Grande Baie and Locality

Port Louis

Central Port Louis, the small town metropolise

Now it’s Friday and over the last couple of days I’ve been getting a bit more ingrained, changing my criteria for the home I want, etc, and getting my laptop revamped by the lovely Jonathan. A few months ago Mizu, the dear Gypo I worked with at the golf club in Ras Al Khaimah, kindly downloaded the pirated Microsoft Office for me, and ever since nothing has worked properly. Not that an Egyptian could admit he’d fucked up, heaven forbid. But now Jonathan has cleaned everything up and downloaded all these marvelous programs I know nothing about. Pretty pictures change as my backdrop, sticky notepads appear to write messages on, and I did have the weather report for the next three days until I unwittingly pressed something and it disappeared in to the ether. Can obviously be retrieved but I have no idea how! This is the learning swerve.

Traffic control in Goodlands for 7.00 am rush hour

So today I’m going to head into Port Louis ostensibly to look at scooters. Half an hour down the road and I hit the gridlock going in to the capitol, but that’s where the bike pays off, as you weave through to the front of the queue. Now I don’t want to be blasé about riding here as you’ve got buses who take the attitude ‘I’m bigger than you’ as they hurtle down the road, a myriad of other driving quirks, dogs wandering out of the bushes, potholes and tropical rain. At least with the last you can pull over for ten minutes till the sun comes out again. But yes; going to have to be very careful and sensible driving out here.

First impression of Port Louis and it’s the size of an average town spread around the base of a rocky hill with a buzzy commercial centre, districts of traders of different nationalities and the Waterfront, similar to those you find dotted around the world, where locals and tourists wander, eat, drink and otherwise soak it all up. My main reason to come in to town was to look at bikes and at ten thirty I met Dennis, the DHL National Customer Manager, as his card describes him, and he took me off to the BMW showroom where he was hoping to get his cut from my buying a Beemer 1200 costing the equivalent of a large family car back in Britain. At least it drove home how expensive vehicles are here with the hundred percent import duty. I then by chance passed by a few other bike shops, as there seems to be districts for the same products, as in other Asian/Middle Eastern countries, and learnt a bit more. Motor bikes are great and I’ve enjoyed in the past, but after my three new hips scooters are definitely the future, unless I go for a car? But hey, this island life says ‘wind in your hair and tropical rain is cool’. Hopefully I’m sensible enough for it not to say ’God, these massive grazes with grit engrained in the seeping soars are agony’, as bucks around the world experience on the annual holiday in Albufeira, Portugal, for example! Let me just clarify that I’m not necessarily going to buy new as am not oozing dinaro, and am perusing the ‘A vendre/For Sale’ sections of the local paper for secondhand vehicles. My dilemma is that on a bike you need some power to escape tricky situations and the 125 does not have enough, especially with a passenger, and so I’m looking for bigger, but they’re few and far between. Though I have found the perfect one and so far it’s the only option along these lines on the island – The Suzuki Burgman 400. It’ll be very unlikely that I find one secondhand and the price is a horrifying amount for what one would expect to pay for such in most other places in the world, but then there are only two major expenditures; home and transport. Except of course the yacht, small airplane, innumerable holidays et all. Anyway as per one of my mantras – Slowly slowly gets the Monkey.

Come Dine with Me

Yes Stephen, there is fresh milk

Back home, after the day out, and the boss rang asking whether I’d like to come to a Barbie, with the others, tomorrow night. With the only sub clause being would I do it? Well of course I couldn’t resist a first cooking challenge, so the rest of the evening was planning my attack. Then the following morning, yesterday, after going for the medical needed for visas and presenting the piss and shit samples, I did my shop and went to his abode to start preparing. This was around eleven to twelve, and from then on I wafted through the day getting my:

Homemade burgers – Angus fillet of course with the bits and bobs.

Chicken kebabs marinated in a yogurty type thing.

A couple of fresh Red Snapper basted in a Thai type concoction with dipping sauce.

Tatty and green bean salad courtesy of Ainsley as he’s the greatest on bbq recipes. Easy and very yummy.

Lettuce and tomato salad

And a carroty mayonnaise number.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, the homemade garlic bread…

The rented house is very well equipped but I still double checked that there was gas in the one of the two bbq’s I was using, and I’d got all my serving platters and utensils, but it was still only when I was all fired up and ready to go that I found the hiccup, as there were no bbq cooking utensils! Made it interesting using a cake knife and table fork for turning stuff over on an overloaded griddle, but we got there, even though the aesthetics were a wee bit lessened as I couldn’t get a clean sweep under the cookeries, as one would with a real metal spatula etc. But unknown challenges are a spice of life. I give myself a seven and a half all told and one day maybe I’ll get a perfect ten. Cesar was happy too as he was sorted for the next few days from the left over’s. Being Filipino there will be minimal wastage as even the fish cheeks are devoured. Of course I only nibbled as I can never cook and eat, as am too hyper. The only time I can eat, when I’m supposed to, is when in a scenario where you sit down, such as at a restaurant. Buffets or casual eating events and I tend to just get nicely pissed, while possibly riffling a few bits and bobs to take home to eat yet later still.   

Every Day’s like a Christmas Day

Sugar cane photo for now

Most of us must surely remember Christmas as a kid. The all consuming excitement on the night before, and then when we did finally get to sleep we were immediately awake again and up to see what that legendary fellow Father ‘nothing perverted about me climbing down the chimney and in to the bedroom of a small boy’ Christmas had left us! We’ll that’s what I’m relating to now; not the small boys' bedroom bit, but the fact that I’m waking up at five, or whenever, and there is no way I’m going back to sleep, as I’m far too excited and wanting to see what the new day has in store for me. I reckon I’m one of those who tends to live at the extreme ends of the spectrum, either peaking or troughing, and not spending much time in between. And God knows, as well as many a friend, that I’ve troughed deeply down in the wells of depression and thoughts of suicide, so consequently, I guess, I am now really appreciating being on a high. 

Well there’s an irony for you, as, as I sit here again an hour and a half after that last paragraph, having been up to the clinic to finalize my medical, in order to get my visa, I'm in a very different space, Anna, the rather delicious Russian doctor, was the last step in the process, and all my tests had come out fine, except a slightly high white blood cell count. But then does excess fag and booze abuse affect that? At the end though, she looks at my chest X-ray and sees a wee blotch, so sends me off for a closer inspection; another X-ray. ‘I’m sure it’s all fine, but just in case…’ Job done and I’m asking the radiologist ‘And’ and he says ‘Please just take a seat and wait till the doctor can see you’. Thirty minutes I’m sitting there thinking ‘Well here we go, I’ve cracked it and made it to paradise, only to find I’ve got terminal cancer'. An hour ago I was up in the sky and now, shiiit, I’m on the way out. It really was a very long wait, but then, when the following year she called me in, all was ok and the blotch had been caused by a shadow from my vertebrae. But… Point most definitely taken. Mind you I’ve been chain smoking and getting pissed on Pastis since, trying to calm the heart down! (It’s now actually late afternoon so seven or so hours have passed.)

American Jack

Early morning on a mildly overcast day; Grand Baie

Gosh, the cheaper eleven day rate on the hire scooter comes up tomorrow, so that shows how long I’ve been here. Passed in the blink of the proverbial, except that eternal spiral into despair yesterday. I was about to say let’s forget that, but no, emphatically not, as there was a massive lesson in there somewhere and not just the ‘how really stupid smoking is’ one. But… So saying, as blasé as it sounds, I used to have my mother saying ‘You’ll change your tune when your older’, when aged eighteen, I used to say that I’ll be dead by forty. But in all honesty I’ve stuck by that, as many could witness, and so consequently, ever since, every year has been yet another one beyond my presumed expiry date. Another week and I’ll be thirteen years beyond the expected. Surely a nice viewpoint so gotta be a positive. ‘Every day’s a bonus point’ (still haven’t forgotten yesterday though, don’t worry, so all in perspective).

Been dipping myself further into this novel world of the ether space today, though hopefully won’t warrant being classified as a nerd/bore/self indulgent type though. Just give me breathing space to find my level, indulge me for a wee bit longer.

And this is later from just over the road from the office

End of the day and had to decide about what to do about transport, as scooter lease comes up tomorrow. The realistic direction is to go for the cheaper month’s lease, as not going to commit to anything dramatic for a while yet. Consequently after looking at some alternatives my best deal was still with my present boys; all power to Pascal, a massively dedicated landlord; owner of where we are presently staying. Up by six, I note, as I’m on my Christmas day morning even earlier bird number. He’s in action coordinating, as he is till late in to the evening. Anyway he is the one who sourced who he felt is the best supplier of whatever it is his guests want, and has come up trumps again on this score. Therefore I ended up talking to Jacque ‘No, Jack, like an American’, the boss of the scooter rental company and more besides.

And the view out from the local watering hole The Beach House

It took me coming on an hour to find Jack’s shop, less than fifteen minutes away, but then that’s part of the learning ‘where you are’ process. From my hour of shooting the shit I reckon the boy, and engrained family, have fingers in many a pie and so got potential… We’ll see.

Besides the bike hire, boat cruises, GPS rental and guided country walks, the flip of the coin seemed to revolve around tourists having fun, possibly with a capitol F. Especially the bachelor type and ‘Oh goodness gracious me that’s moi’. As I was leaving he encouraged me to come down on Friday night to the, to all appearances, restaurant, where anything from a massage to an all nighter, for around twenty five quid, was on tap… Three days to go so who knows? Massif occasion as Florencio Avalos reaches the surface in Chile. One of those times when you put on the TV and there streaming live is a moment in history. Ominously, the only other two I can think of at the moment,  are when going into Aggis’s bar in Proteras, Cyprus, to see a plane fly into the Trade Centre, in New York, and returning to my cottage in the hills, after finishing the inevitably long day in my Bistro back home in Forres, Scotland, and seeing Locherbie village up in flames. Well this, at least, is a joyous one. Florencio who was the self appointed photographer for the group was fairly subdued, but the second guy up, Mario Sepulveda, really shows the Latin emotions that we expect, hugging his wife, briefly, before being far more enigmatic towards El Presidente. But I guess it’ll be the only time he meets the top man, so better make the most of it before his fifteen minutes is over and he fades back in to insignificants. Obviously a joyous man now, but I reckon in the not too distant future he’ll be speaking what’s on his mind, having been a Union official and previously critical of the safety measures taken at this mine… fireworks pending!