22 June 2017 Port Louis, Mauritius
We’ve finally decided on the dates to fly back to the UK, so we started to look at airlines and found that it’s expensive to fly to the UK from Reunion. The cheapest flights go from Reunion to Paris and then we’d have to get from Paris to London. An alternative route is via Mauritius and Dubai, but we’d have to change twice, so it will be longer. We decided to go with a direct flight to Paris.
We tried to book through a travel website, but after entering all our information, the transaction failed at the credit card check, despite trying both our two credit cards. We then tried two other web sites with the same problem - our Halifax and Lloyds cards just wouldn’t work.
I decided to try to Skype the Halifax help desk in the UK, but it appears that Mauritius Orange Telecom blocks international Skype calls. It always takes at least 30 minutes to contact a bank in the UK, so I wasn’t prepared to pay a fortune for a normal international call. We were unable to clear our credit cards to book the flights - so frustrating.
Eventually, Ralph on “Relax” lent me his German phone and I used his Skype to call the Halifax help desk and, sure enough, they’d blocked our credit cards because we were using them in a foreign country (despite the fact that we always pre-notify them about our travel plans.) Half an hour later, we were able to book our flights to Paris - phew! Sometimes life is so complicated and stressful.
Our laundry came back neatly folded and smelling fresh (and so it should for £57). Our propane tanks came back full to the brim. The gas wasn’t particularly cheap (60 rupees/kg + 600 rupees for Rashid). It came to £42 for two full tanks, which is European prices, but we’ve enough gas to get us to South Africa in November.
After lunch, Glenys went for her eye check-up. Everything looks okay, but she has some thinning of the retina in one spot that she’ll have to keep an “eye” on. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon on the internet checking out things for our trip home. We went out for dinner again, this time at a small restaurant on the sea front where I had a nice salad with Smoked Marlin, which is a local speciality.
23 June 2017 Port Louis, Mauritius
We spent the morning on the internet again. Our first mission was to work out how to get from Paris to London. The flights are expensive (even with the budget airlines) and the Euro Express train would be complicated and fairly expensive as well. To add insult to injury, the airlines all quote ticket prices without checked baggage and each bag adds an extra £65, so for two bags on a return flight it costs an extra £260! Glenys eventually found a cheapish flight via the British Airways web site that included checked baggage, so we’re going with them to Heathrow.
Our next mission was to sort out car hire. The hire companies also try to rip you off. They quote prices for unlimited mileage that includes basic insurance with £1,200 excess if you have an accident. A quote for a small car for 17 days was £400. Add on their no Excess insurance and that rises to £600. However, if you get a car with limited mileage and basic insurance it only costs £200…
We booked a car with the mileage limited to 90 miles per day and for 17 days only costs £230 – we won’t be doing anything like the allowed 1,500 miles. Another coup was finding independent insurance that covers the Excess if we have an accident in the car. For £50, we’ve bought a policy that covers us for car hire worldwide for a complete year.
With our administration done, we went out for walk around town. It’s nearing the end of Ramadan, so the big mosque in town was very busy. The men are all wearing fancy Embroidered Hats, that are on sale outside the mosque.
We then walked around China Town which has loads of small shops selling anything that you’d desire and then ventured into the busy local market, which has a great variety of vegetables. We couldn’t resist grabbing a couple of Curry Roti for lunch. Our afternoon was quiet, doing more planning for our UK trip.
24 June 2017 Port Louis, Mauritius
It’s very convenient being in a marina in town, but last night a disco was booming away until the small hours. Add creaking ropes and people talking next to the boat in the car park and you’ve got another restless night.
Saturday in Port Louis is Race Day. The Mauritians love to gamble and they’re lucky to have one of the oldest horse racing tracks in the world. Over 200 years old, the race course is in the city about a mile from the marina. It has a large grandstand containing private boxes overlooking the race track. Inside the building is a lovely, atmospheric courtyard with tall Banyan tree providing shade to the hundreds of people betting, buying food and drinking beer.
We stopped at an information booth and were told that tourists could use one of the private boxes for free, which was on the third floor with a fine view of the finishing line. It didn’t take us long to find out where to place bets, so we had a great time betting on the eight races. It only cost 200 rupees (£5) to get into the grandstand (ladies are free). We broke even for the day, winning 7 out of the 8 small bets that we placed, which paid for our beer and Curry Rotis - a fabulous, fun day out.
25 June 2017 Port Louis to Grand Baie, Mauritius
With a feeling of relief, we escaped the hustle and bustle of the city and sailed up the coast to Grand Baie. It was a lovely 10 mile sail because the north end of Mauritius is very flat allowing the steady trade winds to blow, but the sea is calm in the lee of the island. The entrance to the bay is shallow and not charted very well, so it was a little fraught especially when the depth dropped to 2.3 metres.
Once past the entrance, the bay opens up and the depth increases to over 5 metres. Grand Baie is a well-protected bay and the holding is very good – we anchored at 20°00.68S 057°34.51E in 6 metres over sand. This is a very popular tourist town and there is plenty of activity with charter boats going out to the nearby islands.
We left our dinghy at the very nice Yacht Club, which gives visiting yachts free membership for a month, allowing the use of their showers and restaurant. The small town is packed with tourist shops and tour operators, but it has a huge Hypermarket, which is the best we’ve seen since Phuket.
26 June 2017 Grand Baie, Mauritius
We fly out of Reunion on the 7th July, so we’re planning to sail to Reunion on 29th, which is 135 miles away – an overnight sail. This means that we won’t be spending as long in Mauritius as we’d originally planned, so we decided to hire a car for tomorrow to do a quick tour of the island.
Unfortunately, it was the end of Ramadan and the start of the Muslim Idil Fitri celebrations, so today was a public holiday. There are lots of small tour operators in town, some of who rent cars and scooters, but many of them were closed. It normally costs about 1000 rupees (£25) to hire a car for one day, but the only place that had a car was Eurocar, who charged us over twice the street price. We had no choice - if we want to have a look at the Mauritius countryside then it has to be tomorrow.
After a quiet afternoon, we invited Frank and Evie from “Frieda” over for sundowners. Frank plays guitar, so we had a music session, which was great fun. It’s the first time that I’ve found someone who plays guitar since we left Thailand six months ago.
27 June 2017 Gand Baie, Mauritius
After picking up the hire car, we had a great day touring Mauritius. I takes about 1½ hours to drive from the north to the south of the island, so we were restricted in what we could see, but we had a good insight into the island.
The first thing to strike us was that Sugar Cane grows everywhere – there are fields and fields and fields of the stuff. At the moment, most of the tall plants have a large delicate flower, which looks like pampas grass, swaying in the wind.
Like Rodrigues, Mauritius was formed by volcanoes. Although there are no active volcanoes on the island, the mountains are impressive, with several ranges jutting up steeply with the limestone worn into strange pointed shapes by the wind and the rain. The roads are good with dual carriageways between the jagged peaks.
Our first stop was at a Hindu holy site called Ganga Taloa, which is a renowned pilgrimage site. In February/March, there is a large festival called Maha Shivaratri when up to 500,000 of the island’s Hindu community come to this site to pay homage to Shiva. (Legend has it that the lake was formed from two drops of water from the Ganges River, which Shiva was taking to India.)
The most devoted pilgrims walk from their village to the sacred lake carrying a kanvar, a light wooden frame or arch decorated with paper flowers. Others make their way by coach or car. Once there they perform a puja, burning incense and camphor at the lake shore and offering food and flowers.
It’s a peaceful place, especially if you walk around the lake away from the main temple and all of the tourists. Unfortunately, it rained heavily while we were there, so we were soon back in the safety of our car. The rain persisted as we drove through the lovely, mountainous Black River National Park, so we only stopped at a couple of viewpoints, and had brief glimpses of the spectacular scenery as the clouds parted. We didn’t visit the “seven earths” site, which is an area of multi-coloured earth, which we felt would be multi-coloured mud.
The sun came out as we descended from the mountains, and we stopped for lunch at a small cafe in the coastal village of Baie du Cap, where we had a couple of plates of creole curry and rice. It was a scruffy place, but the food was tasty and cheap.
Our whirlwind tour took us along the coast to La Morne, with is an impressive lump of rock, 550 metres high, jutting up from the sea shore. It was apparently to here that a group of escaped slaves fled in the early 19th century, hiding out on top of the mountain to remain free. They were known as Maroons.
The story has it that the slaves, ignorant of the fact that slavery had been abolished, panicked when they saw a troop of soldiers making their way up the cliffs one day. Believing they were to be recaptured, the slaves flung themselves from the cliff tops to their deaths in huge numbers, which explains the origin of the name Le Morne (Mournful One).
Although there are no historical records to substantiate the story, it’s an important one for Mauritians as a reminder of the island’s brutal history. There’s a small, rather dull memorial to the abolition of slavery.
It was a pity that we didn’t have time to do a trek to the top of La Morne. We found the trail head track, which is marked by a prominent sign on the road out of Baie du Cap (20°27.47S 057°20.42E). Until recently, the trail was only accessible to licensed guides, but in 2016, the route was opened to everyone. It’s supposed to be well marked from a car park (20°27.60S 057°19.54E) and takes 2-3 hours to get to a cross on the summit. The last part is a steep scramble aided by fixed ropes. Sounds great.
On our way back to Grand Baie, we stopped off at the Botanical Gardens at Pamplemousse, which was very pleasant. It’s mostly trees, with a few small formal ponds – the highlight is a large pond filled with Giant Water Lilies with huge 1 metre diameter lily pads. It was lovely to spend an hour strolling around the shaded paths. There’s lots of small wildlife, we saw Red Whiskered Bulbuls, a Mongoose and a very greedy Striated Heron - trying to swallow a fish.
Taking advantage of the car, we called in at the Grand Baie Hypermarket and loaded two trolleys with heavy provisions, rice, tinned goods and drinks. A large Super Supreme pizza from Pizza Hut rounded off the day.
28 June 2017 Gand Baie, Mauritius
After our hectic tour yesterday, we spent all day on-board organising ourselves for our UK trip, buying things online to be delivered to our son’s house. I’ve a long list of items to buy including windlass deck switches, a valve for the front heads, zincs for the bow thruster, 1mm wetsuits, etc, etc.
“Hokulea” invited us over for a glass of wine or two. They’re heading to the Seychelles, so we might not see them again – but you never know when cruising...
29 June 2017 Mauritius to Reunion (Day 1)
The alarm went off at 06:30 and we lifted our anchor half an hour later. The tide was falling and we were keen to leave the bay with half tide.
When we entered the bay a few days ago, the depth went down to a scary 2.3m. The manager of the yacht club told me that there’s no official leading line, but “it’s all sand”. “Hokulea” have C-Map charts that show two slightly shallower patches of sand at the entrance, which they went between - the minimum depth that they saw was about 3 metres. I took some waypoints from their chart and we took a slightly better line this time - the minimum depth we saw was 2.8m at half tide.
In my opinion, the best entry waypoints are: Leave the Outer Channel Marker (19°59.81S 057°34.26E) to starboard. The next waypoint (20°00.180S 057°34.462E) is between two shallower patches of sand - we saw 2.8 metres minimum depth with 0.4m tide. After the inner waypoint (20°00.29S 057°34.52E) the depth increases to over 5 metres in the anchorage.
We had another lovely sail in the calm waters along the coast, although there were strong gusts as we approached Port Louis. There was another yacht on the customs dock, so we had to go port-side-to, in front of them with our bow 5 metres from the corner – the depth dropped to 2.2 metres.
The clearance process took an hour, mostly waiting for the immigration officer to come to the boat, which gave me time to put our dinghy on deck. Customs and the coastguard were very quick, so we were able to drop our mooring lines at 11:00.
It was difficult to leave the dock in the windy conditions. I tried to back out, but our stern tucked in and I ended up peeling to starboard, straight into a 2.0m mud patch. We ground to a halt as we bottomed out, but I was able to use the bow thruster to spin us 120° to starboard, and powered off the shallow spot when we were pointing out into the harbour. It probably looked very professional to the tourists watching us leave...
Once safely out to sea, we had 15-20 knot south-east winds, putting us on a beam reach. The first three hours were gusty with large confused waves, but we soon escaped the effects of land and the conditions settled down later in the afternoon. With only 135 miles to go we were in no rush, so we put two reefs in the main and had a scrap of genoa out, scooting us along at 5 to 6.5 knots.
There was a half moon, making the first half of the night very pleasant. At our 01:00 watch change, we could clearly see the lights on the hillsides of Reunion, some 50 miles away. During my 1-4 watch, I was contacted by a coastguard aircraft, who confirmed our destination and asked if we’d submitted our Arrival Notification form, which thankfully we had.
At 03:30, we had 35 miles to go; 20-25 knot winds; and at least a knot of current with us, giving us a speed over the ground of 7.5 knots. The charts show many unlit Fish Attraction Devices (FADs) around Reunion, so we didn’t want to be approaching in the dark, so I rolled away the main sail and we plodded along with a scrap of genoa. It slowed us down to 5.5 to 6 knots. Sometimes it’s really hard to slow down.
30 June 2017 Mauritius to Reunion (Day 2)
At dawn, we had 20 miles to go, with no sign of any FADs. As we approached the impressive mountainous island of Reunion, the wind dropped to 15-20 knots, so we let out all of the genoa. Thirty minutes later the wind was down to 10-15 knots, so we unrolled the mainsail.
Arrived off the port at 10:00 and called the marina on the VHF as requested, but received no reply. We just went ahead; motored into the small port and then into the Le Port Marina (20°56.39S 055°17.25E). it’s a very well protected, modern marina with excellent floating pontoons.
A couple of the marina staff met us on the dock and told us that the customs would be clearing us in a couple of hours. In the meantime, they laid out a spongy mat and poured disinfectant on it, so that we could disinfect all the shoes that we’d used while on Rodrigues and Mauritius, where there had been cases of Foot & Mouth.
Two customs guys arrived just after lunch. They act as quarantine, customs and immigration and the whole process took ten minutes. Due to the Foot & Mouth, we knew that they’d be taking all meat, vegetables and milk products, so we’d cleared out our fridge and only had a small bag of cheese and a few vegetables. They looked at it and said that as long as we didn’t take it off the boat, we could keep it and eat it, which was good of them.
We went for a walk in town. It’s more French than France. There are small restaurants with tables out on the streets and most shops close between 12:30 and 14:30 - God forbid that you want to do anything other than eat and drink wine on a lunch time. When you finally meet a shop keeper, they are very polite, saying “Bonjour” and shaking your hand - very old fashioned.
We wandered to the Tourist Information, who gave us some good information on La Reunion, especially on the hiking which is a big thing here, with mountains stretching up to 3000 metres. We decided to hire a car next week and drive up to one of the three ancient volcanic craters to do some hiking.
After tramping around town for a couple of hours, getting quotes for car hire and failing to get a SIM card for our telephone, we lost the will to live and retired back to the boat to gorge ourselves on baguette, cheese and wine, and then early to bed.
There are more photos in our Photo Album section.
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