We awoke to beautiful sunny day. Here is a photo we took on the walk to breakfast.

At breakfast, Nadine decided to try something different, and had the sea urchin scrambled eggs!

Back at the villa, it was really starting to sink in that we would be leaving this beautiful island later tonight. After getting packed for the trip home, we spent the day relaxing and sitting in the pool. Nadine’s family came by the hotel, and we spent the afternoon together, before we all headed back to the airport to say our goodbyes.

Unlike our outbound journey, we’re not breaking up the trip back home to Canada with a few days stopover mid-way. Our journey was also made a bit longer since originally purchasing our tickets, when one of our flights was cancelled. We were originally flying Turkish Airlines back to Istanbul followed by the Air Canada non-stop flight to Toronto. With the security deterioration in Turkey last year, Air Canada stopped flying to Istanbul. We were therefore rebooked with an additional connection, flying Mauritius to Istanbul to Copenhagen on Turkish Airlines, and then to Toronto on Air Canada. I suppose we could have asked for the non-stop flight with TK from Istanbul to Toronto, but that would have meant a really long wait in Istanbul, and we actually get home sooner by taking the extra flight segment to Copenhagen.

It’s about 10 hours from MRU to IST. We then have about 2 hours to wait before catching a 3-hour flight to CPH. We then have about a 2.5-hour wait before catching an 8-hour flight to YYZ. From the time of leaving the resort at Anahita, to the time we arrive home in Newmarket, our total time in transit is about 31 hours, with 21 of those hours spent in the air. So, this will be a long day!

The check-in process in Mauritius was efficient, as was passport control. We had some dinner in the lounge before boarding our flight. Here we are after boarding, getting settled in for the long journey.

The flight was fine. Unfortunately, the flight times weren’t ideal, leaving MRU around 8 PM. I get much better sleep when the flights leave later when I’m really tired and ready to sleep, but it was still comfortable. We freshened up in the lounge on arrival in Istanbul, had some breakfast, and it was time to head for Copenhagen.

The final flight home to Toronto was the best of all flights on our journey. We were travelling on a brand new 787-9, and we love the new Air Canada business class seat. Very spacious, with tons of storage, with excellent in-flight entertainment, and with a user-controlled air cushion flatbed seat, it was the most comfortable flight of the bunch.

We made it in to YYZ a bit ahead of schedule, breezed through customs and immigration, and waited the usual eternity for luggage arrival, like only Pearson airport can do! We grabbed a taxi home to Newmarket, and went to bed early. It was a great trip, but it’s always nice to come home.

Until the next trip…

We had another nice day today, so decided to head out and see what more things we could see. Starting out toward the south, and then heading inland a bit into the hills, we saw some nice scenery.

The roads here are interesting. Many of them just wind through the sugar cane fields, as shown in some earlier photos. Another common sight along Mauritian roads, is to have roads lined with large trees, as per the photo below.

Here is a video of driving along such a road:

Another popular drive, is along a costal road, as seen here:

And just so you don’t think that all roads in Mauritius are narrow and twisty, below is an example of a larger country highway:

As you can see in these videos, this is a great place for touring around in a convertible! I highly recommend this method of transportation for anyone who comes here. I was, however, surprised that we didn’t see any other similar cars during our time here, so they don’t appear to be very popular, and I don’t quite understand why.

I also noticed that many of the guests at our hotel didn’t have rental cars at all. We would see many of them waiting to take taxis or contract for a car and driver for the day. I guess this might work for some people, but for our style of travel, nothing beats having our own vehicle (particularly a nice red BMW convertible!) to just go wherever we feel like going, whenever we feel like it.

After a nice day of exploring, we returned to the hotel to relax.