Boo hoo

The sun's going down on another busy day here on Mauritius. It's our last night at this lovely resort, and I've yet to dip more than a toe into the gorgeous pools that I've taken so many photos of. The fish in the lagoon remain unspotted by me and I haven't even stretched out on one of the sunloungers that are freely scattered about the grounds, every one of them German-free.

As for strolling along the soft, capuccino-coloured sand like this couple, well, pft.

Today we've been on the go from 9am till almost 5pm with Jean from Mauritius Tourism. We've had a small adventure at a big waterfall, teetering across the top of it, knee deep in the water while clinging onto a cable to keep from being swept over the rocks. We've visited a Tamil temple and smelled the incense as we wandered around the shrines. We visited a gracious old tea plantation house built on slave labour; and saw vicious ankle shackles in a museum. There was also a sadly small glass case with a scattering of dodo bones - all that's left of the thousands and thousands that were here when the Dutch arrived.

We've chanced eating dhal puri and chanapory from a street vendor at the market, and less riskily eaten manioc biscuits made by ladies in frilled mobcaps bent over a long concrete oven: a human production line. We've tracked down a little house on an island to photograph, and struggled with both the lighting and the inconvenient presence in the shot of a floating flour sack probably containing a bloated dismembered body (not: this is a very orderly place). And we didn't see the mongoose that ran across the road.

All day we've met friendly, obliging people, some of them stunningly attractive.

And now it's dark and we're tired. It's been a lovely day - but no holiday.