Bizarre places, unusual walks - Mauritius and Tanzania

There are many bizarre and unusual places that one encounters in Mauritius. From the waterfall of the Charamel village where the soil is divided into ripples of seven colours to the Jozani Forest Visitor Centre, an area that is both forest and swamp.

CJ: jilljack31

Mon, Aug 24, 2009 17:23:55 IST

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Mauritius Beautiful Places :

THE SPECTACULAR waterfall and curious coloured earth of Chamarel in Mauritius are fascinating. The tourism authorities have cordoned off this area of seven differently coloured layers of earth so that one views the ripples of hardened earth as one walks around the fence or from an observation post.

It is believed that the colour bands are the outcome of uneven cooling of molten rock. Oddly, when the seven different colours are mixed together in a test tube, they divide into separate ones again after some days. One can buy various trinkets with test-tube creations of this at the entrance or in Port Louis - the Mauritian capital - or in the close by town of Curepipe.

The waterfall and strange earth are four kms south of Chamarel village. It’s best if one joins a conducted tour to get to here and enjoy the vertical corkscrew road in beautiful country and English weather that leads one to Chamarel. All major tour operators run tours to Chamarel, usually including it with Grand Bassin and Curepipe town.

This is a town where one is unlikely to leave without buying a reasonably priced model ship encased in a bottle or perhaps even a meter long ship costing Rs.10,000 or adaptations costing from Rs. 1,000 - 10,000. The bigger super models take artisans up to 400 hours to make and copy every minutest detail of such magnificent ships as The Bounty, Victory, Endeavour, Cutty Sark, Golden Hind and even the Titanic. The complex miniature replicas truly deserve to fall in the category of strange and unusual places.

About a kilometre south of the Jozani Forest Visitor Centre, the board walk commences under the shade of an old tamarind tree. About half-way along the horse-shoe shaped board walk, an extension crosses the creek and leads to a rest area. One can sit here and relax a while. At the end of the boardwalk, one emerges in the thicket, a short walk from the tamarind tree and the car park.

Keep your eyes open for tiny, angled holes in the ground. These are the homes of Freshwater Crabs, among the more remarkable denizens of this magnificent forest. As well as being a forest, Jozani is a swamp. During the long rains, it is altered into a vast wooded freshwater lake, merging into salty swamp toward the sea. Jozani is the principal area of mature forest left on the island.

Regular flooding and a high water table have made this a inimitable swamp forest inhabited by the Red Colobus and Sykes monkeys. There are also 43 species of birds and over 50 species of butterflies in Jozani which is about one hour’s drive from Stone Town.

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