Moritz P.: Mauritius, Rescue and Hiking

Hellooooo again from L'Île Intense. Loads of things happened since my last blog. Let’s start off with a little throwback to our Mauritius visit in the 3^rd week of our internship. We spent 4 days in Mauritius, and during these days we travelled practically the whole island and saw almost every must-see. Highlight of this trip, was the boat trip on the last day where we definitely had our fun together.

In the last week I got kind of stressed, because we didn’t really use our 2^nd week. But I managed to see everything I wanted. Together with Adem I went to another amazing valley, some astonishing waterfalls and a small village in the mountains. Crazy waterfalls, a capsized ship and a bus drive through lava fields were also on a daily agenda jointly with Alejandro.

Once this week, we also did something together, we hiked the Piton de la Fournaise, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It breaks out every 9 months. Once we arrived at the peak, Alejandro got crazy dizzy and also his leg hurt tremendously. On our way back down, he had to puke a few times and couldn’t really walk in a straight line anymore. Of course Adem and me helped as much as we could and finally we finished to get back to civilization.

Apart from these things I also did many things alone, since the others weren’t motivated or wanted to chill or whatever.

On Thursday I wanted to go hiking at a beautiful and famous sunrise spot. So, I got up at 4am only to get off the bus one stop too early having to walk 3km and kind of missing the sunrise. Still, it was nice to do something in the nature and the views too were stunning once again.

Regarding that day, a quite funny thing happened looking back. The bus at this stop is only every 3 hours, because the stop is literally at the mountain peak at 2200 meters above sea level. Yes, this bus drives over 2000 meters up a mountain.  As it is only every 3 hours I was waiting at the assigned bus stop. I mean there was no real sign that the stop was there but Google Maps said it. Moreover there was even a traffic sign, which stated that you can’t park at this spot due to the bus. Then waiting there, at some point I was wondering where the bus was, because the schedule said that it already should be here. Due to its delay in the morning, I didn’t think about it that much. I got up from a rock and wanted to look for it and suddenly I saw how the bus turned at the car park below and began to drive back down. (the bus wasn’t visible from where I was sitting). At this point, I knew my only chance now are other people taking me. Walking? Would have taken 10 hours. Next Bus? In 3 hours. So I tried to make myself look fresh and clean, which wasn’t the case after the hike. Waiting at the exit of the view point I spent some minutes waiting for people looking like they could take me. And after a few tries I found a rather young couple. While talking with them, it turned out that they were from Cologne. From that point on we had a great conversation and they helped greatly bringing me directly to my needed location.  

On Saturday, another hike was on my list, this time in Cilaos. You should know that Cilaos is the most famous hiking town, many routes are starting from there and the way up itself is an adventure. There is a fixed and teered street but still, driving through those more than sharp turns and small tunnels with a regular bus, already seemed impossible the first time I went up. This hike took me primarily to a cave with a river inside which was already beautiful. After going in the river and through the small “bassin” I found the waterfall where the water came from. Generally, the scenery was outstanding and definitely worth the hike, particularly seeing all of that while swimming was unbelievable.

Additionally, I did a helicopter flight on Sunday, it was a good finish of this once in a lifetime adventure and showed me one final time how breathtaking this Island is.

Alongside all the hiking and island adventures, I've also been putting in real work at BWT Ocean Indien in Piton Saint-Leu, where I'm doing my internship. My main project is a full water market study for La Réunion — researching the island's current drought crisis, how the water network works (and where it's leaking), and mapping out business opportunities for BWT across agriculture, hotels/tourism, and industry. It turned into a proper 28-page report plus a matching presentation, built from official French and local sources. Turns out even a tropical Erasmus+ placement comes with its fair share of spreadsheets and footnotes!

I want to spend the last few words of my final blog post about the EU and Erasmus+. Firstly a huge shoutout to Mr Crewe, who makes all of these amazing and unique experiences of every student so easily possibly for everyone. Then I also want to mention that we should appreciate the EU more. In my opinion still too many people in the Austrian society look at it from a bad angle which is clear if in the headlines only negativity is spread. But only due to the EU and the people working to enhance it constantly, things like our trip to La Réunion is possible. Hope the mindset regarding that changes in our country and now to everyone wondering if they should give HAK Works Abroad a try:

JUST DO IT

See you next year!

Cheers!