Top Gear driving challenge and Sara's birthday

Today was Sara's birthday and we were going to celebrate it with a meal in the evening.  Before that we decided to drive north and head to the beaches in Grand Baie.  So we loaded up all 3 cars and the "Top Gear" convoy set off in the usual order of drivers: Stewart(Hamster), Jamie(Clarkson) and me(Captain Slow).

My Mum had mentioned something about trying to take the scenic drive up the West Coast and so she was directing Stewart, so he says.  This meant that we took a left turn not long after joining the main A3 road and headed off down some poorly maintained road.  And then down a dirt track.  And then another track through some sugar cane fields and past a Private Property sign.  It was about half a mile after this that we stopped and had a quick discussion that ended with us turning around and heading straight back the the A3!!!  After that Mum's confidence in her navigation skills must have taken a knock as we must have taken a wrong turn just before Port Louis and ended up driving straight through the centre of it.  I'm sort of glad we didn't take the M1 that by-passes the centre as I wouldn't have experienced the most chaotic driving experience of my life!  The Mauritian driving technique is something you have to see to believe, a collection of horn beeps and mental overtaking maneuvers with little regard for other drivers, road markings, signs, lights or pedestrians!!  There aren't many roads in Port Louis and it seemed everyone was on them today.  Eventually we got through Chinatown and then the roads cleared and we carried on with our drive....which took us in slightly the wrong direction.  So another discussion involving mum and dad looking at their paper map and me looking at Google Maps on my phone, and we worked out which road to take to get us to a beach.

We finally arrived in Grand Baie and parked in a shopping mall car park and walked the short distance to one of the many small beaches on the North Coast.  This was another stunning beach but in a different way to the others we had seen already.  This was more like a "standard" stunning beach; soft sand, clear waters, sun loungers....it felt very south of France! (not that I've been there but I've seen pictures!)

One of the many beaches in Grand Baie

It was a beautiful day spent lounging on the beach or messing about in the water, with a trip to a couple of the food vans parked on the side of the road for some lunch.  One thing that I have loved seeing all around the island is little food stalls at the side of the road.  Today these were bigger vans, like you would see in the UK, but most of the time they are little tables with food laid out on them and if you are lucky a little uPVC windowed viewing box.  These little stalls sell anything from fresh vegetables and fruit to home cooked local snacks.  I've only stopped at a couple but the food I have had is delicious.  The fun part is working out what the food is by speaking in very broken French and then hoping that you have worked it out correctly before you bite into it!

Anyway we eventually had to pack up and leave this mini part of paradise and thought we would pop into one of the new shopping malls that we saw on the way in.  This seems to be happening a lot here; new, modern constructions popping up everywhere.  Also there are huge improvements going onto to the road system across the island and this is very obvious around the north of the island.  Sometimes this all looks a bit strange in amongst all the older, battered looking buildings but here it looks right.  The whole area seems to be more "up-to-date", for want of a better phrase.  It looked like we could be in the UK, albeit with much better weather!  So after a little detour where I decided to show my wife and daughters some of the less well driven parts of North Mauritius (I got lost!) we ended up at the big shopping centre.  It really wouldn't look out of place in Nottingham or Cardiff.  Very clean and well designed buildings and the shops that were there were mainly designer stores.  We met up with the rest of the family at a coffee shop and then left them after a quick drink as we wanted to get some food for the apartment and said we would meet them back at the complex.  Yes, I said to my Dad, I know the way back.  You can't get lost, I said to him.  There's only one road and if I go the wrong way I'll just head south, I said.

The drive back was fine until it started getting dark and raining and I hit the traffic in Port Louis.  And then missed my turn off the M1.  Then the fun started!!!  The road system in Mauritius is very simple.  There are only a few main roads and they run North/South and East/West.  Dead easy.  Except the roads South split at Port Louis and go either side of the Grand River North West and I was going down the wrong side!!  I'm not going to lie to you, I got a bit stressed.  Using Google Maps on my phone is not the ideal way to navigate through towns that I have never visited before, in the night, with very poor street lighting and sign posting.  Add to this that the Mauritian motorists are on par with London drivers but with a little less care and I wasn't having much fun!!!  I managed to get to a part that I sort of recognised and then saw a glorious sign for Flic en Flac that sent us in the correct direction (after taking a couple of dead end back roads that I thought I'd never get out of!!! Don't' tell my family that though!!).

We were going for dinner at a restaurant/hotel/spa that was a few minutes from our apartments call Aanari.  The dining and bar area is stunning.  We were shown to our table with the resident guitarist/harmonica player serenading us.  The meal we exquisite and everybody enjoyed it.  A great way to end the day :-)