the vanilla tides | Mauritius
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It’s funny how, when you look back, there are some things that just feel like they never happened. A level of surrealism just clouds certain memories, hazy, the way steam rises from tarmac during sunshine after heavy rain. The time we had with Pruney is coated in that same kind of fog, was she ever with us, or just a figment of a dream? It seems unlikely we were ever lucky enough to share in her spirit, her character, her big hazel eyes… was she ever real? It’s just hard to believe that she was ours, and she was real. In many ways Pruney, her loss and her being, wove inextricably into how I remember Mauritius. Those arching beaches, in shades of flax, wheat, and bone; the calm sea, clear and glassy, burbling like a baby, somehow still guarding the secrets of pods of dolphins and coral rocks. Mauritius too, was surreal, perhaps another piece of a dream, some kind of postcard for a paradise island. The French flair, the English architecture, the passion of the people for the ocean; for fishing; for raggaeton music, which made it feel decidedly island-y, and even more unreal.
There were the luxurious jungles that stuck to the sides of steep rock like verdant tattoos, trees dangerously careening too heavily around bends that hid ghostly shrines, surreptitiously guarded from the view of passing tourists. The hills and forest echoed with the calls of a thousand birds, there were views over leafy hilltops and cane plantations surrounded colonial mansions still producing rum. The road through the hills linked back to a coast road that wove lazily through fishing villages, boats calmly bobbing at the dock, fishermen and small children with corkscrew curls mending the nets. On another side of the island and under the watchful gaze of the peaks of Le Morne we found a tiny beach with water clearer than clingfilm. The shadow of every tiny ripple was visible from the surface, the sun bathed us and everything in white light, while the vanilla tides kissed sands the color of toasted coconut. Palms swayed to delineate hotels from each other, quiet despite peak season, pools gurgled, left untouched, and we drove back to our villa barefoot and with a horizon filled with nothing but the blue of the Indian Ocean.
The sea was often tiger striped, but in blues, greens and azures. A breeze would pick up in the afternoon, there would be a pleasant scent of seaweed, dogs in the small neighborhoods of Blue Bay and Point d’Esny barked, revived by the growing shade. Inland the malls were busy, Port Louis bustled, and the botanical gardens at Pamplemousses burst into a bloom of greenery with giant leaves and tropical tree trunks. You could drive for miles over tiny copper-toned roads, the carmine red earth a reminder of the richness of Africa; the canes stretching infinitely around us, hiding orchestras of singing cicadas as a reminder of Africa’s wildness. Banana plantations snuggled in the arms of rolling hills that ran gently to the sea, the wash frothing like a latte back onto the pristine shoreline.
In the evening we would walk in the neighbourhood, where beautifully unkempt villas were slowly retaken by island flowers; bougainvillea and hibiscus; friendly semi-stray dogs lazed in the long grass, pigeons cooed from crumbling rafters. Local families walked their way up from the beach, the sun began to set, streaking dusky skies into canvasses of pale orange, peach, and lilac. The island was warm, it was slow, and the dreamlike beauty of the Indian Ocean hypnotic. There were moments when we felt like we were frozen in time, sunburnt and sea-salty. We were watching kite surfers hop the waves, colourful sails cutting through the water like jellybeans through a glass jar; we were playing with dolphins who raced our boat and brought tiny babies alongside.
Sometimes, in the tangles of my head, I still don’t know if my memories with Prune are real, or if I’m imagining. Mauritius seems far away too. But then there are moments of clarity, when I can remember what the morning sun felt like as it moved over the ocean and lingered over the jungly mansions of Point d’Esny’s coastal road. When we were at that hauntingly beautiful beach, with the perfect clouds, the glasslike ripples, the tendrils of golden sun, we wrote Prune’s name in the sand. She was with us, she had been the whole time, and she would see the message on that tiny beach, because she would always be there, watching over the ocean, entangled in the coral and the palms, chasing the dolphins, always.
“The island is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever.” - E. Lockhart
