Welcome to the land of the Dodo...AKA Mauritius Island!

Mauritius, the land of the Dodo bird! We found this island paradise and all the fun activities it had to offer and HAD to visit it for our honeymoon. Mauritius is a part of the African Union and is located in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Africa. It is the second small island just past Madagascar.

One fun fact we learned while on the island is that the Dodo bird only resided on the Island of Mauritius and went extinct when the Dutch of the 1800's found a fancy to their chicken like meat.

This adventure took place upon exciting the airport. We had the grand idea of renting a car in order to save some $$ and not have to purchase a taxi each time we wanted to go out and explore. The initial process was easy, and them only having standard transmission cars was okay too as I've driven a stick shift once or twice...however....something seemed amiss when we peered into that tiny Peugeot rental car.

The steering wheel being on the right hand side of the car with the stick on the left definitely made my heart jump! We were about to have a "British" style driving experience.

Peeling out of the parking lot while only killing the car twice wasn't the first of the heart-wrenching experiences soon to be had. It was the street sign with a giant exclamation mark on it right before a round about.  

After seeing these signs periodically throughout the country, I came to realize that they were "Oh $!@#$%" signs... which is what our first reaction was entering that round about and looking left instead of right turning the wrong direction in it.

We quickly discovered that the rules of the road were quite a bit different than we were used to and immediately flipped around heading in the correct, left side of the road, and started yielding right after coming within inches of T-boning a small blue sedan.  Good thing I'm a twin and have 12 lives!! Purchasing full insurance was helpful too!

The next hour and 30 min drive through small towns around the outside of the island heading toward our seaside resort was the longest most intense time of our lives. Skydiving, cliff jumping, Crocodile swimming, and almost crashing airplanes have nothing on that Peugeot experience! Maneuvering through skinny streets with 3 ft cement ditches on either side, dodging on coming traffic (of oncoming cars in our lane), vespas, bicycles, dogs, and people who expected me to drive like a local gave me the ability to up my Mauritius driving learning curve! It was that or be equivalent to a bug smashed against the front of that oncoming bus that missed us by only inches (My bad though because I was in his lane)!

I will have to be a bit prideful now, I am excited to state that I only clipped 2 cars, 1 dog, was honked at 3 times for driving in the wrong lane, and chased only 5 pedestrians off the road during the week we were there. SUCCESS!!

 A view of the Indian Ocean from our balcony.

Nothing like a delicious meal to fuel the jet lag.

We saw some of the most amazing sunrises from our hotel room.  Jenny made sure to wake up every morning to catch God's breathtaking beauty on camera. (only mildly obsessed:))