The Pool at Klondike Hotel
Dive briefing by Rataan
Watch out for this diver!!!
Flic en Flac Town
Drinks in front of our hotel room
Luc and the view!
Luc getting ready for his first tropical dive!MONIQUE:
We survived the first night in our 2star hotel! No bed bugs, but also no sleep! Why then? Because of the heat! And we do have an aircon in working condition – but these divers do not sleep with an aircon the night before a dive! Breakfast is a quick affair because we are slow to get going. Muesli, yoghurt, fruit, omelette and pancake! Grab the dive bags and go, go, go! Of course, we forgot here everything is done in island style. Rataan, our dive master is chilling out on the beach. There is no longer a dive shop here at the hotel because the owner increased the rent, so Rataan’s boss had a brilliant idea – buy a large truck and move the dive shop in there. So, here in Mauritius we dive with our first ever mobile dive operation!
It takes us an hour to sort out equipment, for Callie to run to the Spar to get batteries for the torch and to get everything loaded on the boat. Not the “speed boat” Luc was waiting for! A typical island boat with an engine at the back. What immediately impressed us of Rataan was his suggestion of doing one of great sites of Flic en Flac – Cathedral.
It takes us a while to get into our wetsuits (believe me all the rice, octopus curry, rotis, dessert – had nothing to do with it!), but soon we find ourselves down under! We fall to about 20 meters onto giant boulders. From there we go through a large entrance – we through the top one, whilst Callie becomes a “bottom dweller”, choosing an even lower entrance. It takes us through a beautiful swim underneath the giant boulder. Enormous lobsters peeping from ledges and large fish around every corner. At 28 meters we go round the boulder and up on the other side. After this we level off watching an enormous giant eel below us. It starts raining and we can hear the rain on the surface. 40 minutes we surface a happy crowd! What a stunning dive!
The next dive takes us to Aquarium, just outside the house reef. Now it is Luc’s time! After swapping fins, BCD’s, passing around a few weights, sorting out an ear squeeze we are finally diving! Of course, in true Luc style he discovers the horn on the BCD. Imagine his first sea dive with more than 2 meters viz. Reef and tropical fish – believe it sounded the Cairo Central City the way the horn was blowing! Very proud to say that he takes after his parents – a natural diver! Very proud of him! I must add that Rataan is a brilliant instructor!
We get in that real Sodwana mode of chilling out after the dives. Late afternoon we go for a short stroll through Flic en Flac main street. It reminds us a lot of Phuket. We witness an “afternoon run”, Mauritius answer to SA’s breakfast run, but no Harleys – here they do it on scooters. We discover the Spar and a few other great things. Vanilla tea!!! JIpppeee. Local rum and the best – imported French chocolate at R 20 for a huge bar! A man – now, I will have to do the laps!
We also pop into Anaari Hotel (which was our other option, but decided to use the R5000 price difference towards diving). On our way back we are unanimous in our agreement that Klondike is the best budget hotel in the area! We eat like the French – French loaf, cold meat and Dutch cheese.
Luc cannot stay out of the pool and I join him our daily exercise programme – swimming laps! Those who know me will not believe this – but this holiday I will get fit. We do about 200 meters of swimming – after which I decide that napping next to the pool is actually better than doing laps!
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