Up at the crack of ... nah, who are we kidding?

Had another nice breakfast overlooking the hotel gardens and the ocean . Unfortunately still raining today so it took awhile for us to decide what we should do. Mauritius is beautiful but a lot of the activities do depend on good weather.

Took a punt and headed back to the Pamplemousse botanic gardens as I really, really, really (yes really!) wanted to see the giant Victoria Amazonica waterlillys. Soon as I saw these mentioned when trolling online for things to do, I wanted to come and see them. I remember seeing them in Dad's National Geographic as a kid and being fascinated that the largest ones could actually support people standing on them.
The gardens were very nice and the water lillies were as cool as I imagined though these ones can only support about 20kgs so we didn't go for a walk. I think Jeff liked them too as he took about a hundred photos of them.

We also saw white lotus, pink lotus, lots of overflowing streamlets, some more of those bright orange cardinals, herons, sparrows, giant tortoises, deer and a very large eel! Well worth a visit even in the rain .

Had a lovely late lunch back at the restaurant at the sugar museum. Had a yummy main and an amazing dessert each, plus Jeff had a cocktail and it only cost $7 more then the shitty dead dodo lunch yesterday. Seriously, the desserts here ... oh my god! Jeff had a chocolate lava cake that came with a scoop of homemade icecream in a tuile basket and I had a creme brûlée which came with a passioncurd macaron and a scoop of passion fruit sorbet. Cest magnifique !

Stopped at the Waterfront in Port Louis again for a more relaxed look around without a shadow. Shopping is one of few the indoor activities when it's raining. Let's hope we've been converting correctly and not dropping too many zeros!

Drove past the huge Princess Tuna canning factory on the way back to the hotel. Air not smelling too special around there! Interestingly, our driver told us that most Mauritians don't eat tuna. They prefer smaller fish as tuna is too dry for them. So all this tuna being fished from Mauritian waters is sent off to other countries.

The other interesting thing that happened on the way back was our driver doing a Peter Brock on the wrong side of the road around a blind corner, and nearly mowing down a pedestrian. The pedestrian running to get a cop and them all having an argument about it for 15 minutes ending with the pedestrian calling our driver a terrorist! Fun times. Good grief. Ironically this was about 10 minutes after our driver telling us how two tourists were tragically killed in their way from the airport yesterday as their taxi driver was driving like a lunatic. Right.