Sailing around the World ( presently in Mauritius )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Mon 11 Oct 2010 04:53
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SUNDAY 10th
OCTOBER 2010
Today is going to be a rest day, relax and just
take it easy, well thats what we thought,
No sooner were we out of the bunks, but we were
marched off to the local Cathedral for mass at 8.30 am.
It was an interesting mass, in that it was all
conducted in French. The whole service took 1 hour.
The catholic population here is about 26% and
Hindu's are by far the vast majority at 60%
and again , they obviously have a lot of Indian
ancestors, Most people are very slim and good looking.
Then there is also a large Chinese population, who
seem to have most of the buisness connections,
Following Mass, we wandered back to the local 5 *
hotel and had a full english breakfast for just about 10 Euro's,
we thought that was good value for what we got, in
fact we ate so much, skipper had to have a nap to sleep it off.
Our first impressions of Mauritius are very good,
As said before, clean, well organised and happy. A different kind of paradise.
later, Neil and Terry washed down and cleaned the
boat,while skipper did the emails and the blog.....
2pm after a relaxing morning, we decided to
go and do some food purchasing in the supermarket, particularly butter and spuds
for the dinner,
as we were going to have dinner on board
tonight, roast belly pork and chicken snitzels.
Of course, when we got to the supermarket, it was
closed, It closed at 12.00hrs so that was that, With nothing much to do, we
wandered
off down the town through the Sunday Markets, where
we managed to get enough potatoes for dinner,costing approx .04 cents for 1/2
doz
huge potatoes, We also got an LED reading
head lamp, ( one that straps around the head ) for less than 2 Euro's , great
value.
Back to the boat, having done lots of window
shopping on route, we relaxed again and watched many of our boats arrive into
the little harbour basin
which was reserved for the World ARC boats.
One big happy family.
Then there was an exchange of all the different
experiences that each boat had, many boats having had some damage done on the
crossing.
but luckily, nothing too serious.
We were joined on " A Lady" by our American friends
from " Wild Tigres, " for some drinks, thats Casey, Hidi, and Henry.
we
were cooking our dinner at the time, we had a good
time and a laugh, Henry was on neat gin and was very funny.
we exchanged all sorts of stories,
Later, when dinner was finished, skipper took his
new laptop to the Hotel, where there is free Wifi and tried Skyping home ,
but the pass word would not work, blinking computers. I am sure they were
designed to drive humans daft. so we will have to try again some other
time.
So back to the boat, where everyone else had gone
to the scratchers, that is except Neil, who had gone to " Crazy horse " to a
sing song
organised by the younger folk.
At this stage, most of the fleet had arrived , and
were soooo happy to be here,
Tahts all for now, Hope you enjoy the
photo's
Signed :- Stephen Hyde, ( skipper
)
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