of marine plants and animals. Something tells us that we are going to like this speaker. Brian Stoddart is still onboard with a talk about the African Continent.....150 years of global development. Now that we are heading in that direction, we need to learn as much as we can about Africa. In fact, our safari in South Africa is coming up a week from today. Where has the time gone?

We spent some time at the pool, with a quick swim. But we had so much work to do with photos for the last two days, we headed back to the room for a simple snack and movie or news watching. Hoping for some news on the lost plane, we were frustrated to find that the TV reception was cutting in and out. Around 6pm, we took a walk to deck nine to watch the sun go down. As we head due south, the sunsets are getting really nice. An added bonus to the sun setting, was seeing a large pod of tuna jumping wildly right near the bow of the ship. They had also been around the ship early this morning, right when one of us left the morning walk. That's always the way it goes.

Dinner was formal this evening.....a White Dinner, meaning everyone was to dress in something white. Too bad our tablemates Bill and Marianne were not there, since Bill has been feeling under the weather since coming back from India yesterday. Sometimes it is unavoidable to pick up a bug when going overland. The food can be too spicy, or the water, OK but different than what we are used to. He has to recover, because they are planning a trip out of Durban to Victoria Falls and Chobe. We did have company this evening. A pretty young lady from the jewelry store joined our group. She is here with a special collection from a New York jewelry store. You could not miss the fabulous necklace she was wearing. It was set with several tanzanite stones surrounded with numerous diamonds. As the evening went on, we casually asked her how much a piece like that would cost. She casually said about $65,000. Really? Then with a little help getting it off, she passed it around the table for all of us to see it closer. It was a big WOW, but where would you wear something like that when you went home? Only if you were attending the Academy Awards and had a bodyguard with you at all times. In addition to the necklace, she was wearing equally exquisite diamond earrings and a dazzling ring. She was unsure as to the price of the earrings, but added that we were welcome to come to her in the ship's store to check it out. Oh, that could be really dangerous. All in all, it was a lovely evening, even though the all white decorations gave us the feeling of being in a hospital ward. They needed more glitz.