Incredible Week-end; day 2

fRiDaY;
my friend Andreas invited me for this trip to Ile aux Cerfs
this was the first time for me that i visit an outer island
this was kind of an exciting experience for me
we started early; 7:30 after a nice quick break-fast we had to meet the transfer vehicle in a front of a restaurant in flic-en-flac
we waited for long because not only were we ahead of schedule but the minibus was late
after pretty much of a long trip which nearly worn me out (didn't have much sleep the previous night)
we reached the beach of Trou-d'Eau-Douce (picture) which i still can recall since we passed there during the 100Km bike race with TEAM AWESOME.
It is a really nice beach... typical view.. with many boats. It is a central place for departures to the island. After the nice young lady briefed us about the trip we set up to the speed boat who would be taking us to the island. Again that'd be a first experience for me


















The speedboat was nice...we had a 200HP Suzuki motor so as you can see the trail on the picture it was really amazing!
We finally arrived on the island... and what do I see? this
A beach full of tourists, applying sunscreen, sunbathing, swimming in some specially reserved area with protection, restaurants, waiters, massages...
moreover most of them were old.. and enjoying this crap...
we were both somehow stunned about what we saw.
and there's a huge golf track
so that's Ile aux Cerfs?



we moved to some other place, as far as possible as this junk of consumerism and superiority tourism. we laid down under some filao trees and had a swim... the water was ok... but there was a lot of dead seagrass because of the incredible amount of speedboat traffic there and as the water is not deep enough and also the skipper who don't seem to give a damn, the underwater life is pretty much damaged. But the government needs to feed itself upon these tourists... so; to hell the environment.
after some swim i tried to see what does this island have to give me... there was nothing much to see while snorkelling... sometimes i would be lucky to some algae and some fished, star fish, and other thingies...
but there was the hell of a lot of sea urchins... sometimes so huge and so purple...
after that and some well deserved rest, we proceeded to see a waterfall which was at the other end of the island...
again so touristic...boat goes there, at the mouth of Grand River South East... see the waterfall, take pictures, sometimes videos, try touching the water... then our boat leaves... and then comes another one... and there are three more others waiting!
then again the boat took us to another point of the island where we were to have a BBQ lunch..
on arriving there.. it was the sum of all touristic sight-seeing... Sega dancing...
sega is the so-called local folklore here... almost everywhere they wanna sell some kinda image of Mauritius, there are sega dancers...
so we both sat at this table with the Reunion family who were talking shit about us.. but who didn't know that i speak and study French as major... they were always passing comments about what we would be doing... and they were just horror-struck when they realized that i speak french...
anyways back to the sega thing... the musicians could have been worst and they were really great to the point that they tossed a Redemption Song from Bob Marley just for me!!
again the tourists went taking pictures again with the sega dancers and the island around.
we took the boat back to Trou-d'Eau-Douce and set back home.
Bottom-line; cool nice experience with Andreas but way too touristic... they made a mess out of the nice long sandy beautiful beaches of this island.
In the evening i had diner with Phil, Nina and Laryssa. We intended to go to this nice restaurant in Quatre-Bornes but they were full. We had no other choice than to hit the nearby café, the food was OK but such in a small quantity. Then we picked up Tania and hit some pubs. First we went to Le Suffren, this hotel in the Port-Louis harbour, pretty posh, with expensive and crappy cocktails. We didn't stay long there because the atmosphere was somehow boring and Laryssa was yawning a lot. Then we took this water-taxi that took us to the Caudan Waterfront, there was this sports pub which was kind of OK, with of course better cocktails, a bit less than Le Suffren.
We met some crew from LTU, had some nice drinks and chat before finally hitting the road to home by 3 am. Unfortunately no pictures of this evening.