Peter's World: Holiday in Mauritius

We just got back from an excellent holiday in Mauritius. It was our 14th Wedding Anniversary and while we were there Dylan and Emma turned 2 and a half. It was a full 10 day celebration. The kids also went on their longest flight (just over 4 hours) ever and the first one out of the country. They have now got some stamps in their new passports.
On the flight there we sat three together on one side of the plane and had one aisle seat on the other side. Emma and Dylan found it hard to believe that the aisle itself between our seats did not belong to us. They wanted to sit and lie in it. SAA provided them with a colouring-in book and crayons that went down very well. The airline hands out the special meals (i.e. the one for the kids) before they hand out the others. This meant that we sat with trays tables down for an awfully long time. At some point Emma kicked against one of the trays by mistake and sent it flying into the aisle. The steward serving drinks to the row in front of us didn’t notice and proceeded to drive his trolley into the pasta noodle salad amongst other things. Only later in the flight, did one of the stewardesses pick up that something had been spilled and had a hell of a time trying to clean it up. Other than that the kids managed quite well.
When we got off the plane the passage to passport control was so narrow that when walking with a child next to you, no one could get past. Emma and Dylan are rather slow walkers so there was an incredible holdup behind us. To add insult to injury when we got to passport control we were shown to the red carpet Premier queue because we had small children and the others who had been held up got to join the long regular queue.
In Mauritius itself the Long Beach Hotel was absolutely wonderful. It's a modern 5 star hotel completed in April this year (2011). Everything is new and very modern yet pleasing and comfortable. Our room was configured with two “roll-away” beds for the kids to sleep in. We especially went for a larger room on the ground floor close to the beach that would accommodate us all. It was wonderful.
We quickly got into a routine of breakfast, beach, kids club (Angel club), lunch at the pool restaurant, afternoon nap that lasted till 6pm and then dinner at 19:30 or 20:00. The kids managed surprisingly well to stay up until 21:30 or 22:00. They were so tired from their morning fun activities that they needed their very long afternoon naps to recover.
The dinners at the hotel were really good and we never got that stuffed chicken feeling. The service in the Hotel was rather variable. Most of the staff were new and the level and type of service you got depended on who you got as a waiter. Our frustration was that we had to always get milk for the kids at a lukewarm temperature. No one in Mauritius knows the word or knows what it means. So we got between very warm and hot milk. Later we started ordering the milk with a jug of cold milk on the side so that we could fix up the temperature. Emma and Dylan were of cause oblivious to complications of their milk and just wanted their milk ready to drink.
We had hoped that the kids would walk a bit more and hence had left the pram at home. Both however developed a need to be carried around which meant that we couldn’t go far at all. Emma especially would insist to be picked up and in the humid 28 Degrees Celsius Mauritian climate you can’t carry Emma or Dylan very far. Our room was fortunately just within carrying distance of the restaurants, hence we only got to see parts of the resort.
We were glad we stayed for 10 days. It was the perfect length. Some more detailed descriptions of what we saw and what we got up to can be found in some of the photos on Flickr. Follow the link below.
Click here to see the many pictures from the Holiday