Trou
Aux Cerfs – Floreal Shopping Factories – Sacred Lake of Grand Bassin – Black
River Gorges- Chamarel Waterfalls – Chamarel Seven Colored Earth
The
beauty of Mauritius is in its beautiful landscapes with spectacular mountain
viewpoints, waterfalls, colored earth caused by past volcanic activities,
luscious plant life, varied flora, fauna and the dream beaches with an amazing sea life phenomena.
Our
third day on the island was spent exploring the land beauty of Mauritius and
our first stop was Trou aux Cerf’s dead volcanic crater, which has become one
of the naturally created attractions. Interestingly, it is said that this
volcano is also the origin for Mauritius’s existence. For that we had to hike a
small hillock, and the weather was perfect. It had just drizzled right before
our tour and the kids enjoyed running to the top where we finally saw the
crater of a dormant volcano surrounded by thick vegetation of lush green
shrubs, bushes and pine trees. The view of the crater was along a dangerous steep embankment,
so we made sure that the kids don’t steer too close to that. However, the
panoramic scenic view of the island from this vantage point was beautiful and
gave us a great opportunity to take amazing landscape pictures.
From
there we went to Floréal shopping factories, which has the biggest and most
famous workshop for model boats. However, the prices were so exorbitant that even though we
wished to buy the handcrafted boat, we didn’t buy any. We also visited the
Adamas diamond factory but just like the model boats, we only enjoyed seeing
them.
Our
next stop was the Sacred Lake of Grand Bassin situated amidst the picturesque
view of lake Ganga Talao that is formed in a crater and is surrounded by
mountain area and colorful temples and idols of deities around the lake. It is
a popular pilgrim place, sacred to Hindus and is the largest of its kind outside India. The entire
land is considered scared and pious in the minds of locals and visitors from
India. The huge statue of Lord Shiva, a whopping 108ft tall, built in the open
is a real marvel. This place is considered auspicious and you will definitely feel
at peace and calm while visiting it. After which we took a break for lunch.
Later
we boarded our mini tour van to go to Black river gorges national park, which
is the largest protected national park of Mauritius. The varied, exotic flora
and fauna and the unfathomable
beautiful gorges of unspoilt beauty of rainforest will leave you totally enraptured. Our minivan stopped at Chamarel waterfalls,
which has a jaw dropping height of 100 meters and is the highest waterfall in
Mauritius. It is indeed a popular tourist spot for its picturesque, pristine waterfall
surrounded by dense lush green tropical forest and rocky river canyon. From the
viewing platform we did what tourists do,
clicked 1000 pictures and moved on to our next location.
Have
you been to tours where you try and squeeze every sightseeing attraction
possible in one tour? Well, that’s kind of what we tried to accomplish that day.
Hop off – see the attraction – hop on to the tour and move to the next. So
finally, our last destination for the day was just 4 kms away from the
waterfall – the Chamarel Seven Colored Earth. I was super excited to see this as
it surpasses all the extravagant things in this country. This otherworldly
unique geological formation has seven colors – red, brown, violet, green, blue,
purple and yellow. Although it is hard distinguishing all the 7 colors of this
geological wonder, but we will not contest that. These psychedelic dunes are a
rare combination of natural phenomenon of volcanic activity over a
milleniaWe were busy
clicking family pics then group pics, then individual pics, then kids’ pics,
then sibling pics, then girls together, we really got very busy collecting
lifetime memories. So, you know where most of the time was spent... When we
were assured, we had enough pictures to last a lifetime, we retired back to our
hotel to enjoy some relaxing time before our next island adventure.
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