Mauritius Part 1: Arrival

I couple of weeks ago, I was in Mauritius for work (and of course pleasure). To get around the island, I arranged for a hire car from Maki Car Rental, which was apparently small local company with a German parent company.  Apparently.  It was the cheapest I could find on the island (about half the price of Avis / Europcar and friends).  We arrived at the airport after a 10 hour overnight flight in economy.  Only, in the airport terminal, there’s no hire car stand called Maki Car Rental.

“Umm.  There appears to be no Maki Car Rental here.” I stated, somewhat blurring the ridiculous and obvious all at the same time.

For this trip, I was travelling with my boss and he shot me a look that was somewhere between worry and annoyance.  He’s a great fellow to work with: gruff and straight to the point.  Not that I needed that right at that moment.  We’ve both travelled on the overnight 10 hour flight and he’s thinking: “We’re getting too old for this s@#$.”  I’m thinking: “There goes the bonus.”  And, we still had a business meeting to get to.

Rapidly running out of conventional options (such as googling the iPhone or calling Maki Car Rental which gets me an ominous, “this number is disconnected”), I start to ask around and everyone tells us to go outside to have a look.  Pushing through the throngs with our roller luggage and business work bags, there’s a wild cacophony of “Taxi sir? Taxi sir? Where you go? You need taxi?”

It doesn’t seem to matter where you go in the world: roller wheels on business luggage are always a massive taxi fly magnet.  We wave them away bravely, and I push forward clutching my printed reservation sheet which could well have been now a crumpled bank note from an African devalued currency.

Around us were newly arrived holidayers looking to settle into their resorts, and locals returning home.  We went further outside pushing through the clouds of people.

At the end of the arrivals trolley ramp, there was a guy holding up my name printed in CAPITALS on a somewhat crumpled piece of A4 paper.  It was Arial bold, centered.  It looked somewhat legitimate, but he was standing there, like a chauffeur.  I gingerly ask him the painfully obvious, “Is this Maki car rental?” to which his response was to call out my name.  He didn’t even know what the parent German company was.  Promising.  The car was indeed a red Honda Jazz.  Pressure subsiding.  It was the middle of a blustery Mauritian day, and as he filled out the rental agreement, various sheets of form and carbon paper flap wildly like flags taut in the breeze.  He’s struggling with this and I help him by holding down the corners of the form.  It’s a real team effort: but I just wanted that damned set of car keys to get to the meeting.

My boss leant lazily on his luggage handle and idly pushed his bag around on the bitumen.  I can see the tropical hot blood slowly retract from his face.

“I need a credit imprint,” our new friend says.  I always dread this part.  It’s the blind trust that annoys me.  You have no idea what people can do with your card once they have a physical copy of it, but you have to give it away anyway.  I handed over my Amex.

Then it got very interesting.  He lazily retracts his disposable pen and reaches into his pocket and takes another pen.  This pen has a metal tip, unlike the disposable plastic one.  I raised my eyebrows with interest.  He then took a credit card imprint page and carefully placed my credit card on the car bonnet.  Followed by the imprint page.  Licking his lips like he’s about to do something really quite difficult, he then started carefully rubbing the tip of the pen over the paper and credit card to make the imprint.  Like making those pencil outline drawings of coins when you’re a kid at school.  

“Oh, shit.” I say partially marvelling at the ingenuity and apparent lack of organisation of a larger chain hire car group (which of course would have cost more).  My eyes went wide with fascination and fear.  I elbowed my boss and pointed to the guy making the imprint.  My boss’ eyes go even wider.

“Is that it?” I asked gingerly.

“This is… (smiling) the Mauritian way.  Welcome to Mauritius.” He held up the imprint and looked at it like some sort of jewel, tore off the carbon copy for me, and stapled the other to his rental form.

He then handed over the keys, says goodbye wishes us luck and walks away.  And like some sort of an apparition, he disappeared into the car park leaving my boss and I with a car with a quarter tank of petrol, a small photocopied map of the island, and our baggage in the boot.  I breathed out a small sigh of relief: that has got to be the most difficult thing done for the day.

I turned to my boss.  He comes to Mauritius almost every year for a holiday and has kept on telling me about all the great places he would show me around the island.  So, I ask him: “OK mate, so where is this meeting?”

“I have no f@#$!@ idea: I only holiday here. I’ve NEVER driven here.  And I certainly don’t know Port Louis.  I only hang around Flic en Flac. I can't believe you've hired a car! By the way, where is this Bel Ombre place we’re staying anyway…” 

He paused and considered the gravity of my original question and the moment.  A diminuendo followed by a fermata.

“You don’t know where to go do you?” He asked, finally realising what I was really asking.

“No. I don’t have a map, nor a GPS, but I know this place is close to the race track.”

“Near the race track…” he echoed and trailed off, half reflecting and half running out of energy for this conversation which has for him had more than run its course. In short: One Australian and one French guy, got car, got place to go, no map. We hadn't even started yet, and we were already lost. But we had arrived: we were in Mauritius.