15th December 2022, Glass Factory and Eureka

Today we learnt not to trust Google maps completely as we ended up on some dirt tracks on our way to the Mauritius Glass Gallery. It had been suggested as somewhere to visit in my handy tourist book. The glass ornaments, trinkets, light shades etc. are all made from recycled glass and from 1 pm to 2 pm the glass blowers give demonstrations. They made a dodo, swan, elephant head and many beer mugs ( from beer bottles to which handles were attached and the lips were fired to give a smooth surface.) After spending an hour and a half there we carried on north along the M2 and B6 to Moka and Eureka.

Eureka is a preserved Creole mansion built in the 1830s with 109 doors. We paid our entrance fee of 150 rupees and ambled around the museum house. They did suggest that the Ravin waterfall , a 15 minute walk along an “ interesting non health and safety pathway” might be too slippery for us “oldies” but we said that we would try it and make our own decision. On the way down we came across a troupe of monkeys and lots of tiny frogs. 

There is a restaurant on site for those who wished to eat or drink.

As it was after 3.15 pm and we weren’t sure how long it would take to get back so we put our trust in Google Maps ( and me slightly) and headed back. No mistakes this time and we arrived at the local Supermarket just in time to see Vicky heading off to collect Jason from work.

Today was an ideal day for these 2 visits as the cloud cover was extremely low. We missed the heavy rain but we did have a sprinkling.











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5th and 6th December 2022 Mauritius, to meet up with Jason, Vicky and the menagerie.

Image
Dave Rolfs kindly took us to Stansted Airport for our flight to Mauritius, via Dubai with Emirates which took off 30 minutes late. This made us quite nervous as our transit time in Dubai was only one and a half hours between landing, getting off the plane, finding out where we should go and taking off again. The flight time was six and a half hours for the first leg and 6 hours for the second. Fortunately we managed to find the transit bus quite easily but it seemed to take us under the whole of Dubai airport before we arrived at Terminal C. We made it to the gate by the skin of our teeth which meant “ not much room in the overhead lockers” as the bulk of the passengers were already on board. The luggage managed to survive and we had no problems getting through all our security checks. It was great to have Jason greet us in the lounge area and we headed to our “home” for the next two weeks. It was lovely to meet Vicky again, their dog, cats and bird when we arrived at their large rente...
Read more

17t h December 2022, Aquarium,Grand Bale and Pamplemousses

Image
A very busy day for us all especially Jason who did all the driving after a late night previously. Vicky and Jas organised the day for us. We drove to the other side of the Waterfront and into the Aquarium at Port Louis. There were numerous fish including Sand sharks, tiger and white tipped sharks and some very strange looking ones. At the beginning there were some seahorses which I think are lovely and seem really unreal. Our next trip was to head to the north coast at Grand Bale ( next to Mont Choisy where the golf tournament is being held at the moment.) We had lunch at the Bloom restaurant and then walked along to look at the Public Beach. It is a great shame that all the hotels have blocked off most of the coastline again and although the Public Beach is lovely it is also quite crowded. We asked Jas to drive along the coast road so that we could see a bit more and get a view of some of the off-shore islands.  This part of Mauritius is quite “flat” in comparison to the rest of ...
Read more

14th December 2022 East Coast Beaches

Image
From Flic en Flac on the west coast of Mauritius to the east coast beaches there is no easy direct route because there is a mountain range in the middle. Also, there are no really good maps of the island so armed with my basic book map and later on Google maps we made our way across, passing through many small towns, Quatrefoil Bornes, Quartier Militaire, Centre de Flac finally arriving at Belle Mare. We could see the sea but the hotels have taken over most of the access to the beaches.  We travelled further south to Palmar and at last we came across a public beach. Swimming was only safe in the first 30 metered of water as the “reef” was much nearer to the shore here and the rougher, deeper water was not far away. Volcanic rocks jut out to sea making ideal fishing areas and give the scenery a dramatic look. We stopped for a short while and I clambered over some of the rocks ( litter picking needs here) before we drove a couple of miles along the edge of the beach towards Trou d’Ea...
Read more