Some People Call Me Maurice

Ile Maurice, that is.  Mauritius has some distinguishing characteristics.  For starters, that was the slowest damn immigration entry line I've ever been in.  It took well over an hour and there were only like 7 people in line ahead of us.  There were 20 other lines, all moving at the same glacial speed.  It was raining a little when we got in the cab.  The airport is in the SE part of the island; our hotel is on Turtle Bay in the NW.  It takes about an hour.  So I was worried we would have rain all the time.  But by the time we got there, the skies were clearing, and we spent the whole afternoon by the pool or walking along the beach, with temperatures in the mid 80s.  The beach is kind of rough to walk along; there's a lot of broken coral.  The waves break maybe 50-70 yards from the shore, so it looks like it gets deep very quickly and then shallows out; maybe there's a sand bar out there or something.  We'll find out tomorrow.  The clouds wisped away by nightfall, so we spent time on the dock pondering the ocean, then explored the restaurants.  The food has been delicious so far: dinner was tuna and seafood cassoulet, with a dessert of coconut creme brulee and fruit with passion fruit sherbet.

Our taxi driver today gave us the brief overview of Mauritius' economy.  Tourism is number one, followed by sugar cane  - the entire highway from the airport to the top tip of the island is lined by sugar cane plants.  They grow two meters tall - 1.5 meters for the stalk, another 0.5 meters for the leaves.  Harvest season starts in June.  Also, there's a Sugar Museum where you can go on "l'aventure de sucre."  Not for diabetics, I'm guessing.  After that comes textiles - they import wool and cotton from Africa and India and make clothing; then services such as banking, and then fishing.  Now you know what we know about the island's economy.

It started raining hard in the middle of the night and kept raining hard until about noon.  Apparently the last few months have been drier than normal, though we're in cyclone season.  (We're told there are two seasons: cyclone and anti-cyclone.  As best I can tell, the only difference is the direction the thunderstorm comes in from.)  Someone had spray painted on a wall, "God forgive us our sins, and give us rain."  Well, apparently the Mauritian God, a combination of Christian, Hindu, Muslim and whatnot, doesn't take kindly to spiritual vandalism, so last night kind of flooded out all the roads.