Climbing
Mauritius’ highest peak, sounded like a holiday in paradise. At my best, I am
not so great with directions and maps – so when Christa Van Schalkwyk started arranging
accommodation and transport for our trip, it was such a welcome relief. Of course, 5 star hotels were out of the
question but after searching for ‘cheaper’ accommodation, we stumbled upon the Mountain
View apartments.
We
arrived after 19:00 and our taxi driver was waiting to take us to La
Gaulette. The trip started off great.
Our taxi driver took the wrong turn-off but the roads are narrow in Mauritius
so he was forced to put a lot of extra kilometres on his speedometer before we
were back on the road to La Gaulette.
The road is also very winding and travelling at 80km/hour, I got carsick
for the first time in my life.
I was
pleasantly surprised by the accommodation and Shan, the owner, who went out of
his way to assist us.
The next morning at 6:00, we started our hike to Le Morne Brabant, an UNESCO World Heritage Site. I was told that it was pretty exposed, but I chose to ignore that bit of information and by talking just about non-stop with the rest of the group, I missed all the exposed parts.
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| On top of Le Morne Brabant |
Christa
was ready for the beach and asking around, we were told that the beach in Le
Morne was only 5 minutes away. In most of the African countries, you are told
that whatever you are looking for is just around the corner – or not very
far. In Mauritius we were told that
whatever we were looking for, was only 5 minutes away.
It felt
great to be lying on the beach with my hiking boots on and no-one seemed too
surprised when I walked into the sea wearing my hiking clothes.
Getting
back to La Gaulette was another matter. We were told that we could wait all day for
local transport and we were advised to hitchhike, which we did. Scared and surprised when a truck with 3 guys
stopped – but we got in. The driver
refused to take any money and by now I was very impressed by the friendliness
of the locals.
Lying
on my bed, I heard an ‘explosion’ and ran outside. The electrical cable was on fire and the
people next to us said it is extremely dangerous. I decided to grab my passport
and get away as far and as fast as possible.
I have, after all, still a lot of mountains I want to climb. When I was convinced that nothing was going
to explode, after this quick getaway, I looked into my backpack. I had packed
in my passport, wallet, a clean set of undies, my favourite shirt and a book to
read.
For the
rest of the evening we had no electricity and decided to have some cocktails
but since we were on a tight budget, we got some cane and orange juice at the
local supermarket. We could not find any
‘umbrellas’ and settled for birthday candles.
Whilst sipping our ‘cocktails’, I realised that using burning candles
instead of decorative umbrellas could end up with my hair scorched. Since we had
already an eventful day, I decided to extinguish the burning candle. Shan arranged transport to the highest
mountain in Mauritius for the next day.
Kunal,
our taxi driver for the day, arrived at 06:00 and it was only after a while
that we realised that he did not know that we wanted to climb Black Rock
peak. So we had to go all the way back to
where he dropped us. For some reason I
thought the hike was only 30 minutes, but it turned out to be 3 hours. I loved
the forest, and every now and again I had to hug a tree. The last part was surprisingly steep. We used
the ropes that someone put in place. The view from the top was breathtaking. We
spent at least 30 minutes on top admiring the view.
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| What a view on top of Mauritius' highest mountain |
Then it was time to go
down. Taking it step by step, whilst clinging to the ropes, we finally made it
past the steep part. I can’t image
anyone getting down without using the ropes – and definitely not after some
rain. Our taxi driver was there to pick us up. Can you believe that he gave us
a discount, because he did not have to travel too far? It was so uplifting to realise that there are
honourable people around.
That
evening, after watching an amazing sunset, we had some cocktails (it was happy
hour after all) whilst listening to a local band. It was Sunday the next day,
most of the places were closed but we managed to find a taxi driver willing to
take us around. The plan was to visit the 7 coloured earth dunes, hike down the
7 waterfalls, visit the temple and then have a swim on a nice beach.
Our
appointed taxi driver picked us up at 08:30 and then our ‘tour’ started. After
visiting the 7 coloured earth dunes, we were taken to a view point where we
could ‘see’ the 7 waterfalls. When we
told him we wanted to hike down, he stopped at a remote ‘view point’ and we
started ‘hiking’. Pretty soon we
realised that we were dropped off at the wrong place and started to hike
back. Lucky for us, we bumped into a
couple in love. They said we must follow
them...... It turned out to be the 5
minute story again. A couple of “5
minutes’ later, we arrived at a very well-marked path. I asked the girl to explain to our taxi driver
where we must be picked up and she told him it was in front of a temple. After a steep hike down, I had to jump into
the pool. Once back, we realised that
our taxi driver was still missing. A
couple of phone calls later, he arrived, apologizing profusely. He was waiting at a different temple.
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| Abseiling down a waterfall |
Looking
for a nice beach where we could swim on a Sunday was not the greatest idea.
Busloads of people were everywhere and when we had to use a toilet, we had to
compete with 20 other people getting dressed in a 2 X 6 m room. To celebrate
another adventurous day, we stopped for more cocktails.
The
same taxi driver who drove us from the airport arrived to pick us up. I opened my window, fastened my seatbelt and
tried not to vomit whilst he drove 80 km around the bends, abruptly stopping for
every speed bump in the road.
It was
definitely a great adventure and realising that there are countries where the
people are honest and so helpful, was so inspirational.
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