When we first began our round-the-world adventure back in early July of 2016, there was one thing in particular that made us more anxious than anything else:
That first flight.
Braeden had flown several times before, but New York to Paris was the longest flight by far we had ever dared taken him on. At 6 hours and 40 minutes it was daunting. It was a redeye and we hoped that he would sleep for most of it, but we were still nervous and we prepared for it by packing toys, books, downloading movies to our laptops, etc.
It turned out that we had nothing to fear. The flight was easy, he slept through most of it, and we woke up in Paris feeling pretty damned good.
Fast forward 2 1/2 months.
Our flight from Paris to Mauritius made the NY to Paris hop look positively jaunty, clocking in at 11 hours and 40 minutes. We knew far in advance, of course, and we started preparing for our September 18th flight in mid-August. Juliann bought a Legos kit, split it up into three groups and wrapped them in gift paper. We bought a puzzle that we hid for several weeks so we could surprise him mid flight. We downloaded his favorite movie, Ice Age (which I now loathe), onto a laptop. We bought new workbooks and stuffed them in the bottom of our backpacks.
We were ready. But we were still nervous. The flight was scheduled to take off at 4:20 pm in Paris and land at 6:00 am in Mauritius. What if he didn’t sleep? What if he wasn’t interested in anything we got for him? What if he screamed the whole time and every passenger on the plane stood up at once, pointed at us, and chanted Bad parents! Bad parents! BAD PARENTS!
As it turned out, he wasn’t the one we had to worry about.
We arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport via taxi at 1 pm for our 4:20 flight. Because we took the taxi we weren’t tired out from carrying our packs so we lugged them into the terminal feeling pretty fresh.
CDG was easy to navigate and we soon found ourselves at the head of a growing line to get into the check-in counters that opened at 1:30.
After a brief wait the security folks let us all through and we headed for the counter. We got a very nice young woman who was naturally charmed by Braeden, but it took us a while to get our boarding passes because she kept having issues with the printer.
[Sidebar: Normally when you travel internationally you do so with a roundtrip ticket. If you have a roundtrip ticket the country involved assumes that you’re just a tourist who wants to spend some money and enjoy. However, if you have a one-way ticket, they take very seriously the possibility that you may try to stay in their country longer than allowed and maybe even take a job from one of their citizens.
Because of the nature of our travel we have one-way tickets everywhere we go. So in many places the check-in staff of the airline may ask us for “proof of onward travel”, or proof that we’re eventually going to leave the country to which we’re flying. They do this because if they fly someone to a country that then rejects the person because they think said person will be a job-stealing scrub, the airline will have to immediately fly said scrub back to where they came from. On the airline’s dime. And unless you’ve been living way, way off the grid for the past 40 years or so, you know the airlines always seem to be a half-step away from bankruptcy.
So for round-the-world travelers like us, “proof of onward travel” (POOT, yes, they actually do call it that) can be a bit tricky. I researched this quite a bit before we left and decided to go with the simplest option: I saved the confirmation email from one of our legitimate flights and altered the details to make it look like we would be leaving the country on another flight at a later date.
I have this document saved on my laptop, and now I alter it and make a fake ticket for whatever country we’re flying to, then I email it to myself.
From what we’d read, airline staff very rarely ask for proof of onward travel, and the fake ticket trick works in those rare cases. However, if when you get to the country in question and the immigration officer asked about onward travel, it’s a very bad idea to give them forged documents. Some immigration officials can get a little pissy if you forge your way into their country. You could very well end up in a dingy little cell somewhere.
So when we entered CDG I had a copy of our fake ticket for a return flight to JFK on my phone. And now we rejoin our story in progress.
End Sidebar]
We were standing at the check in counter at CDG and Juliann, who was very much aware of what I had done with the fake ticket, visibly tensed when the agent asked:
May I see your return ticket?
It felt to me like my knees buckled, I ran to the nearest trash can to throw up, screamed Why, God, why?!?, and then passed out in the middle of the terminal. But what actually happened was that I smiled, sweetly replied, Of course, just a moment please, in French, and drew out my phone. I pulled up the email with the fake ticket and handed it to her confidently.
She looked at it. What seemed like an eternity passed. Then she smiled, said Merci, and handed me back my phone. Juliann and I both relaxed. Minutes later we had boarding passes in hand, our bags were checked, and we headed off to our gate.
Bullet dodged.
After a couple of hours we boarded the plane and Braeden immediately set to playing with the seatback video system so he could cue up a couple of movies. He doesn’t get to watch films or TV very much so he might as well have been in Disney World. We also lucked out (again) and had an empty seat in our 4-seat row so he could lie down.
We took off and the first few hours were good. Braeden happily watched movies until he fell asleep around 11 pm, and then J and I attempted to settle in for some Z’s.
What we had liked about our XL flight from JFK to CDG was that XL was generous with the legroom. We had at least an extra 6 inches to stretch out, and although that doesn’t sound like much, it’s a country mile on a long flight.
Air Mauritius, however, felt a bit stingier with the legroom, and it meant that both J and I were in for a long night of tossing and turning in an effort to get comfortable enough to sleep. In all we probably managed only 30 minutes of shuteye, but Braeden slept for 6-7 hours of the flight and was happy as could be by the time we landed in Mauritius at 6am local time.
SSR airport was small, clean, and inviting, and we worked our way through customs, immigration (they did ask when we were leaving and on what airline, but they didn’t ask for our tickets…whew!), and health, then grabbed our bags and headed for the parking lot to pick up our rental car, a sexy little Nissan March.
Just kidding. It was about a 2 on the Sexy Scale, same as The Golden Girls.
The hourlong drive up the eastern coast of Mauritius was beautiful, but we didn’t get to spend much time appreciating it because we were:
- Exhausted
- Starving. As in, willing to eat a whole cow starving.
- Driving on the left, which took five 9’s of my focus
We soon arrived at the villa, were let in by the security guard (the complex was surrounded by walls and a gate) and stepped inside.
We were immediately disappointed. The villa was worn and badly in need of a coat of paint. The pool was faded and looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a while. It didn’t smell too great, and the pictures on AirBnB were clearly not showing the real deal. We were a bit bummed.
Our disappointment evaporated, though, once we stepped out onto our terrace and saw this:
After we got the lay of the land we headed into the little seaside town of Trou d’eau Douce to get some essentials. We picked up some food, water, and other basics and drove back to the villa, had a little something to eat, and crashed out for a couple of hours.
The first few days in Mauritius we recovered, swam at the beach, explored the little surrounding towns, found a nearby mall complete with a modern supermarket and a playground (GOOOAAAALLL!), and visited Grand Baie, one of the larger and more touristy towns in the North.
We found a nice South African joint in Grand Baie called The Beach House that had tables right in the sand and a gorgeous view of the harbor. Juliann had the lobster, which I hadn’t seen her eat, in, umm, ever, Braeden ordered chicken, and I enjoyed a fish curry. We were all delighted with our meals and the spot in general and resolved to make it back up to Grand Baie at a later date.
That was our first week in Mauritius. Not a lot of action, just some exploring, enjoying the laid-back vibe, and recovering from our long trip. The Green Island definitely made a good first impression, and we were looking forward to seeing some of the sights.
Next: an amazing hike, and Uncle Scott comes to visit!