A hot day in Port Louis

Colonial building

Sector chart

Will they wear one of these?

Port Louis

Vibz play us out

Only 2667 miles

Sunset cafe

Cloudy Island

Central Port Louis

Harbour View

Waterfront

Adds perspective!

Watching the sailaway

Fishing Fleet - mostly foreigners

Floating restaurant

Nice jacket - good price!

Little & Large

New course for Australia

The miles are building up now and we start to think in thousands as we clock up 2990 from Cape Town and with a mere 2667 to run to Fremantle heading 110 deg at 24 knots, hopefully avoiding the cyclone headed for Madagascar. A cloudy day today (Saturday) but yesterday was a bit better when we explored Port Louis.

Mauritius is a volcanic island with a highest point just a bit lower than the 3500m of Reunion Island, which we passed during Thursday night. The manouevre to re-align the ship to enter Port Louis involved a tug for the first time, helping the thrusters to turn us 180 degrees and come in astern.

The stop was very short – only just over 6 hours – so there was a big queue to disembark all the tours and get them away before the ‘independents’. Don’t like the Cunard queuing, so a leisurely breakfast in the restaurant set us up for the day, even if it might have made us a bit unpopular due to the big crew exercise scheduled for the morning. The ship must have 2 drills per month to satisfy SOLAS regulations and QM2 had to do it in Mauritius to comply – much to the chagrin of the significant Mauritian crew contingent.

Port Louis seems to be like any other island port, but has a new Waterfront development with craft shops, restaurants, Banks and a museum so we caught the shuttle and had a quick look round, avoiding the warm rain showers while hoping that David Norval would find time to meet us at some point. Great news …free for a quick lunch so we met at the Sunset café and exchanged news and views with David and his colleagues from South Africa. Great to see a friendly face ashore. A quick look round the shops and then back to the ship to escape the heat and humidity with a quick dip in the pool as the ship pulled away and a wave to David on the shore as the steel band played us out.

Well, last leg before Fremantle now, three formal nights and a Captain’s reception tonight for the Cunard World Club Gold Members, which should be fun. And our pre-dinner drinks will be on Cunard!

Great to make a phone call to the UK this afternoon and catch up with Jilly who is at OVC for the weekend. We have been playing a bit of 2-handed bridge and the Boss says I’m almost ready for a bit of ‘kitchen bridge’ – rare praise indeed!