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Friday - Kempton Park
After work meetings, shopping and a few other errands we drove to our accommodation in Kempton Park, close to the airport. We got ourselves a take-away dinner and spent the evening watching dvd’s the B&B supplied. We got an early night in preparation for our early flight the next day.
Saturday – Mauritius!
We got up early, had a quick breakfast and headed for the airport. After an hour or so reading in the lounge, we boarded our plane, and then stood in the parking bay for a full hour until the airline caterer had delivered the food for our onboard meal. Eventually we took off. About two hours into the flight we flew over Madagascar and both of us peered down at the mysterious island, promising to visit there soon. An hour or so later we flew over Reunion, and Pieter got some lovely views of the volcanoes piercing the clouds. We landed in Mauritius only about 20 minutes late as the pilots had done their best to make up for the initial delay. As we taxied in, we both peered out the windows looking for our first Mauritian bird but were dismayed when this turned out to be a bunch of Common mynas. Our rental car (with First Car Rental) was a bit of a skedonk with little Marie biscuit wheels and creaks and groans coming from all over. Driving into Mahebourg for the first time was intimidating: the streets are literally only wide enough for two lanes, buildings are built right up to the edge (no shoulder) and street name signage is virtually non-existent. Having driven most of the Mahebourg streets at least twice, we eventually found our accommodation, Auberge Le Saladier, a lovely B&B run by an extremely friendly and helpful couple. After checking in, we took a quick drive down to Blue Bay for some sunset pictures and then returned for a local dinner and our first night in Mauritius.
Sunday – Black River Gorges National Park
Our first birding destination was Mauritius’s only national park, the Black River Gorges. Detailed directions from our hosts in Mahebourg saw us passing through sugar cane fields, small towns, Hindu monuments and tea plantations before arriving at Le Petrin, one of the access points for Black River Gorges. All 9 Mauritian endemics are to be found here but since many of these are still listed as Endangered or Critically endangered, we weren’t sure what we’d be able to see. We took a slow walk along one of the forest tracks and very quickly picked up our first lifer – the very common Mauritius grey white-eye. We peered longingly into the trees hoping to catch a glimpse of the very rare and endangered Pink pigeon, but no such luck. We did pick up a few more lifers: a White-tailed tropicbird flying far away over the trees, and later the Mauritius olive white-eye, Madagascar turtle dove, and the Madagascar fody. Returning to our starting point we made our way to the other side of Black River Gorges intending to climb Mauritius’s highest peak, but just then our petrol light came on. We decided instead to find petrol first and drove down the mountain towards the nearest petrol point indicated on our map. We arrived on the west coast to find that our map was wrong, no petrol was to be found in miles! Nervously we drove east along the coast of the island, passing through town after town with no petrol station. It was a very pretty drive but we were not in the right frame of mind to really enjoy it. Eventually we arrived at a bigger city and were delighted to stumble across a petrol station, over 50km after the light came on! We filled up and headed back into the mountains, determined to go bag the peak, despite the weather now being hot and humid. First though, we stopped off at the “Coloured earths” in Chamarel, an interesting combination of eroded basaltic soil and sand with different chemical compositions resulting in sort of a sand-coloured rainbow patch, smack in the middle of the forest. Back on the road, we soon found the trailhead for the peak and parked. Luckily the walk in is dead-easy with a flat 3km walk along muddy pathways carved out of the casuarina forest. The last 50m or so is not that straight forward though with a very steep and nasty scramble up loose dirt to reach Mauritius’s highest point, Piton de la Petite Riviere Noir (828m). From the summit we had a 360 view: the entire Black River Gorges spread below us, the large lakes and mountains to the north, Port Louis in the distance and the surrounding Indian ocean as far as you can see. Mascarene martins and swiftlets, both lifers, flitted around us in a stiffening breeze. After s spot of late lunch, we climbed back down the slippery slope, hiked back and then drove back to Mahebourg. Another restaurant dinner and an early night followed.
Monday– Grand Baie
To try and miss the notorious traffic of Port Louis, we got up early and were off just before 6am, driving around 70 kms on the motorway to get to the most north western point of Mauritius, Grand Baie. We had a very special trip planned – a trip on a submarine! A briefing started at 09:30 followed by a short ride across the lagoon to a larger ship anchored close to the reef and serving as base for the submarine. Excitedly we climbed down the ladder into the sub and crawled to our seats since the sub was barely tall enough to accommodate us while seated. The sub dropped down around 20m to a shipwreck – an old, limping boat that was deliberately sunk to act as an artificial site for future corals to grow. A few fish darted around the rusty ship, but we saw far more fish when we moved over to the coral reef itself. Hundreds of yellow and blue and red (although they appear brown at that depth) fish danced over the corals. To our delight a turtle appeared out of the blue (literally) and slowly swooped off through the water to a quieter spot. We moved over several coral mountains before heading to a particularly active patch, so active it’s been called the aquarium. An amazing abundance of fish darted in and out and over this little patch of coral, which even housed a a moray eel. An anemone waved from the top of the coral, and a little clown fish swam all around it. An angel fish glided majestically past, and six lion fish glared menacingly from the depths. Scores of yellow fish swerved nervously about, a few larger black fish came closer to satisfy their curiosity, and an occasional flash of brilliant blue was yet another species. All too soon we were surrounded by a curtain of bubbles as the sub surfaced again. It was a fantastic experience; I could easily have spent hours down there just watching the fish go about their day. On our way back to Mahebourg we stopped off in Port Louis to visit their craft market where we picked up a few souvenirs, the most impressive being a wooden scale model of a French brick. The building of wooden ship models started in Mauritius in the 1960s and has grown to such an extent that Mauritius is now famous for this. We could hardly go home without one of our own, although we wish we were able to afford one of large models with intricate detail and carving work, selling for thousands of dollars. We were back in Mahebourg for an early dinner.
Tuesday – Black River Gorges
The day dawned overcast, but we weren’t put off. Straight after breakfast we headed off again to Black River Gorges, still hopeful of finding some of Mauritius’s endemics. Some rain and a steady wind made the morning quite chilly, so instead of walking, we just drove around the perimeter of the park, looking for birds. Unfortunately Mauritius is not a friendly place for car birding; narrow roads and impatient drivers make it impossible to drive slowly. We eventually headed for the Grande Riviere Noir entrance to the park, which gave access to the river valleys itself. Once there, the rain had cleared a bit so we braved the wind and took a walk. At the very beginning of the walk, a parakeet flew into a tree ahead of us and got us very excited before we identified it as the common introduced Rose-ringed parakeet. As we continued on our walk we heard this strange call, a deep hooom… hooom…, sounding very much like an owl. Since Mauritius has no owls we wandered on very puzzled. A short while later the mosquitoes started becoming a real nuisance so we turned back. Again we heard the hooom… hooom… call, and this time the thought popped into our heads that it might be a dove. We perused our bird book and were excited to find out that it was the call of our sought after Pink pigeon! We scanned the trees eager for a sight of it, but only got a brief glimpse as it flew off. Happy with this ID, we headed back to the Le Petrin entrance of the park to spend some more time along the escarpment of the gorge before heading home. Right by the entrance, we stopped to look at a large pigeon on the ground and were thrilled to see it was a Pink pigeon! It was very obliging and allowed us to get close enough for good pictures of this famous bird. When it flew off we continued our walk and were lucky to catch a glimpse of a group of parakeets flying and calling overhead. Back at the B&B we took advantage of the free wifi to compare the calls of the two parakeet species on the island and confirmed our suspicions – it was the scarcer Mauritius parakeets! So our day ended with two endemic lifers added to our list!
Wednesday – Ile aux Aigrettes
For the first time on our trip, we had a late lie in and only got up at 7am. We ate breakfast and spent some time carefully packing our delicate wooden ship into our luggage. We then headed off for our last excursion, a trip to Ile aux Aigrette, a small (26ha), Mauritius Wildlife Foundation-protected coral island just off the coast, used to breed Mauritian endangered species of birds, reptiles and plants. We were guided carefully around the island to see all of these. Giant fruit bats were hanging from a netted roof in a breeding cage, covering their eyes with their hands and we were allowed to gently touch one of the giant Aldabra tortoises, a Seychelles’ endemic introduced because of its similarity to the now extinct Mauritius tortoise. The tortoise looked at us and stood up, the top of his shell being higher than our knees, stretched out his neck and begged for some attention. I swear it had a look of content on its face as we stroked its leathery neck! We continued our walk and spotted some of the Telfair skinks that were being bred here. Once we reached the more overgrown (more natural forest as it used to be) portions of the island, characterized by mainly endemic ebony species, we started seeing some birds, and were happy when our guide pointed out a Mauritius fody – an endemic we had missed on the main island. An excellent sighting of a Mauritius olive white-eye followed, and we learned that this is now even more endangered than the Pink pigeon with only about 150 birds left in the wild. A feeding cage provided shelter to more Pink pigeons and it was a touch sentimental to see these birds made famous by the works of Gerald Durrell and Douglas Adams. It was a good tour and it was fantastic to see the sincere efforts on the conservation front. Pink pigeons, although still endangered, now number around 400 birds in the wild, a fantastic achievement considering they numbered only ten birds in 1991. The Mauritius kestrel (one of the endemics we dipped on) is also a bit safer now, its population also up to about 400 from only 4 individuals at its most critical. Plants have also fallen to man’s hand – only 1.3% of Mauritius area is occupied by endemic species, the rest are introduced or are crops. The conservationists have around 12 full time personnel living on the island to assist in the conservation efforts. Their jobs entail collecting seeds from the endangered plants on the island, germinating them and eventually planting them in protected areas back on the main island. They feed the birds, import soil for the turtles to lay their eggs in (being a coral island, there’s very little soil deep enough for this), and put cages around the Mauritius olive white-eye nests to prevent the fodies from taking them over and destroying the eggs. They ring each fledging before it leaves the nest, and organize trips to the main island or to other small islands off the northern coast of Mauritius, where they re-introduce the bred birds. There is a long way to go, but it is good to see that perhaps these species will not follow the fate of the dodo. We headed back to the main island, finished packing and headed for the airport, our short trip over all too quickly. There’s much still to do in Mauritius and it’s such a friendly and easy place to visit that we will certainly go back when we get another opportunity.
