Cruise 07: Days at Sea and Mauritius

Thursday, February 27, 2025 – Friday, February 28, 2025

Leaving Madagascar behind, the ship set sail for Reunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. This would require one full day at sea before reaching the island and it would be the last entire day at sea for the cruise. However, the weather had other plans for our itinerary. The cruise director and the captain both made an announcement around midday notifying everyone that our stop at Reunion was unfortunately cancelled. Cycle Garance had formed off the east coast of Madagascar a few days earlier and was barreling directly towards Reunion. On the 27th, the storm was rated the equivalent of a category 3 hurricane, and it was due to make landfall on Reunion the following day (the same day we were due to arrive).

With no other options, the cruise had to cancel our stop on the island and head directly to our final destination, Mauritius. We would still arrive at Mauritius on the first of March, which meant that we had two full days at sea ahead of us now. As compensation for both the loss of Mauritius and the cancellation of our stop in Zanzibar, the cruise line gave everyone on board some on board credit towards our accounts.

These two days at sea were very rough as we were sailing in the wake of the storm. Before this, I had not really felt the movement of the ship as we were sailing, but everyone aboard the ship could feel every swell that we sailed through. The staff put seasick bags throughout the ship for passengers to use – and they were quickly being used (happily I did not need one). The pool had to be closed during this time as well because the rough seas had basically turned it into a mini wave pool: the water was sloshing back and forth violently, splashing water onto the deck.

During the entire cruise, the company had been pushing passengers to either book future trips with them or to purchase credits for future cruises, offering all manner of discounts to entice people. With the credit I was receiving from the company due to the cancellations, I decided to use it towards buying a credit for a future cruise. There were a few that looked appealing, and so I ended up buying a $250 credit and I was given an additional $250 for free, all of which was fully covered by the cancellation credit.

Later in the evening I noticed that my onboard account showed a massive balance of several thousand dollars! Looking into the transaction history, I discovered that they had charged me $2,500 rather than the $250 for the future credit! The next day I brought it to their attention and they were able to get it quickly corrected.

I attended one final show on the ship during these last few days. A Broadway musical review was being performed, and it was billed as performing songs from several well-known shows. Being a fan of musicals, it sounded rather fun (and it was free, so why not?!). The theatre was packed when I arrived, but I managed to find a lone seat near the back. The show itself was lackluster. The singers themselves were good, but the volume of the speakers was far too loud, and the music drowned out the singing throughout the show. The majority of the songs were from shows that I did not recognize either – I believe they were from fairly recent shows. They did perform a medley of songs from Les Mis, as well as one song from Wicked, but the rest of the songs were unknown to me. I was surprised by this because the vast majority of the audience were older people and I expected the show to cater to shows an older generation would know – classics such as Sound of Music, etc. It was better than the magic show I’d attended several days ago, but it wasn’t anything special.

During our final day at sea, everyone had to reclaim their passports, which had been held by the cruise staff since we first docked in Abu Dhabi. This has helped facilitate our entrance/exit stamps at the various ports we’d visited throughout the cruise, which was much better than making everyone go through passport control in each port. We were called according to the deck numbers where our cabins were located and mine was near the end of the list. When I arrived to get my passport, the queue was quite long, stretching down the hall and almost out onto the pool deck. I had to wait roughly an hour before I reached the front of the line. While I waited, some “Karen” began complaining to a member of staff about the wait, whining about people not adhering to the schedule, etc. Disappointingly, the crew member took her to the front of the queue, rather than just telling her to deal with the wait like everyone else.

As my turn came up, it was very quick to get my passport back – it was a very well-organized process that took so much time simply due to the sheer number of passengers. Passport in hand, we were then directed to a passport control table for entry into Mauritius. The officials had come on board at some point and were able to complete our entry process there and then, rather than when we arrived in port.

I spent the remainder of the last day relaxing around the ship and getting my bags packed for disembarkation the following morning. Overall the cruise had been better than I had anticipated, but not an exceptional experience. The ship itself was nice and there were plenty of places for me to hangout during the day. The food had been my major complaint though. The quality of the buffet food was been very disappointing and I was thoroughly tired of eating the same few dishes each day. On the last day I had tried the mac and cheese for lunch, thinking that they couldn’t possibly screw up this relatively simple dish. While it appears quite cheesy, it was astonishingly bland without any flavor! This is just one example of how bland the food was throughout the cruise.

I was also looking forward to my trip coming to an end so I could fly home to Hanoi – and my wonderful husband! We’ve been apart during several of my previous trips, but it never gets easier being away from Thinh, especially for so long a time. Thinh has always been very supportive of my passion for travel, stating that he’s perfectly fine with me taking trips by myself. He’ll obviously join me as his work schedule permits (we’d used up his leave from work already with our time in the States and Europe). There are also numerous places around the world that I want to visit that hold zero interest for him, and I would never make him travel there with me. This is just going to be the reality of our marriage and life together… but we both miss one another a lot when we’re apart. We’d messaged and done video calls on an almost daily basis since he’d flown home, which helped a lot. There was now less than a week to go until we’d be back together though and we were both very excited!

 
Saturday, March 1, 2025

Port: Port Louis, Mauritius

Country 137: Mauritius

The ship docked in Port Louis in Mauritius very early this morning, but we were not permitted to disembark for several hours while the crew finalized the entry procedures. We were initially supposed to arrive at 06:00, but this was rescheduled over the past couple of days. I had arranged a shuttle from the port to my hotel, so I had to message them several times to update my pickup time. As it was, we began disembarking around 09:00, though my pickup was not for another two hours. I stayed onboard as long as possible, hanging out in my cabin and then the café to pass the time.

When I disembarked around 11:00, I made my way out to the passenger pickup zone so I could find my driver. There were dozens of people for passengers, with names written on paper or boards. I spent about 30 minutes waiting for my driver, but no one appeared with my name on a paper. The hotel messaged me that the driver had arrived and I discovered that he was waiting outside of the main port entrance, which was only a short walk away. Once I figured out where he was, I was able to quickly find him and we set off for my hotel.

I was spending one night in Mauritius because the only flights departing from the island heading towards southeast Asia were in the early morning, and there was no possibility of making one today. This also gave me some time to enjoy the island on my own as well.

Upon arrival at the hotel I was shown around the property and then told that my room was not quite ready (it was still a bit early for check-in). I left my bag at reception and then settled in at one of the charming lounge areas so I could do some reading. The hotel-resort was not huge, but what it lacked in size it more than made up for in charm. Everyone was very friendly, the public lounge areas were luxurious, and the on-site restaurant had a wonderful selection of food.

I had a nice lunch at the restaurant and was then able to go to my room. It was a comfortable room with good air-con, which was much needed on the hot and humid day. After freshening up in the room, I decided to go out for a little walk in the area near the hotel. There was a small convenience store nearby where I bought some snacks and drinks for the rest of the day. The store also had a large section of souvenirs, so I bought Thinh and myself matching keychains with the dodo bird on them. The dodo had been native to Mauritius and, by the late 1600s, had been hunted to extinction.

Returning to the hotel, I went down to the beach to have a look around. Cyclone Garance had also impacted Mauritius and the beach was strewn with seaweed that had been washed ashore. Thankfully the storm had lessened in strength before making landfall in neighboring Reunion, and only the outskirts of the storm had hit Mauritius.

I had dinner at the hotel restaurant this evening and then spent the night relaxing in my room before bed.
 

Sunday, March 2, 2025

I was up very early this morning so I could take the shuttle to the airport, which was located on the opposite side of the island. The airport was very nice and modern – much nicer than I had anticipated on such a small island! I didn’t have too long to wait there before it was time to board my first flight of the day.

My flight to Bengaluru in India departed at 09:30 and I spent much of the six-hour flight napping and watching movies on my phone. We landed at 17:00 and I had a four-hour layover before catching my next flight. It was good that I had such a long layover because the transit process was a total disaster.

Airline staff were waiting for the transit passengers as we entered the terminal, and they collected all of our boarding passes. We had to wait there for quite a while until the last of the passengers had left the airplane. The staff then walked us over to the transit area, which was only about 100m from where we’d been standing. They proceeded to hand back our boarding passes (why even collect them in the first place?!) and we then had to stand in line for another 30 minutes. When the doors to the transit area opened, an officer examined our boarding passes and passports one-by-one, checking our names off of a list he has in hand. Once that was done, we were told to wait even longer before we could proceed through the security screening (no one understood why we had to stand around waiting for so long – it was getting ridiculous). Finally, we were ushered towards security, where I went through the most ridiculous scanning in any airport that I’ve ever visited. Not only did we have to take out our electronics, but we also had to remove anything with metal from our carryon bags (could their x-ray machines not detect anything at all?!). Since I had so many items with metal on them in my bag, I essentially had to completely empty it out. As my bag went through, I was stopped and made to open my umbrella for the officers – again, could their x-ray machine not adequately scan such things?! It was taking everyone a long time to repack their bags since we’d had to dump everything out, and the security officers were rudely telling us to hurry up. I was exasperated and over this ridiculous transit process by this time.

Once through security, I was able to enter the departures hall itself and made my way to my gate. At 21:15 my flight departed for Singapore!