We woke up a little after sunrise to the waves crashing on the reef, a couple hundred meters offshore.  The view was nice, but it was a bummer to think that this was the only view we were going to have for the next 1-7 days.  We got cleaned up so as to look our best for the health minister, then we contacted Vandana in customer service to ask about breakfast, then to ask about meeting with the health minister, then to ask if we should take one of the antigen tests they gave us.  She didn’t respond to any of them right away, and we wondered if something had gone sideways.  They had told us over and over the day before that they were going to help us out, that they were “here for us”, etc., and yet at the first instant we asked for anything specific, there was radio silence.

The nurse (Rajshree) came by at 09:00 and gave us more information, for better or worse.  What she said is that the seven (not five) day quarantine is, for all intents and purposes, fixed.  The only way to get out from under the seven day quarantine is a negative PCR test, which, from everything we’d seen and read, wasn’t going to happen, as PCR tests are far more sensitive and come back positive for weeks after antigen tests stop giving positive results.  Moreover, a negative PCR result doesn’t allow you to go enjoy the island, just to go straight to the airport, which wasn’t of any interest to us.  Apparently the health ministry doesn’t do any mandatory testing any more, as they now view COVID as that not big a deal.  Apparently it’s just sufficiently a big deal so as to keep us confined to our hotel room, eating nothing but room service for a week.  A more cynical person might conclude that the main thrust of the quarantine rules is to help the finances of the hotels at the expense of the tourists.

We still couldn’t get a straight answer on what food was available to us, and how to order it, which shouldn’t have been such a complicated issue.  While the room was great, and didn’t have all of the unnecessarily complicated hassles of the L’Escale or the Address with regard to lighting, they had made ordering food unnecessarily complicated.  Seriously, just put a menu of all the food that’s available in the room, and/or on a website that is easy to navigate.  Instead, they had us navigating through menus on our TV, then downloading an app, all of which kept leading to the inescapable conclusion that only a limited “room service” menu was available, despite their repeated representations that everything was available.  Meanwhile, it had been 2.5 hours since we first tried to order some food, and we were getting very hangry.  We had eaten basically nothing the day before, just the “sandwich” on the plane and two satay skewers at the hotel.  Just when we thought we’d navigated the obstacle course to get everything ordered, we found out we couldn’t use that form to order things for today, just to pre-order for tomorrow.

Crystal just called and ordered some food, and that worked, thankfully.  We spent the day hanging out, with Justin using the time to work on the trip diary outside (there was a plug) and Crystal using the time to do some work.  She figured if she was going to be gone an extra week - planned or not - she might as well use the week in quarantine to do some work.  Some of the first news she received was that her boss was resigning, so that was a big surprise.  We ordered some Indian food for dinner, and it was good but not great.

The 20th was more of the same.  It was steadily raining in the morning, and we both realized that the boating trip we were slated to take wouldn’t have been very enjoyable…at all.  Justin watched Pearl Harbor - man is that movie awful.  He didn’t feel so great a good chunk of the day, but that was because of drinking the tap water, and he felt better as soon as he reverted to bottled water.  We had checked, and the tap water was supposed to be perfectly fine to drink, but the proof was in the…pudding.  We watched Gone in 60 Seconds, which had an interesting mix of people who went on to bigger and better things, and others whose careers fell off a cliff.  Dinner was pretty good, with Crystal getting some soup and Justin getting a lamb shank.  After dinner The Matrix was on TV - we were surprised it was as old as it is, all the way back to the late 1990s.

The morning of the 21st Justin was able to watch some of the NBA Playoffs live, albeit in French, with the Warriors coming back to beat the Mavericks in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals.  At our 09:00 wellness check, the nurse asked us how we were doing, and after we answered, she laughed and said we were like a mirror - apparently we had both done identical shrugs and said “fine, just passing the time.”  Justin took a COVID test a little after the wellness check, and the test came back negative, which wasn’t really going to have any tangible impact on our circumstances, but was better than it coming back positive again.

But then Rajshree called a little bit later, saying she was coming to the room to test us.  This seemed fairly pointless to us, since the 7 day self-isolation was mandatory, but we weren’t about to argue with the nurse, basically the only person we saw every day.  When she arrived, she mentioned that if we both tested negative on an antigen test, they’d arrange for a rush PCR test, and if that was also negative, we could go around the hotel.  This seemed odd to us, but again we weren’t going to argue.  It ended up being a non-issue, however, as Crystal still tested positive.  The nurse instructed her to take a new test every day in the meantime.  We discussed whether the test results meant a) Justin got COVID first, b) Crystal got a higher viral load, c) Justin’s immune system was working better, or d) all/some/none of the above.

[As an aside, we felt worse in Mauritius, after our positive diagnosis, than we ever did in Seychelles, where we presumably caught it.  How much of that was psychosomatic, since someone told us we were sick, we weren’t sure.  Justin had felt pretty awful on the 12th, a week prior to our arrival on Mauritius, but he felt fine thereafter and had no real symptoms until we arrived on Mauritius, at which point he got an annoying cough that wouldn’t go away.  Crystal had a bit of a scratchy throat when she woke up on the 12th and 13th, but that went away almost immediately after leaving the hotel room, so she chalked it up to the AC unit in our La Digue hotel room.  She, like Justin, had no issues in Praslin - hell, on the 14th we climbed up 1000 feet in the rainforest without batting an eye - but once on Mauritius she also had a persistent cough and a lot of phlegm to boot.  So we weren’t sure if we actually were sick on the 12th, got better, then “relapsed,” if us wearing our (possibly COVID-filled) mask from Seychelles to Mauritius made us worse, or something else.  Also, if we were sick on the 12th, we wondered where/how we contracted COVID, as in the three days prior we’d flown from Socotra to UAE, UAE to Seychelles, and then we’d basically been outdoors the entire time in the Seychelles.  We’ll probably never know.]

For lunch on the 21st we had some food from the Asian restaurant, and we watched the end of an awful (but enjoyable) movie, Into The Storm.  But then the TV cut out right at the very end of the movie, so we didn’t get to even enjoy its awfulness to completion.  Justin spent most of the afternoon outside on the lanai, going through the trip log and the photos, but also paying attention to all the birds that kept landing in the pandanus adjacent to the lanai.  The pandanus had several nests, and multiple types of birds kept landing and singing, and seemingly not caring that Justin was there - unless the singing was yelling to get away.

We had Thai food for dinner, and the management gave us a bottle of champagne for an unstated reason.  We didn’t know if it was because they felt sorry for us, if we extended our stay by 7 nights at considerable profit to them, or if they just thought we were all-around cool people who deserved free booze.  Who’s to say?  The movies tonight were Safe House (Crystal described it as a 45 degree turn from the Bourne Movies) and The Dark Knight (probably one of the top 10 movies of the 2000s).  Thankfully we’d seen The Dark Knight before, as we fell asleep before it finished - perhaps the champagne contributed to that.

Sunday the 22nd was the first sunny morning since our arrival.  Ironically, it was the first morning that we weren’t originally scheduled to be in Mauritius - we were supposed to be on our flight from Dubai to Los Angeles.  Justin was able to see the end of the Miami-Boston rock fight whilst Crystal was able to sleep in a bit.  She remarked her voice sounded more normal, but she didn’t have a ton of energy.  Justin said it was good she didn’t need much energy to just sit in the room all day.  She tested positive once again, and was pretty much over the entire deal.  Justin tried in vain to cheer her up; normally our roles are reversed in this regard.

There was a beach wedding in the afternoon; that was the entertainment for the day.  Crystal spent most of the day on her phone and watching TV; Justin spent most of the day outdoors catching up on the trip log (he finished this task) and going through all the photos (not even close to done).  In the afternoon he figured out how to raise the screen that was impeding our view to the west.  Once done, we doubled the amount of things we could see but not travel to.  But this did come in handy since the sunset was nice and it was now much easier to see.

Monday the 23rd was more of the same.  More basketball in the morning (the Warriors are much easier to cheer for without Durant making things unfair).  More of the same breakfast.  More pouring through the litany of travel photos.  Another positive test for Crystal (although this one took a lot longer to turn positive, so we took that as a good sign).  Both of us felt better, though still not 100%.  Crystal had a Hungarian lesson at 11:00.  Justin had two daiquiris at 11:30 - the Passion Fruit was slightly better than the Mango.  The only new thing we noticed was a crew clearing the fronds off of the building next to ours, presumably so they could put new fronds on top.

It got rainy and windy just after noon, with the weather coming in from the east.  Bernard had told us that Mauritius had southeast trade winds, which makes sense given that Hawaii has northeast trade winds.  But just as soon as the rain came, it went right back to sunshine.  The weather seems very Hawaii-ish in that regard - what you see is what you get.  We hoped that what we see and get for our helicopter ride is the underwater waterfall, unimpeded.  Julian pinged us and let us know he had attempted to schedule that for Wednesday morning, right after we were slated to finish our self-isolation.

We had a sadly not funny game of “Who’s on First?” with the nurse in the afternoon.  We were asking about the Document of Recovery to satisfy the CDC guidelines to be able to fly back to the US.  The US requires either 1) passing a test one day prior to departure OR 2) getting a signed letter indicating that you are fit to fly and have no symptoms of COVID.  We had been asking the nurse about this for a few days, but there was no rush since we had plenty of time.  Today she told us we couldn’t get a letter, but they’d be happy to give us a test.  We told her that if we passed a test, we wouldn’t need the letter.  We told her it was an alternative, in lieu of a test.  She then told us that someone could write a letter saying we were fit to fly if we got a negative test; we again mentioned if we got a negative test, we wouldn’t need a letter.  We seriously went around and around on this about 6-8 times before Justin asked if there was someone else he could speak to, and the nurse said she’d inquire.  She called back about 45 minutes later and we went through the same thing about two more times before Justin short-circuited the conversation and thanked her for her help, but that we’d take it from there.  

In the 45 minutes after the meeting but before the call, we checked online regarding exactly what a letter needed to say, and some of the results that popped up were for telemedicine entities in the US that would provide such a letter - with all the magic words and phrasing - for a small fee after a video chat with a medical professional.  Rather than continue to go in circles with the Health Ministry in Mauritius, or even to have to deal with the health people for even one second more than we had to, we decided just getting a letter taken care of now would be money well-spent, and we wouldn’t have any stress hanging over us on Wednesday through Saturday.  So we scheduled our own respective video chats for the evening, figuring that if there were any issues or follow-up necessary, we could do that on Tuesday.

We ordered some drinks, and when room service showed up they asked if we wanted some food as well - “nope, we’re good, thank you.”  We enjoyed our drinks whilst watching the original Police Academy, which has not aged well at all, but has also held up comedically, if that makes any sense.  Our respective video chats with the medics for the Recovery document were very brief and straightforward and we had our documents within 30 minutes or so.  We celebrated with another round of drinks - they didn’t ask us about the food a second time.

Tuesday the 24th had the best weather of the week, with very few clouds at all; it’s too bad we weren’t free to take the helicopter ride.  We did more of the same - reading, TV, internet browsing, picture browsing (Justin had at least narrowed down our photos to a “first cut” that was still entirely too many), etc.  Julian told us that the helicopter wasn’t available Wednesday morning, but we were scheduled for Thursday morning.  So Wednesday we’d visit a bunch of sites in the southwest, Thursday we’d go on the helicopter tour and then drive up north to the Botanic Garden, Friday we’d go on a boat tour, and Saturday we’d have entirely free for whatever.  For lunch we ordered some Indian food. 

We watched Fracture in the afternoon; it’s interesting how Anthony Hopkins always plays very intelligent characters, and how that indirectly shapes how we view his own personal intelligence.  We also watched The Green Hornet (entertaining if nothing else) and Air Force One (screams 1990s in about every possible way).  The last movie of the night, and of our quarantine, was The Gringo - we didn’t see the beginning, so spent most of what we saw trying to figure out what had happened in the beginning of the movie.  It was quirky and entertaining, but apparently moreso because we hadn’t seen the beginning.  All the reviews indicated that it was predictable, but since we started in the middle, it wasn’t predictable to us at all.