Mauritius

Today was Mauritius. We got into port sometime before eight and the immigration officers were coming on board just as I was walking by the gangway, which was on deck two. I figured I'd get ahead of everyone and wait at the faculty and staff lounge in order to get cleared for immigration. When I got there, I ran into Mike and his friend and we went out on the seventh deck to get some pictures. Luckily, only people whose ID’s were 600-999 had to go through a face-to-face clearance for immigration, so because I was on an SAS trip that left early, we got to leave the boat first.On the way to the dock, I saw Katie and met Jamie from Alaska and Carol, who signs for the deaf girl on the ship. We talked on the way to the dock, which was about a 45-minute ride.

The island was beautiful, super natural almost. Mountains everywhere and plenty of sugar cane fields. Once we got to the port, all of us got onto the catamaran, which was about 50 feet long. There were only about twenty of us so it was not that crammed. After we sailed for a while, we got to the place where we tied up and then we went snorkeling for half an hour. The snorkeling looked very similar to Dominica. Now I have to write 1500 words on exactly what I saw in Dominica. Not sure how I’m going to pull that off just yet, but I have class tomorrow so I’ll ask my professor then. But anyway, after snorkeling, we sailed just off the coast to a beach and then were tendered in by a large dink to the shoreline. A group of us walked along the coastline for a while until we decided to go in the water, which was only about two feet deep. The whole atmosphere was like a giant bathtub. Carol, her girl, and Jamie all made friends and had a few drinks, so when they came back to the dink an hour later, they were kind of drunk.

When we got back to the Catamaran, we started to head back to the port. I felt that the day flew by and since we only had from around 8:30 in the morning until 6 at night, there really wasn’t too much else we could do here. Once we pulled up to the dock in our bus, I noticed that someone was being taken out of the ship in a wheelchair. When they got closer to us, I realized that it was Dylan. He was not responding to anything the crew and medical staff were doing and he looked quite pale. He got carried into a car and then the car drove off. It was really scary.

After I talked to people, I heard that he had been drinking all day on the beach and then when he realized he had an hour left before they needed to go, he went to the bar and started drinking as much as he could, not exactly the smartest thing to do. I was also told that on the way back, he was throwing up in the shuttle and that before he was wheeled out, he collapsed on the ship. Its 7:32 and we still haven’t been given notice about an extended stay, and we haven’t heard anything about Dylan’s condition. I hope everything turns out ok.