A bus to Flacq Market leaves every half an hour. We’re told this our first full day on the island during hotel orientation and reminded often at reception.
The fare is 30 rupees per person one way and the bus stop is right outside the resort gates. We know these details well, and on Monday morning, right after a massive breakfast, we’re ready to set off.
Armed with 500 rupees and what we think are adequate outfits for a leisurely stroll through a market, we head to the bus stop.
The bus to Flacq Market leaves every 30 minutes and will cost us 30 rupees each but no one tells us what the bus looks like.
We watch private cars, minibuses and big buses pass us by but none of them stop for us. They must not be our bus, we decide.
Another bus, that is not our bus, passes by and the driver waves enthusiastically. I nod and smile because I think it’s our bus and that he’s heading down the narrow road to make a U-turn somewhere but he never returns.
We spend maybe 40 minutes waiting and when our bus finally arrives with a thick French accented “Flacq?”, every single serial killer book I’ve read and movie I’ve watched begin to flit through my brain at high speed.
We’ve been assured that Mauritius is safe and the relative nonchalance the staff send us off in the direction of the bus stop with makes me feel like they must be sure about it.
But I’m paranoid as I always am so the drive to the market is a tense affair for me.
We’re joined by another passenger and the country slides by the windows in a blur of colour.
The other passenger hops off at Flacq shopping centre and we drive on to the market and it’s only once we’ve gotten off the bus and waved the driver goodbye that we realise that, on Mondays at least, not much happens at the market.
A few women who speak in quiet voices have clothes and shoes and jewellery on display but in all of three and a half minutes, we’re all marketed out.
We’re convinced there must be more to see so we set off again, into the streets and alleys, past dress shops and banks and Island Life Assurance offices.
About an hour and a half, several blisters and an incredibly uneven tan later, we can tell you that, on Mondays at least, not much happens at the market.
It all happens beyond it.
