Our next island stop was Mauritius and even though it has a lot of French influences it was like night and day from La Reunion which is a French outpost of some kind. The Mauritius islanders would take both euros and dollars unlike on La Reunion where they would only take euros and their own currency. They were also exceptionally nice and we had no trouble getting a beer and a bite to eat. The port city was also very beautiful with this canal located right next to great shopping areas. I was with Joan on this excursion and we found her a wonderful beaded top for $37 and if I could get it for that price at a 75% off sale it would have been a bargain.

Now that I have raved about the island I do have to tell you about our experience with the water taxis. I had heard it was the only economical way to get to town besides walking and I didn’t feel like walking over two miles in hot and humid temperatures.

We proceeded aft of the ship and it was obvious where they were picking up passengers. Two pallets (the usual construction type pallets with wooden slats) were in front of the metal stairs to the small water taxis. As Joan was stepping on the pallets some of the wood gave way and her foot was caught in between slats which caused her to drop to one knee. At our ages no fall is good but she did seem to be ok even though she was probably going to see some bruising later. By the way, Security from the ship immediately took the pallets away from the metal stairs and some time, while we were gone, they arranged a gangplank from the ship for the water taxis. I believe they had more problems than just Joan’s fall.

These small boats could comfortably carry about ten passengers but they were overloading them. I found the one and only life jacket hanging from the top and please note that the steering mechanism looked like a pipe from a vacuum cleaner.

Even though the people were very nice on Mauritius there was some petty officer in customs or immigration who decided we needed to be checked before we left the island. We had to line up with passports in hand while they took our landing papers out of the passport. They never looked at our faces to see if we matched our passports. In other words they could have taken the papers out of the passports without us being present when they did so. Did they think we were going to jump ship? The Captain was very angry and I have a feeling HAL will not be sending another ship there again. We did get a free glass of champagne for our troubles.