Sunday 21 August 2016

En Route

Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport

We have arrived in Mauritius, only a few minutes late, so connecting to Madagascar has worked out fine. There is a website called FlightAware where you can check the history of flights over a couple of months. I had seen that the London flight had been close to on time 9 times out 10. A recurring theme, we are enjoying lattes. These turned out to be free. We are in transit so have no Mauritian Rupees. We asked if they took Visa. When they said yes we ordered. But our cards (their new matchine we assume, it is a new store apparently) were rejected. They would take Euros but only give back Rupees. We had only bigger bills. Our coffees were already made, so the manager gave them to us. But he did not give Po her almond croissant.

On the plane early this morning

It is 4:20 London time, so we have been in the air for about 7 hours. I gave up on sleep when I could not stay in my seat any longer. And my nephew’s voice was in my head, “Get up Uncle Bob, get some water, walk around.” In 2011 I took a trip to Botswana with Mike. He is a regular international traveller with his job. He kept bringing back bottles of water. “Drink this. You have to stay hydrated.” That flight was about 15 hours so I think I will survive this one. I did break my hydration  rules and had some wine with my dinner. They never feed you on domestic flights, but you get dinner at 11 pm on international ones.

I guess it is okay that I did not get a backlit keyboard. I can type this from the light of the screen in a darkened aircraft. Before we left I was using both my computer and my new iPad to update this blog. I think it takes about 3 times longer on the iPad. It is not just the small keyboard and screen. Blogger.com works differently as well. When I get a few paragraphs with photographs and then do some editing of a saved post, I find the curser jumping up and down. I type one letter, up goes the curser. It comes back down with each keystroke. I have lost some brilliant thoughts a couple of times  when everything froze. The retyped text is shorter.

We had a nice chat with a Mauritian lady in the departure lounge. I felt guilty that we are only spending a couple of hours there, just there to connect to get to our Madagascar flight. Here we were, going all that way and not stopping for a few nights in her country. She knew someone who had moved to Newfoundland, but she thought they had moved on to someplace else in Canada, someplace warmer. (Imagine that!)  I might have done the trip differently, booking a couple of days at the beach in Mauritius before heading into Tana. But, it is too late now.

There was actually a bride, still wearing her gown, waiting for the plane. The guy with her (assume her new husband, or maybe she was running off with an old boyfriend?) was not wearing his tux. That would have to be so uncomfortable to wear that for 12 hours. I don’t know if she is still wearing it as this is a big plane, with few empty seats.

2 comments:

  1. Mauritius looks pretty interesting if you like tropical beaches. Wow.

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  2. FlightAware is really useful. You can check departure and arrival gates and if you're connecting flight's plane hasn't arrived yet you can check on its progress. I love that tool.

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