childrenChildren's Villages. There are tons of them all over the world. They
are great because they focus on creating a normal family life for the
kids. It's a village because the kids live in houses with a mom. This one for example had like 7 houses with 10 kids in each house. So the kids grow up in a
family unit with a mom and brothers and sisters. It's very effective I
think.
The kids were very sweet. They did a Saga dance for us. Saga is the native music of Mauritius. It's got influence from the Indian and African cultures. It has a little bit of a salsa beat too it too I guess. Anyway, they all danced for us, like they do in every country!
We played with the kids and they did mendi on some of our hands… these are little kids, like 6-8 so they did flowers and hearts, not exactly the mendi you see in magazines but it's adorable.
We also went to Casela Park which is a bird and plant park. They had a petting zoo so I got to pet a giant tortoise, a deer, a wallaby, and some little monkeys who kept trying to eat my Brazilian bracelet. (oh
by the way, I found out the bracelets from Brazil only say that this is a souvenir from a certain church in Brazil. Not as exciting as I thought but as long as it grants wishes I'm good with it.)
So there's a bunch of touristy stuff in Mauritius. We went and saw the old volcano crater which pretty much looked like a lake because it was filled with water and surrounded by vegetation and trees. Nice spot to raise a family if there wasn't a small chance of exploding someday.
We went to a lake which is holy to the Hindu's because there is a story about a man who saw Shiva dancing on the water's surface. They also had a story about some other "supernatural in a divine way"
things that have happened there. I of course am now totally into Hinduism as well (expect a lecture blog on it soon!). So I took off my shoes and walked into the lake so that my feet were covered in holy
water. I was basically walking on algae, but it was holy algae!
There was a deaf man who kept insisting on talking to me so I had to get a translator. I really liked him, he was just extremely talkative and he kept taking my arm and walking me over to other things he wanted me to look at. It was a bit humorous.
Close by was a tea plantation with tea tasting. I bought a few boxes to bring home as gifts… to be honest I
don't think any of the gifts I've bought are going to go to anyone cause the more I look at them the more I want them.
The coolest thing Mauritius had in my opinion was the 7 colored earths. There's a place were the ground is rainbow colored. I asked how it was possible for soil to be different colors (because I have a need to know everything). Our guide, Shane, said it was not soil but volcano ash with different iron oxides and other chemicals which created different colors. Nothing grows on it. It's beautiful, especially at sunset. One of the best things in Mauritius was the food! No surprise there. There's authentic African, Chinese, Indian,
and French food. We tried to find a "traditional Mauritius meal", but that's kind of hard since its just a mix of cultures and Mauritius hasn't had people on it for every long. What we found was a great little place on the side of a road that served food "in the Mauritian manner", meaning on giant banana leaves. One big plate with a banana leaf spread open on it… they added some samosas, a ball of grainy stuff, eggplant, a native vegetable, spinach, giant beans, tomato sauce, fish, chicken, shrimp and a few other things that I couldn't recognize.
It's all prepared in a curry-like fashion and you eat by braking off some nan (which is a type of bread if you don't know) and you use the nan to scope up the other stuff, with your hands of course. The nan is the eating utensil and they use mostly just three fingers to do all the work. It's different from how they do it in Sri Lanka but every bit as fun. I can't wait to get to India and eat some more!
Anyway, the food was amazing, none of it was spicy in the burn your mouth way, but it was all very flavorful; probably the best meal I've had on this trip so far. Thank Shiva and Parvati for the Indians and
their amazing food!
Some other photos:
