Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Mauritius


As some of you "guessed" (aka cheated), we traveled to Mauritius last week, which was part vacation, part mile run and our first trip to Africa. It doesn't really take 30,000 miles to get there, but we tacked on an overnight to Hawaii on the way back for no extra cost. This meant one stretch of more than 48 hours of flying (Johannesburg to Washington to Los Angeles to Kauai).

We got an unusually good deal on the tickets, which is why we ended up in Mauritius in the first place. (Not many Americans travel there or even know where it is.) And we used miles and points to stay at the Le Meridien in Mauritius and a hotel in Kauai. We stayed with friends one night in Johannesburg.

Below are a few pics from our four days in Mauritius.


Hot and humid every day with a few pleasant doses of rain and major condensation.


Free drinkies and snacks at sunset. We lived on this along with the included breakfast buffet.


Fresh flowers in tubs of water.


While we sat on our rumps and shoveled down food from the buffet, we watched this fisherman dive in again and again to haul lobster traps. (Note rainbow. Another shower had just passed by.)


Mango and papaya. Yum.



Two panoramas - one of the view from our room and the other of the Indian Ocean, which is a smooth as a puddle along the north shore of Mauritius due to a barrier of coral reefs. Mr. Bromeliad waterskied.

p.s. - Here is a fun video documentary about the whole mile runner community.

13 comments:

  1. That's so exciting and beachy and warm! And I'm sure you are right...not a lot of people go to Mauritius.

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  2. Gorgeous. Care to tell us what the price per day worked out to, or would we hate you too much?

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  3. Gorgeous and more gorgeous! Can I just say I might be COMPLETELY JEALOUS! Fab! :)

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  4. How beautiful! I'm wondering what the blue drink is?

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  5. Wow. Amazing. That shot with the blue drink did me in. I love living vicariously through others' vacations.

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  6. OMG! Looks like you had an amazing trip! Those pics of the water are gorg and the blue cocktail looks very festive!

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  7. Absolutely gorgeous -- and your pictures are really well done. I'm jealous!

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  8. Katie, not sure of the price per day. It wasn't our cheapest trip ever. For example, we paid $60 a night at Le Meridian in addition to the points. Also, we didn't rent a car so had to subsist on expensive resort food. And the taxi from Le Meridian to the airport was about $70. And United now charges for airline food, etc. etc.
    Mise, I don't remember the drink name but it contained Curacao, which I believe was the source of the blue color.

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  9. I want to use that photo with the blue drink as my laptop desktop at work, but since I work with underage kiddies, I probably shouldn't.

    Sounds like a relaxing vacation. I learned something about mile runs by reading your old post! Interesting stuff.

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  10. What an amazing trip! I did have an inkling you might be in that part of the world, even before I saw the name of the photo. We stayed in the south west of the island and were able to go because I used to work for British Airways. It certainly is a long, long trip from the US.

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  11. It is indeed a long, long flight - 15 hours going, 20 hours coming back, with a 1-3 hour layover in Senegal. We flew South African Airways, and the plane was big and comfortable, the food was good and there were lots of movies, which helped.

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