Hello everyone. Just wanted to write another update for Mauritius since I have the time to write about it. Jon and I have come up with a motto for Mauritius…and that is: Shit just happened. Well anyway. Time to sum up our trip in Mauritius. When we got into port, we immediately exited whenever we had the chance. Jon and I and a couple of other friends were pumped to check into our villa next to the beach. We decided to take a taxi to Flic-en-Flac for about 40 dollars for 5 people. Our cab driver tried to sell us a pound of weed…When we finally got to Flic-en-Flac, we got lost because we didn’t know where our villa was located. So our cab driver stopped and asked for directions. When he got back into the cab he started to drive a little further and all of a sudden one o f the tires busts…shit…so we paid the cab driver the money and started walking. Some of the people in our group were hungry so we decided to stop by a local café to get some food. When we were all done, we realized that the villa was about 5 minutes away from where we were..god, we felt stupid. The villa that we got was definitely not what I expected…It was definitely not worth the money that we all put into for it. The kitchen was disgusting, the beds were nasty, and the villa itself had a musty smell. But, hey, what can we do right? We had to make the best of whatever we had. We then went out, got some food, and groceries. We had to stock up the fridge, if you know what I mean… After we were all settled in and everything, we decided to head down to the beach and lay around. It was pretty fun. But when we looked down the beach, we saw a huge group of people just partying it up so the guys and I decided to walk down to see what was going down. And when we finally got there, it was not surprising to see that it was a group of SAS people. After hanging out a little bit, we decided to get back to the villa because it was getting dark and we wanted to get ready for the night. There was only one club/bar in Flic-en-Flac and it was called shooters. This places was extremely packed and there were approximately 100-200 SAS students juss jamming at this place. It was wild…definitely spring break status. It was a good night.
I had to wake up about 7 AM in the morning to go on a catamaran/ snorkeling tour. IT was probably the most miserable thing to do because it was definitely a long, long, long night. But we ended up waking up and a friend and I were ready to go. The catamaran ride to Flat Island was one of the most scenic and greatest rides of my life. Being able to sail on the ocean was definitely a sight. The ocean was blue and the sky was great. The sun felt hot, but there was a nice ocean breeze that kept us cool. When we got to the island, it was incredible. White sand beaches and clear blue waters filled with corals surrounded us. It was amazing. A couple friends and I decided to go snorkeling before lunch, so we rented some gear to go out. We went out for about 15 minutes and saw some cool stuff.
All of a sudden my friend Eric started to have a seizure under water right next to me. At first I thought he was just kidding, but I soon realized that it was reality. I quickly swam to him and made sure that he didn’t drown himself. He was having a seizure on the bottom of the ocean where all the corals were. I made sure his head was out of the water and his neck was fully secure so that he wouldn’t break it. When he actually became conscious again, he was not able to speak or anything. When I saw him in my arms, I seriously thought that he was going to die. I don’t know how it was going to be. I had so many things going through my mind that I was not able to really comprehend what I was doing, but I was able to somehow stay calm and do as I was supposed to do. I guess it is from listening to Jon’s stories about his lifeguarding experiences every day. You all know; those mundane stories that we all just listen and nod our heads while he just speaks. I also wondered what it would have been like now if he actually didn’t make it out of the water. I was even thinking about how long ago I just met Eric, and when I look back, it seriously has been like 2 months and a little more. Although we haven’t met each other for a very long period of time, it seems as if we have been hanging out with everyone on this ship for so long. As he was laying in my arms yelping, my heart was calm and controlled. Then I snapped out of my semi-zoned out state and realized Eric’s eyes were not really focusing and his face was turning a bit blue. His lips were also turning blue by the second and his tongue was extremely swollen. My other friend and I were screaming frantically for help. The coast guard finally came to pick him up. There was a Swedish doctor who was there to help us out all the way. Thankfully he came to save Eric. If he wasn’t there, I would not have known what to do. Then I had to help the coast guard carry Eric on a lounge chair to transport him to another island. From that island, we had to wait about a couple hours to wait for the helicopter to come and pick him up. I was kind of excited because I wanted to ride in the helicopter to the hospital with him, but unfortunately I was not able to. Because I wasn’t able to get on the helicopter with Eric, I had to take the Catamaran back to the island. I don’t know what happened to me, but I just felt like I needed to be alone. All I was able to think about was the fact that I had to save my friend out of the water. As I looked back on all the things that happened out there, I was surprised I was not the one freaking out and swimming away. I guess some part of me was able to realize that I had to do what I had to do. Everyone tried to talk to me to make sure I was ok, but I just wanted to be alone and enjoy the cool ocean breeze with the sun beating down.
As we arrived to the main island, the national coast guard was there to pick me up and asked me to follow them to the station. I did as I was told and answered a couple questions and figured out where he was at. When I finally arrived to the hospital, the place looked like a jail cell mixed with a psychiatric ward…I cannot believe that the place we were at was a hospital. The doctor told us what happened and said that he was now fine and he should be alright after recovery. I went in to drop off some clothes for him because all he had on was his Speedo. I thought it was kind of funny that he was wearing it because I don’t know, it was just funny. I notified our ship Medical staff and they quickly arrived to check up on him. After about forty-five minutes of talking, the hospital agreed to let him out and come back to the ship where he would be watched closely in the ICU. We took the taxi back to the ship. He had to be wheel chaired in. When I got back onto the ship, I had to answer a few more questions, fill out some paper work and just make sure I was clear to exit the ship. Before I left the ship, I checked up on Eric one last time before I was to go back to Flic-en-Flac. He seemed relieved and back to the Eric that we knew before the seizure happened. As I saw his energetic self back, I became relieved and de-stressed.
When we arrived back in Flic-en-Flac, we decided to get some Chinese food, and to be honest, the food was not too bad. I arrived back to my villa and everyone was just so glad to see me. But they realized that Eric was not with me. I told them the story and they immediately thought that I was joking around. I then stood my ground and told them that what happened to Eric was not a joke. When they saw the seriousness on my gloomy face, they realized that it really happened. We proceeded to go out that night just to have a little fun, but I was obviously not in the mood to do anything. I didn’t want to stay back by myself so I decided to follow along. As the night was coming to a close, my one friend (not Jon), was pretty tipsy. He decided that he wanted to go to another villa to hang out. I was the only one who did not want him to leave by himself, so I decided to just make sure he gets to the place safely. With a mixture of stumbling and laying on the ground a few times, I made sure that he made it back to the villa he wanted to be at safely. By the end of the night, I was so tired, that I decided to crash at the villa.
I just slept and hoped that the morning was going to be ok. With my back burnt up and the sun blaring into my face, I realized what a great morning it was. As l got ready to go back to our own villa, people were either wandering about or still sleeping in bed. We got back to our villa around mid-morning. I was not really tired at this point so I went to take a dip in the pool. It was extremely refreshing. About lunchtime, Jon, a couple friends and I decided to go out and get some lunch. We went into this local restaurant place and got some food and surprisingly it was really good. And I spent around 2-3 dollars. Pretty cheap eh? We all decided to go shop for some groceries so we stopped at the local supermarket to buy some goods. I needed money so I decided to pull out some cash from the ATM. As I was pulling cash out, there was a taxi that stopped and everyone I was with was like, “Holy shit, its Eric.” When I saw Eric back like we were the first day, I felt a slight jilt of joy in my heart…not in a gay way. It is a figure of speech…come on give me a break. Haha. So then we all just jokingly talked and went around town doing our daily things and about mid-afternoon, we all decided to hang out around the beach. At the beach, the guys decided that we would have a guy’s night out and eat dinner to discuss all the things that has happened and all the things that we plan to do for the rest of the stay in Mauritius. When we were done with dinner, we went back to our villa to get ready for the night. Everyone got home safely that night and all was well.
The morning we had to leave, we cleaned up our whole villa from all the garbage and sand that we left around the area. After we cleaned everything and made sure that everything was tidy and the same way as we left it, we checked out and started our journey back to the MV Explorer. When we got back to Port Louis, we checked back into the ship and showered up to head into town to do some shopping. I bought some souvenirs and decided that I needed to head back to the ship because I was so damn tired. When we all got back to the ship, we blacked out our room and took a long nap. We didn’t wake up until the ship started to sail which was 11 at night.
That about sums up the Mauritius experience. Although there have been a lot of things that happened here in Mauritius, some of the other stories that I left out are better to be told in person. J
