Mauritius: The Wedding Planner
Our wedding planner accosts us early in the morning. As in we’re not yet out of bed. Don’t judge us – it’s 2 hours before they’re due to stop serving breakfast, so it’s not unreasonable that we might be having a little lie-in. For some reason it’s really important that she know what we’re going to want for breakfast in bed in a few days. Even though it’ll just be a selection of the buffet breakfast. We promise to make a decision soon – once we’ve actually had a breakfast to see what’s on offer. This turns out to be an abundance of options.. none of which really require advance planning as it’s mostly continental choices. The trickiest element to breakfast is guarding your food from the birds that freely roam about the restaurant trying to take advantage of any unguarded plates. They’re not shy of people and cluster at the table, barely intimidated by people swatting at them. As soon as someone leaves they descend opon the remains of any food.
After breakfast we have an early appointment with a tour operator to check the details of our checkout and departure for the airport at the end of the trip. This means rising quite early (after the wakeup call) which we’re not too enthusiastic about. We’re then treated to a show of all the wares that that the operator has to offer. We happily sit through an overview of the attractions on the island and take a price list away with us. Unfortunately for them, the prices are astronomical compared to the website we’ve been using – so they won’t be hearing from us again.
Our next mission for today is to come up with a music list for the wedding ceremony. We brought ipods, but apparently that’s too hi-tech. We should have brought a CD. Happily, we’re confident that we can provide a usb drive containing music which any vaguely competent person with a cd drive can burn to disc for easy use. This delights our wedding planner. We promise to return later and deliver the goods.
We have a pleasant day strolling along the beach. This is slightly marred when I find an obstinate patch of oil has attached itself to my foot and has no intention of leaving. Attempts to remove the slimy black stuff only result in it spreading to my hand. No amount of scrubbing helps. I find myself extremely grateful that I packed nail varnish remover. Even oil is no match for that and some energetic work results in a clean, if somewhat raw, foot.
Following afternoon pancakes and tea (complete with thieving avians) we take a siesta nap before establishing ourselves in a corner of the lounge where we crane over an ipod and scroll through the list until we’ve narrowed ourselves down to a playlist that contains songs that neither of us vetoed. We cull this until we’re left with a number list of songs that are deemed appropriate. ITunes conveniently provides the ability to convert the playlist to a more CD-compatible format and we soon have a drive with 13 songs ready to go. Following dinner we can then get back to planning excursions. In a smaller version of the travelling salesman, we must try and select an optimal route around the island that will result in traversing the most points of interest without spending too much time sitting in a car.
