Best location ever?

Day 37 - Flic en Flac to Gran Baie

We headed to the north coast of the island, passing through the busy capital of Port Louis along the way. We briefly diverted into the city and drove past the main market, negotiating the heavy traffic of cars, buses and people.

It wasn't far to our ultimate destination of Gran Baie, so we drove a little further on to have lunch at a rooftop bar close to Pereybere Beach before checking in to our great apartment right on the marina in Gran Baie.

This apartment had one of the best locations we'd ever stayed in, with a view of the marina and beach, close to shops, bars and restaurants. It was also very nicely set up, with a great kitchen, and three big bedrooms. 

The cyclone had passed us by and the overcast skies were replaced with bright blue ones. This meant the heat and humidity were now overpowering making daytime activities very unpleasant. As the sun set we visited an outdoor bar in the main street but the lack of air flow made it stifling. We then went to a restaurant on the beach as the sun was setting but even there with no wind the humidity made it unpleasant to stay long, so after a very quick meal we went back to our more comfortable apartment.

 

Not our idea of a "beach bar"

Day 36 - Flic en Flac

Flic en Flac's name comes from an Old Dutch phrase meaning "free and flat land". It's a small popular beach town on the west coast of Mauritius. We were staying at the northern end of the town and beach which meant we weren't as close to restaurants and cafes as we'd like, but there were some decent options  in walking distance and a nice resort where we could have a drink by the sea.

We went for a drive along the coast, passing a lot of high end resorts. We entered one to have lunch at what they called a "beach bar", but it wasn't quite what we expected, and quickly departed when we saw the prices!  

That afternoon M walked quite a long way north along the beach, and once past the main town beach found that much of the coast was taken up by beach lounges belonging to the resorts we'd driven past earlier. The whole area appeared to be geared towards resort holidays, and was also quite busy with some places having no spare lounges.

The evening was spent at the resort bar we'd visited the previous night, where we saw quite a striking sunset. 

Back on the air

Day 35 - La Gaulette to Flic en Flac

Some research indicated the local supermarket in La Gaulette sold sim cards, so first stop for the day was to get that sorted, followed by a pretty decent coffee at a local cafe.

Now that we had internet and navigation sorted we drove to the Le Morne Slave Monument, right next to the imposing Le Morne Brabant monolith. Yesterday was the public holiday for the annual remembrance of the abolition of slavery, so today there were workers dismantling the marquees and seating. 

The slave monument included a series of sculptures that tell the history of the atrocities and how many escaped to the Le Morne mountains and caves.

After some time pondering the sobering history of the island we drove inland to the Chamarel Seven Coloured Earth Geopark. Here there is an area of small earth dunes which are meant to show different colours due to their different mineral composites in a very small area. However, as it had been raining the colours were very subdued.

What was more interesting to us was the Aldabra tortoises, the second-largest species in the world. These were imported from the Seychelles, a cousin of the extinct Mauritian domed and saddle-backed giant tortoises. 

There was also a nice twin waterfall in the area, with just a small climb needed to get to some good views. 

Then we visited the Grand Bassin temple, a massive Hindu temple complex on the shores of a small crater lake. The statues were huge, as was the car park, they must expect some pretty big crowds during festivals, though today it wasn't too busy.

We drove on to our destination for the next few days the weirdly named town of Flic en Flac, to stay in a nice hotel by the ocean.

They sell them at petrol stations, they said

Day 34 - Beau Vallon (Seychelles) to La Gaulette (Mauritius) 

We left Beau Vallon early to return our rental car before our 2h40m flight to Mauritius.

We had learnt that today was a public holiday to commemorate the abolition of slavery, so most shops would be shut and supermarkets would close at lunch, but we weren't expecting this this to be a problem. 

We had ordered sim cards through the car hire company so we didn't buy them at the airport on arrival as we normally would have. However when we picked up the car they told us they didn't have the sims. We said we'd go back into the airport to buy them but they told us that would be a waste of time as we could buy them at any petrol station. 

The first petrol station we stopped at didn't sell them, and of course all other shops we went past were closed. We had to meet our Airbnb host at 3pm and as we had no internet we had no way of contacting him. 

We took the coastal route from the airport to reach La Gaulette, passing many beaches along the way with lots of family groups, we weren't sure whether this was normal or if it had something to do with it being a public holiday. 

We followed the instructions we had to get to where we thought our Airbnb was but we'd taken a wrong turn somewhere, we were looking for a gate with a butterfly but it was nowhere to be seen. After speaking to some very helpful people on the street we finally managed to find the house, but then of course the gate was locked, the host was inside on the top floor and couldn't hear us yelling out for him. 

After all that was resolved and we had checked in we drove to a nearby shopping centre, the supermarket was open but the mobile phone place was closed, sim cards would have to wait until tomorrow. 

We had learnt from our host that a cyclone was in the area, it was a category 1 which is the lowest category so we were hoping that it wouldn't affect our trip. January to March is the worst time to visit Mauritius apparently, something that we didn't even consider when we were planning the trip!

Island life

Days 30, 31, 32 -  Beau Vallon 

Day 30

Today was a day to take it easy after our sometimes challenging travels through Africa. English is spoken by pretty much everyone so the Seychelles was a pretty easy place to be, the only thing we really had to contend with was the heat and humidity, but the evenings were much more pleasant and a good time to sit by the beach for a drink.

M went exploring and walked along the main beach, past a number of resorts and restaurants, then following the road for a while to get to the small town of Bel Ombre with it's historic church.

Day 31

We spent the day driving around the island. The island is quite small, so in total we probably only spent three hours in the car, if that. There were some nice beaches but apart from the capital Victoria there isn't that much development, we drove past a few resorts but overall the island didn't appear too busy, in particular the southern and western areas seemed quite peaceful. There is a rule that no building can be higher than 6 metres, which certainly helps give the place a nice tropical and low-key vibe. 

Day 32

M started the day by exploring the beach in the northerly direction, but had to turn back due to the large boulders blocking the way. We had seen these boulders and rocks all around the island on our drive yesterday.

Up to now we had only driven through the capital of Victoria so we headed in to check it out. There were some tourists around and quite few stalls selling souvenirs, though they generally (as is often the case) were selling pretty much the same stuff. 

 

Now for the beach section of the trip!

Day 29 - Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) to Beau Vallon (Seychelles) 

The flight from Addis to the Seychelles was easy, what's interesting (to M at least) is that we flew almost directly over Mogadishu, this is probably the closest we will ever get to travelling in Somalia.

After the cool of Addis we were hit with the heat and humidity of the Seychelles as soon as we walked out of the airport. 

We picked up our hire car and drove to Beau Vallon on the northwest coast of the island. This was our first car rental of the trip and fortunately in the Seychelles they drive on the correct (left) side of the road, so it wasn't difficult to navigate the tight turns as we climbed up and over the mountainous centre of the island to the other side.

Our accommodation in Beau Vallon was just across the road from a nice sandy beach and close to restaurant and shops, it looked like a nice place to spend the next four nights.

It looks a bit different

Day 28 - Addis Ababa

This is our second time in Addis and we can't really remember exactly how Addis looked on our earlier trip but it did seem there was a lot more modern and high rise buildings. The area around our hotel was a mixture of new buildings and ramshackle housing. 

It was a nice sunny day and the temperature of around 19C was a welcome change to the heat and humidity in West Africa. It was Sunday so things were very quiet, we took a taxi to the octagonal St. George's Church and listened to a large group singing outside with some nice drumming that reminded us of West Africa. There were many people worshipping outside with their heads pressed to the bricks.

After an afternoon wandering around the area we went to a Yemeni restaurant close to our hotel for a very tasty dinner.

Day 27  - Addis Ababa

Our room overlooks the street and some local bars, the first night the loud music was a bit of a nuisance but was turned off about 3am. For some reason though Sunday night was a shocker, there were drunk people screaming, yelling and banging until they finally turned the music off at 7am. Hotel management were very quick to move us to the other side of the hotel the next morning.

At lunch time we caught a taxi to the Mercado market, the largest market in Africa. It was a very busy market and we were the only non-locals walking around, we were approached a few times by men who wanted to tell us where the spice market and jewellery sections were, one man in particular wouldn't leave us alone until we told him off for following us.

After wandering around for an hour we looked for a taxi to take us back. We found a taxi rank but they were all trying to charge us five times the going rate for cars that were so old it was surprisingly they even ran. Luckily a modern new taxi pulled up so we jumped in and he used an app on his phone as the taximeter and we had a more reasonably priced trip back to the hotel.

We noticed that we were getting tired more quickly than normal after walking or climbing stairs, we worked out that this was the altitude (around 2300m affecting us slightly).

We have a new contender!

Day 26 - Lagos (Nigeria) to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) 

After a slight issue with our Uber who drove past our hotel and then had to reverse 300 meters to pick us up, we made it to what is perhaps the worst airport we've ever been to! 

The international departures check in didn't feel like it had any air con, or lights, we thought there might have been a power cut but no-one would answer our queries. We had our passports checked by one person, then told to join another queue a few metres away for the same thing to happen, no explanation of why there were so many checks. Eventually we made it to the actual check in counter, we received our boarding passed and our luggage was tagged, but we weren't confident we'd ever see it again!

Immigration was also different steps at different booths, we were consistently asked if we were citizens or here on business, it seems they didn't see many tourists. At the baggage check before passport control they opened K's hand luggage and took out a ceramic mug and very fragile pot that she'd bought in Benin, they said ceramics weren't allowed and they would have to be checked in, as apparently they could be broken and used as a weapon! After some protesting we were allowed to continue providing M took the mug in his hand luggage. However before we could proceed M was then pulled aside and asked if he'd completed a customs declaration for travelling with cash, he explained he didn't work in Nigeria and only used credit card. 

The airport was old, grotty and dark and not much fun to wait in, so we were happy to board a modern Ethiopian Airlines plane and say goodbye to Nigeria, though of course we weren't allowed to board without one more baggage check, where they opened up our hand luggage and searched through it.

We landed at Addis Ababa quite late Ethiopian time, but luckily our hotel had free pickup so at least the final part of our day went smoothly.

Are we the only tourists in town?

Day 25 - Lagos 

Last full day in Lagos and we hadn't arranged any tours or other tourist activities. Lagos didn't seem "set up" for tourists, there was nothing at the hotel about things to see and do, so we decided to have an easy day and stick to the local area.

We walked to a very modern, French bakery/cafe for lunch. On the way we were hassled by beggars, as well as a couple of children, and we did notice that there were no other westerners walking around. When we reached the cafe it was nothing like what we'd seen so far, it was very modern and full of expats. The food and drinks were nice but also quite expensive, even by Australian standards.  

We decided to Uber it back to the hotel after a quick trip to a supermarket across from the cafe, after that it was drinks and a very nice dinner at the rooftop bar.

 

Arts and crafts and poverty

Day 24 - Lagos 

Lagos' grey, smoggy sky keeps the heat down but the fumes are thick and feel very unhealthy.

We took an uber to the Nike Art Gallery which has nothing to do with the shoe company but is the name of a famous Nigerian artist. The gallery is over 4 floors and has 24,000 pieces of art that are all for sale. The variety, styles and vividness of the paintings as well as the large sculptures made from recycled materials were stunning. 

Another Uber took us down shocking roads that were barely driveable to the Lekki Arts and Crafts market. There were stalls of souvenirs of wooden carvings, weaving and paintings, it was quiet so most of the stallholders tried to get us to look in their shop.

We ordered another Uber to take us back to the hotel, but to avoid the terrible roads around the market we decided to walk the few hundred metres to the main road first. This took us through a small local area, many of the buildings were in very poor condition, and there were small stalls selling food and other essentials.