Last few days...

So now we're down to our last few days spent in Mauritius. I don't want to leave! It will be freezing cold in England when we get back! Also, since the clocks went back in England, Mauritius time is now 4 hours ahead of English time, so my jet lag will be even worse! :(
So here's a breakdown of the last couple of days...

Friday 29/10/10
On the Friday night we both really wanted to go to a Divali festival that was going on, but didn't know where we could buy the tickets, didn't know where the party was happening, and we thought some of Tahnia's family was supposed to be going as well. So in the end we didn't end up going, which sucked quite a bit, but not much we could do about it! We found out the next day where we could buy the tickets from. How annoying.

Saturday 30/10/10
Today we met up with Tahnia's cousin Varuni, who is about the same age as us. We all went to Quatre Borne together for a shopping trip and lunch! Much fun was had by all and I bought a new dresss! Yay! We had to get 2 buses there and back, and we were sooo tired by the end but it was a really fun trip, even though it rained a little bit. And we all got souvenirs from the shopping trip! Later in the evening we went to a restaurant with Tahnia's grandparents, which was nice, but not as nice as some of the other restaurants we've been to!

Sunday 31/10/10 - Halloween!
Got up early again and got a taxi to the Black River Gorges National Park - FINALLY!!! We did the Macchabee Trail from the Visitor Centre to the Petrin Information centre - most people do it the other way around, so it's all down hill, but for some reason we chose to go uphill the entire trail... I don't know why. It took us AGES to go a really short way, coz the first bit was all uphill and in the sunshine. Then we got lost. So we had to stop and ask someone for help. But it turned out that the guy we asked was a Mauritian policeman who is chief of a department and goes walking twice a week in the National Park, so he offered to be our guide since he was going in the same direction. He was able to show us lots of cool stuff and told us a bit about our trail and where we were going. He encouraged us at the difficult parts and helped us up the really steep bits, which was really very nice of him! We never would have been able to do it without him! And he was able to take us into a part of the forest thats off limits to the public to show us the feeding stations for the endemic birds! Along the way, we were taken off of our particular trail a couple of times so that our policeman/guide could show us interesting things, such as the feeding station mentioned above, a massive roost of Mauritian fruit bats, a really beautiful reservoir, and several other things. The only problem with this is that we ended up taking much longer than we had intended to and we were much more tired than we would have been. So our policeman/guide called in a favour and got a police car to come and pick us up and take us to where we were meeting the taxi! So I have now ridden in the back of a Mauritian police car!
After the National Park, we went straight home, got showered and changed very quickly and ran round to Tahnia's great-grandma's house, as all of our walking made us late for dinner! Definately feeling it today. So tired and my muscles ache :( Oh well, at least I had fun!

Whilst in the National Park I saw lots of White-tailed Tropic birds, Pink Pigeon (endemic), Echo Parakeet (endemic), Ring-necked Parakeet, Mascarene Martins, Mascarene Swiftlets and a Mauritius Cuckoo Shrike (endemic).
Which means that whilst in Mauritius I have seen 6 0f the 8 endemic birds - found only in Mauritius! These are: (* = seen it!)

Pink Pigeon *
Echo Parakeet *
Mauritius Cuckoo Shrike *
Mauritius Grey White-eye *
Mauritius Olive White-eye *
Mauritius Fody *
Mauritius Bulbul
Mauritius Kestrel

Only 2 more to go!! And only 1 more day to go. Don't think I'm going to see any more birds in a day though, considering there are very few of them on the island! Tomorrow we will be packing up our stuff, resting, possibly visiting some of Tahnia's family and possibly going to the beach for the last time. It will be sad to leave Mauritius, but I've made a lot of useful contacts while I've been here, so I may be able to get a job or a voluntary position in Mauritius either next year or the year after, so I may come back soon to work here! See you soon England!