Our 2016 New Year Beach Break – Mauritius
Direct Flight from Cape Town to Mauritius is about 5
hours 15 minutes. One new thing we learnt on our Air Mauritius Flight
to Mauritius is that Hindu meal includes chicken and fish! Since we both are
vegetarians, we had reserved Hindu meal for
all our flight legs. When Air Mauritius Flight crew served us fish in
the meal, we asked them why they are serving us Fish, they
said Hindu meal according to their definition includes poultry and sea
food! Must say I still have to figure out when
did these definitions change?! In the end, we ended up
eating only bread butter for the meal (irony of being vegetarians!) as
the crew didn’t have anything veg.
Landing – immigration in Mauritius was fast and smooth. Our resort, Tamassa, was
about an hour drive in the area called Bel
Ombre. We had already reserved our private airport transfers along with
the resort booking so our driver was already
waiting for us in the arrival area.
Tamassa is a great resort (
https://www.facebook.com/TamassaResort/?pnref=lhc) and some of the things
they do are quite unique (atleast I have not seen these facilities in
the Caribbean side islands) – there is a phone booth from where you can
call free anywhere in the world; they do picnic
lunch boxes for your day trips if you are staying with them in all
inclusive package - since we had missed the dinner time on the day we
arrived, they prepared and got us special meal in the room! The staff
goes extra mile to ensure your stay is pleasant whether
it is to do with the food or services or organising day trips; there is a
fixed charge taxi services you can arrange from the reception for which
you can obtain the price list at the reception. These taxi services
also covers insurance if something happens
during the trip as it becomes resort’s responsibility (these taxis are
definitely cheaper than the prices provided by the other private tour
operators).
I loved every part of the resort except one thing - their evening music entertainment part is something that needs to be worked on. It is good but after a day or 2 at the resort, it gets bit boring and monotonous kind, guess it's time for them to work on this!
+Tamassa )
For first couple of days we spent time relaxing, doing lot of water sports at the resort – I particularly
enjoyed sailing in 2 person sail boat; doing an hour ride in transparent
glass bottom boat to see ocean life. The funniest activity we both did was to do pedal boat; since we
both are so short, our feet couldn’t reach the pedals…..we were literally
lying flat on the boat to reach the pedals. In the end our boat got stuck at one
part of the shore and we couldn’t pedal it back
so the staff had to tow our boat back!!:-D.
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| Sailing time...yay!! |
Food at the resort is a complete treat as they do
lot of Indian dishes n the chef was happily making us masala chai for all mornings and evenings every day!
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| Mmmm mesmerizing sunsets |
Watching evening sunsets and gazing clear sky with clusters and clusters of stars was miraculous and our favourite everyday a "must do thing".
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| Someone is again having romantic dinner at Jetty |
Our first excursion trip
on Wednesday
was fun. First stop was at Rochester falls which was bit of bummer as
the part of the road is very bumpy to get to the falls and the water is
almost dried up currently due to no rainfall season. Second
stop was at the nature reserve
(http://www.lavalleedescouleurs.com/), where you can do a lot of fun activities
like zip lining, buggy driving, quad biking, trekking etc. Our first
activity was to do buggy driving – even though I was the one who was
driving, my friend was having heart attacks sitting
in the passenger seat as the drive up and down the hills is quite steep and
the terrain has been deliberately left rough to make the whole activity more
fun and eccentric! Although in all fairness to Sumedha, it is normal for a person to
get scared on such terrain especially one of
the quad bike ahead of us toppled on the slope and the girl driving the
bike got some bruises. I did a brief quad biking too after
which we left to see Ganga Talao. This is the biggest temple with a
massive lake in Mauritius and get super packed
during Shivratri time. Even though there are all origins of people like
Telegu, Tamil, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Shivratri is still
celebrated as the biggest festival on the island.
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| Rochester Falls |
Our driver told us every village has one mosque,
one hindu temple and one church. Just before the temple, there is a
massive statue of Shivji which took 4 years to build. And now they are
building the similar huge statue of Durga Maa from
past 3 years which will take another year to complete. After Ganga Talao, we stopped by to see Tea plantations and spent the evening at Gris Gris.
Thursday
was the day to do underwater subscooter diving in first part of the
day and then submarine ride in the second part. Drive to Grande Bay took
us about an hour and 45 minutes. After giving us a brief about the activity, we
were taken to the
scooters platform via small boat. These sub scooter diving only
happens in Mauritius where 2 people can go on one scooter and in one
batch, maximum 5 scooters are taken under the water with 2 qualified
scuba divers. The scooters have oxygen tanks attached
to it and is covered only on the top part so you breath normally inside
the scooter although the water still comes up to the neck (atleast for short a*se like me!). The maximum
depth of diving for these scooters goes between 3-4 meters and is roughly
35-40 minutes activity. After we had our lunch back at the restuarant on Grand Bay, we went for our second excursion of doing submarine journey which is for about 45-50 minutes under water. But the whole activity takes about 2 -3 hours. Both our excursions were organised with Blue safari (
http://www.blue-safari.com/).
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| Underwater subscooter! |
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| We go for submarine! |
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| Our handsome submarine captain briefing us all! |
Saturday we had reserved a private speed boat trip to do dolphin watching and sailing near Grand Riviere Noire, Black River area. We saw thousands of spinner dolphins on our trip who come out aparently for sleeping during mornings and late evenings (as they need to breathe while sleeping and can't sleep inside the deep waters!).
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| Spinner Dolphins |
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| Our vehicle for the day! |
After we came back to the resort late afternoon, the staff was already in prepping mode for the big New Year eve celebrations at the resort. The decorations at the resort were spectacular, food variety was great and so was the fireworks. The only thing which was disappointing was the evening music entertainment part (we found the music at nextdoor resorts Awali Golf Heritage and Outrigger much happening and meant for wider global taste). Hey ho, overall the evening was fun - dressing up for the big night, eating - dancing till late with few friends we had made at the resort and watching great fireworks jointly organsied by all resorts.
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| Even the rainbow showed up on the last day of 2016 - sign for good 2017, I guess!! |
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| Decorations at Tamassa |
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| Beach Fireworks |
Next morning was bit hard to get up after a late nighter but we had our spa treatments booked which was all we needed after long tiring days of holidaying!! :-)D.
Since it was our last day at the resort, we spent most of our remaining time at the beach. We said our goodbyes with heavy heart to our friends and the wonderful staff at the resort before heading for our late night flight back to cold gloomy London.
Here ends yet another amazing trip. But as they say there is always a light at the end of tunnel, time to move on and plan another holiday soon...hahaha!! But hey before that it is time to be back in the grind of long office work hours, afterall this is the reality of life:-) :-).
Special thanks to the Tamassa resort staff - Nishal Seebaluck;
Jugmohun Parvesh and
Seechurn Rohansing for making our stay pleasant.
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