This is part of my year in review. Writing one post will make it too long, so I’m breaking each month into a separate post. This is the latest instalment.
February was Mauritius month too. Well, two weeks of the month to be precise but who’s counting when it involves a tropical island. Unlike January, the client arranged an apartment for us to stay in. I was not in the mood for hotel food for two weeks and having a space to call my own was important – a home away from home. Whenever I travel I look for these pieds-a-terre. I can only stand a hotel for three or four days at a time.
Well, this didn’t work out so well! The client’s procurement people worked with a new realtor and didn’t quality check the apartment. We lasted one night in the place and I sent a lengthy email and photos to our client and in no uncertain terms told them – in a nice way – that I wasn’t going to stay there a day longer.
It was dirty, the linen dodgy, the shower curtains mouldy, the one shower had no water pressure, the other shower had no shower – it had a tap but no pipe or showerhead. Of course, there was no hot water. And to cap it all the kettle, which hadn’t been emptied or cleaned in what looked like months, had a gloopy mass of bacteria floating in it.
After the email, our client said that we could look for our own place and charge it to them. So, I turned to the tried and trusted Airbnb. I found a modern apartment in Curepipe an area relatively close to the office. We rushed back to the dodgy apartment to hand over the keys to the realtor –he wanted to know why we weren’t happy there and I promptly showed him – grab our luggage and drive to the new place. All this with my co-worker who’d injured her back on her return trip from Amsterdam. We lugged 2 heavy suitcases each up and down stairs in the pouring rain but we made it. Our new accommodations weren’t in the fanciest part of town, but it was modern and beautiful, and our neighbours friendly.
On the weekend went sightseeing and this made up for the apartment fiasco.
From Troux aux Cerfs, the dormant volcano to the Tamarind Falls (or 7 cascades), we spent the morning exploring. The Falls are in a hard to reach place but I managed to find a spot where I could take a pic of most of the falls.
On the way back to Curepipe we got rerouted multiple times by the traffic police who were attempting to manage the traffic caught up around the Thaipoosam Cavadee processions in each locale.
In the afternoon I joined a friend at her Tamil temple to witness the end of the procession as her sister participated in it. It was colourful, chaotic and full of joyful celebrants. There were flowers all over.
And then the time came to return to South Africa. Roll on March …
If you haven’t yet read 2020: January in Review, click on the link.
