The Southwest of Mauritius, the Natural Wonderland

I've been doing this journal so slowly that a lot of it is fading now sadly, but the pictures do bring portions of it back.  It's good way to do it, I get to read my diary, look at the pictures, try and remember where I went , What I did and so on and in some way relive part of it, jog those memories.

There's no shame in admitting I travel for the visuals, I'm a scenery person and just catching that unusual play of the light in some place i've never set foot before and likely never will again makes it all worth while.  It may seem trivial to some, but when you hit that moment it's more poignant than anything in everyday life. It stands out against the background grey, thats why it has such an impact.
Not everything is as it seems in this life, but when something is beautiful to you. . It is,  that's truth right there. There may be ugliness beneath but that doesn't detract from the beauty, it's independant of it. They do make each other stand out in contrast with each other and reminds us of the large range that life presents us with.
Although you can have too much of a good thing, and might need weening off it , it's those very things that bring other things into focus and provide some moment of clarity.

On the first day in flic-en-flac I had a lazy relax at my chosen hotel after organising what I was doing the days after that, a mid-range on the coast near the casuarina trees (yes they are from australia)
The day after I did a day trip to il-au-cerf joined a group of random holiday makers and did a underwater walk with this bubble thing over my head and went a saw a waterfall, ate lunch on a prepared beach on the far side.   This was a taste of things to come later as the seychelles had a lot of these day trips with lunch things going on.

I remember organising with a taxi-driver to pick me up after I would walk through the black river gorges on day three, he took me through the coloured sands which are interesting in their own way.  It's really worth doing it, just watch out for the nasty bloody sucking bush flies, they're like microscopic vampires.. hiding in the flesh of normal flies.  They do look just like a house fly but they'll draw blood with those blade proboscii.  Still a great walk through if you have a day, try and start early it takes a little longer than you think. The taxi-driver was a little tardy in picking me up and didnt pick me up inthe arranged spot, I had to walk 1 and a half hours north to the phone in an out of the way shop and ring him to get him to pick me up, he did have my backpack after all. But I had nothing of value to anyone else in there and I hadnt payed him his fair so it wasnt like he was going to skip with my gear.

I stayed a couple of nights in trou-aux biche after my walk through the gorges and walked around the top end past the club med there to grand baie for a look, but it wasnt until I came back from reunion and seychelles that I actually stayed in grand baie.

From there I went back to port louis to take my ferry boat to reunion, which I didnt regret at all there was thankfully no sea-sickness.