June 25 - 29
- Le Touessrok and St. Geran Mauritius
In
the spirit of the revered "sabbatical" , we thought it
would be best to get as far away from work and home as possible --
not only in mind but also in body. And since the space shuttle
isn't offering trips to civilians just yet (they will soon), we
chose Mauritius as our final destination. Beach, sun, watersports,
and it's physically just about as far away as you can get from
Seattle... opposite you in longitude, we are 11 hours off your
time. In latitude, it's a little too far north to be the
opposite spot on the globe, but close enough for our purposes!
Even
though it's winter here, we're in the tropics so the temps have been
in the high 70's every day. We have had some rain, but it has
been brief and we've enjoyed sunshine every day. The sands on
the beach are white white white and the water is a beautiful
blue-green-- and clear, with visibility underwater at about 15
meters. On our second day we went diving and saw a TON of
fish. We also saw one of the biggest moray eels we've ever
seen and believe it or not, we were able to pet it. On this
excursion, we also met one of the very few Americans we've seen on
our entire trip.
Yesterday--
our last full day-- was a typical day here at Saint Geran resort...
after waking up around 8:30 we ate a massive breakfast at the buffet--
Kristina got to have as much bacon as she could eat.
Afterwards, we went golfing on the Gary Player designed course... it
was our second round, and Kristina demanded a rematch after I won $1
from her in our skins game the day before. The rest of the afternoon
we spent on the beach, reading and drinking foofy tropical drinks.
(OK, I had a pina colada and Kristina had a diet coke.) Just
before sundown, Kristina took a golf lesson while I edited video on
our verandah, and then we strolled the beach watching the sunset...
And today
we are heading home.
We've had
an awesome time (and could both keep right on going..) but
now we're ready to get back to normal life. The hotel we're
at-- for the first time-- has CNN, so we've been able to start
slowly getting some info from the west. We heard about
Microsoft's new '.net' thing (joe likes the name!) via a Business
Week article and by sneaking a peek at news.com. And today we
actually saw a BASEBALL score on tv... a welcome break from all the
cricket and rugby!
In
the spirit of the revered "sabbatical" , we thought it
would be best to get as far away from work and home as possible --
not only in mind but also in body. And since the space shuttle
isn't offering trips to civilians just yet (they will soon), we
chose Mauritius as our final destination. Beach, sun, watersports,
and it's physically just about as far away as you can get from
Seattle... opposite you in longitude, we are 11 hours off your
time. In latitude, it's a little too far north to be the
opposite spot on the globe, but close enough for our purposes! 
Yesterday--
our last full day-- was a typical day here at Saint Geran resort...
after waking up around 8:30 we ate a massive breakfast at the buffet--
Kristina got to have as much bacon as she could eat.
Afterwards, we went golfing on the Gary Player designed course... it
was our second round, and Kristina demanded a rematch after I won $1
from her in our skins game the day before. The rest of the afternoon
we spent on the beach, reading and drinking foofy tropical drinks.
(OK, I had a pina colada and Kristina had a diet coke.) Just
before sundown, Kristina took a golf lesson while I edited video on
our verandah, and then we strolled the beach watching the sunset...