Bird watching

I don't know much about birds and have never been much of a watcher, but this guy stands out a mile with his fluorescent yellow feathers so I decided to find out who he is.

A few minutes on the internet have revealed some interesting facts, and cleared up two mysteries that have had me puzzled for a while now. It turns out this is a Village Weaver, introduced to Mauritius from Sub-Saharan Africa. The bright yellow feathers are his attempt to woo the ladies, and he's not always that well-dressed. They are known for living in colonies and making a lot of noise, often an aggressive chirping sound, which is probably what woke me up every morning at 5am for the first three months I was here.

More interestingly, my research has shown that these are the birds responsible for this :

I first saw these nests on a walk in Albion and had no idea what they were. They are so intricate and solid looking, it stands to reason that they would be made by a weaver, no?  The male builds his nest and then hangs out in front of it, trying to attract the ladies. Once he has a mate in there laying eggs, he builds another nest and does the same again. Sometimes the colonies can have up to 200 nests, not all from the same bird though.

The yellow bus nightmare

The majority of the buses in Mauritius are old and spew out clouds of black smoke as they rattle along. The seats are ripped and if you want air conditioning, you open the window. The drivers live by the rule that the biggest vehicle has priority so you soon learn to keep out of their way as much as possible. Having said that, the buses are relatively frequent and you can travel across the island for less than £1. 

In Réunion, there are buses and there are "Cars Jaunes", coaches which travel between the big towns around the island. They are different in almost every way from the buses in Mauritius - air conditioned, modern, no conductors to buy your ticket from - but given the choice, I would travel on the Mauritian bus every time.

The local buses I travelled on in Réunion were fine, except that the air con was set to about 15 degrees and the seats are incredibly slippery, which can be a bit awkward if you're sitting next to a stranger and you end up practically on their knee going round a corner. 

The Car Jaune, however, is a different story. In the UK, and most other places I've visited, each bus line has a timetable. You check the timetable before leaving the house, and generally the bus is more or less on time. Often there's a pause factored in at one stop so the driver can either wait if he's running ahead of schedule, or catch up any lost time if he's running late. No such organisation in the islands - if you leave the house 10 minutes before the allotted time, but the bus is running 11 minutes early, tough luck. On the line I used, there are two buses per hour, an express which travels directly between towns, and the "normal" bus which goes round the houses and takes a bit longer. To me it would be logical to space them out a little - have a bus every half hour - but no, they arrive within five minutes of each other and if you miss them, you wait almost an hour for the next one.

The Car Jaunes are coaches and you're not allowed to stand up on coaches, so you might wait 1h for your bus, only for the driver to go whizzing straight past you because he has no free seats. Or he might stop and let on the first 5 people and then close the doors on everyone else who has been waiting patiently for ages. Worse still, he will let you on and sell you your ticket, only for you to discover that someone snuck in through the rear door and took the last available seat, meaning you, with your now useless ticket, have to get off and wait for the next bus. If only the French were as good at queuing as the British everyone would know where they stood, literally. But as it is, they stand in a scrum and elbow each other to get to the door first in the hope of getting a place on the bus. I can understand their desperation but frankly it was enough to put me off leaving the house.

With your bottom firmly on your hard-won seat, you look out of the window at the poor people left behind and realise that sometimes, the driver doesn't even stop when he has free seats. I have no idea how they decide which people are worthy of their seats, it seems totally random. 

As you approach your final destination you look around for the bell to ring, to let the driver know he needs to stop, and soon realise there aren't any. The first time I rode in a Car Jaune, I was with Merv and asked how on earth the driver knows when to stop if there are no bells. Those of you who know my husband will know that he likes to joke and often tells me things that are completely untrue, just to see if I will believe him, so when he told me that you had to clap your hands to signal to the driver that you wanted to get off, I laughed in his face and told him to pull the other one. We were getting closer and closer to home and I was getting a bit anxious that we would miss our stop. Fortunately Merv didn't want to spend the day riding round on a bus either and he started clapping. Who knew, for once he was actually telling the truth!

The return of the Islander and the thief next door

Sorry it's been a while, I've been on holiday visiting my "Belle Famille" who live on Réunion Island, a French overseas department. It's only 30 minutes by plane from Mauritius but the two islands are very different. I've been collecting ideas and photos and will be writing a few posts about Réunion when I have more time. This week we have friends staying with us. 

For today, there are just these photos of our neighbour showing that you don't need to make friends with the people next door in order to eat their mangoes - you just help yourself with the aid of a long stick and an old plastic bottle!

They say the grass is always greener on the other side, in this case the mangoes appear to be riper than the ones in his own garden!

When I'm cleaning windows

Let's be clear on this, I hate cleaning windows. It's one of my least favourite things to do, and so I do it as little as possible. I hate when you think they're clean and you sit back, basking in the feeling that you've done something useful with your day, right up until the sun hits that side of your house and shows every last streak. In the 3 years I lived in my Paris flat, I think I cleaned my windows once, probably right before my Mum visited.

However, I do have certain standards and, when I realised this afternoon that I actually couldn't see out of the kitchen window, I decided something had to be done. (I didn't take a 'before' photo, I was too ashamed!) I filled my bucket, found an old t-shirt, and headed outside. It was then that I discovered there are two major disadvantages to cleaning windows in Mauritius. The first was more a question of bad timing, but the sun was directly on the window, meaning the water dried the second it touched the hot glass. Hello giant watermarks. I had to move fast.

Problem number two comes from this delightful feature of every Mauritian home - security bars. When we were house hunting I hated them. I thought I would feel like I was in prison. They've grown on me now though and I even find the ones on the doors at the front kind of cool, like an old-fashioned lift. Like the doors of a lift, these open fully, giving easy access for glass cleaning, should you be so inclined.

The kitchen is a different story. The only way you could move these would be with a crowbar, which seemed a little extreme. You just have to stick your arm between the bars (Merv will be delighted to learn that he's exempt from window cleaning as his arm would probably get stuck) and work your way up and down each space, trying not to cut your forearms in the process. It's slow, painful, and not that rewarding.

Well, they're done, I can see out again - into the neighbour's garden where his mango trees are weighed down with new fruit! - but that's just the kitchen. My parents are coming to visit in a few weeks, does that mean I have to do all the other windows in the house as well?

Tamarin and the birth of beach snobbery

Last weekend, my friends suggested we go to the beach at Tamarin for a change. It's very different from Albion as there is no coral reef separating Tamarin Bay from the ocean, and it's one of the few places in Mauritius where the waves break on the shore. A lot of the south is open sea too, but there are practically no accessible beaches and the waves crash directly onto the rocks.

It was a little cloudy when we arrived and my first thought was "Oh, it's dirty!" In fact this is not true, but the sand is grey in colour, contrasting sharply with the bright white sand and turquoise sea I've become used to. Going down to the water's edge for a paddle, I saw some floating twigs and seaweed and couldn't see the bottom, even though it was really not that deep. In rainy season, the beach is divided in two by the Rivière du Rempart, but when we went, the river dried up before reaching the bay. Most beaches in Mauritius are narrow and bordered by filao trees and car parks. From Tamarin, you get an amazing view of the Rempart mountain.

In the time Merv and I have been together, we've been fortunate enough to be able to travel quite a bit, mostly in France, but also to the UK, Turkey, Spain, and Thailand, and swimming and beaches have always been a thing we disagree on. I used to laugh at him, standing on the edge of a lake, refusing to go in because the water was muddy. I left him on the beach in Turkey while I went for a swim because the water was deemed too cold. It wouldn't even occur to him to take his swimming shorts if we went to England on holiday. He is even reluctant to use the term "beach" in Europe, preferring to refer to them as "rocky places by the sea". I always thought he was just being awkward to wind me up, but as I stood looking out over the bay at Tamarin on Sunday, I realised that I have become that person too, the beach snob who only wants to swim in crystal clear water, having left my towel on the pristine white sand. It only took me 6 months - in his defence, he spent the first 24 years of his life here! 

Six months may have changed me in many ways, but island life hasn't quite defeated the Yorkshire girl in me yet. After five minutes of hesitation, I was out there jumping around in the waves, just like I used to do in Scarborough. The water was a lot warmer too!

I also discovered that the sand in Tamarin, grey though it may be, is some of the finest sand I've ever seen. It feels like velvet. It also sticks to everything it touches and takes forever to wash out of your ears, where it inevitably ends up when you jump around in waves like these.

Happy times at Cap Malheureux

Even if you've never been to Mauritius, you may well have seen the most famous sight Cap Malheureux has to offer. It's on almost every postcard and tourist brochure ever made, and has probably inspired many a destination wedding. I'm talking about Notre Dame Auxiliatrice, the church with the red roof.

This is what it looked like when I first visited Mauritius in 2012.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed. Obviously I wasn't expecting to see clouds like that on a tropical island, but also the church didn't look anything like the pictures I'd seen. I'd clearly just been fooled by the result of someone's Photoshop effort. From a distance it looks like there are a lot of tiles missing on the roof but, if you get a bit closer, you'll see that the roof is actually made of wood, and has suffered a lot from its exposed, seaside location.

Since that last visit, they've restored the roof, plank by plank, to its former glory. I guess they must do it quite regularly, and we just came at a bad time. In any case, now it looks more like this:

A lot of couples either get married here, or just come here to take some pretty photos after their wedding. Last time I was there, there was one lady in full white wedding dress, white sparkly beach shoes, bouquet and everything, posing for pictures on the beach. Apart from the photographer, there was another guy with her, who we assumed must be his assistant, telling the bride where to stand etc. He was wearing khaki shorts and a fluorescent green rain jacket, and carrying a backpack. As we stood watching, he put his arms around the bride and posed with her. It turned out he was the groom! They made an odd couple, that's for sure. I would have taken a photo but my camera had no battery left so you'll just have to imagine the scene.

This is the inside of the church, which I love. The altar is carved from a huge piece of rock, and the holy water font, which you can see on the left, is a large "bénitier" (clam shell).

Other than the church, there's not a lot to see in Cap Malheureux. There isn't much beach, and there are a lot of fishing boats. In fact, when the fishermen land here, they clean their fish on the beach and throw the fish guts back in the water, so it's not a place I would like to swim! You do get a great view of the "Coin de Mire" and the other islands off the north coast though.

In case you were wondering about the name Cap Malheureux (The Cape of Misfortune), it was given by the French after their defeat at the hands of the British (woo hoo!) in 1810. Mauritius was a strategic spot on the trade routes, and the British decided to invade. However, they didn't approach from the south as would be expected, but from the north where the French defence was weakest. They won and ruled the island from 1810 right up to its independence.

The kitchen garden

I've decided I'm going to grow things anyway, despite the lack of available garden, so I've made a kitchen garden, literally, in my kitchen.

I currently have 3 avocado seeds on the go, and have recently planted basil, thyme and parsley. Note the thrifty use of empty water bottles in place of plant pots. This is mainly because there's nowhere to recycle plastic here, and I hate throwing it away. Alternatively, I could have gone and thrown them over the wall into this garden, the owner would probably have been delighted.

I realise that this isn't the most exciting subject for a blog post, but I can't believe how quickly things grow here. I planted the basil on Saturday, and this was what it looked like yesterday. At this rate I'll be eating it next week! I only planted the thyme and parsley yesterday so no sign yet, but I'm sure it won't be long.

I've also just picked 16.2 kg of calebasse chinoise from the garden. Time to see if you really can store it for months because I doubt I'll get through all that by myself.

From my bedroom window I can see directly into the neighbours' gardens and this is what I see:

Two varieties of mango

Bananas!

Mango season is coming, now I just need a cunning plan to befriend my neighbours so they will share with me!