🇲🇺 After seven enjoyable days sailing the Indian Ocean, avoiding a cyclone or two, we pulled into Port Louis on the island nation of Mauritius, a melting pot with multi-cultural influences and known for the extinct Dodo bird. Our e-bike tour was canceled due to wet paths from a recent cyclone so we booked a private car tour on Viator ($105 USD ea). Alan picked us up in his nicely air conditioned sedan and drove us to all of the popular tourist spots on the south end of the island, the most popular being Ganga Talao, or Grand Bassin, a sacred crater lake in the Savanne district hills. It's the most sacred Hindu site in Mauritius, and symbolizes the Ganges River of India. It features a 33-meter statue of Lord Shiva, known as Mangal Mahadev, which stands at the entrance of the lake. Surrounding the lake are temples dedicated to various Hindu deities, including Lord Hanuman, Goddess Durga, and Lord Ganesh. We next went to a path to a waterfall and a viewpoint out to the ocean, and then a dramatic viewpoint of jagged mountains in Black River Gorges National Park. Our sole wildlife sighting was a macaque monkey in a tree at that parking lot. The highlight was La Vallée Des Couleurs Nature Park, where we went on a quiet nature walk to a viewpoint of multicolored rock formations. Besides that walk the other stops were crowded with tourists on other tours, mostly from our ship.

Our tour included lunch, which was nice although the restaurant was really hot and we would've preferred to sample various local delicacies instead of the set "package menu." At the end Alan took us to a tourist shop where we found some treasures. We were amazed at all the traffic around Port Louis, with backups for kilometers, but thankfully always in the opposite direction. It was uncomfortably hot and humid for us there even though it wasn’t an especially hot day, but all in all a very enjoyable and interesting day.