Bonjour from Mauritius!

Hello Mrs. Simpson's class!

A couple days ago I spent the day in Mauritius! Do you remember where Mauritius is on the map? It's a very small island east of Madagascar. It is a very beautiful place, but unfortunately when the MV Explorer was there, it was raining! It rained all day but my friends and I didn't let that stop us from having lots of fun. Below is what the island looked like right before it started raining.



To get out of the pouring rain, we visited the Natural History Museum. Something very special about Mauritius is that it is the only place in the world where the dodo bird used to live before they became extinct. Because they had no natural predators on the island, the dodos became a fat, flightless bird! When Europeans landed on the island, they were very hungry from having spent months at sea, and it was very easy for them to hunt these birds.



This is what scientists think the bird looked like. It is actually quite big, about a metre tall. At the museum there was a complete skeleton. There are only a couple other museums around the world that have dodo skeletons.



Unfortunately, by 1700, less than eighty years after Europeans had first seen a dodo bird, it was extinct. This is partially because humans ate them, but also because Europeans brought animals, such as rats and monkeys, to Mauritius that ate the dodo bird eggs. Later, humans would realize that the dodo bird demonstrates how we can destroy the natural world if we're not careful. We have to work hard to preserve nature and it's inhabitants.



After the museum, my friends and I wanted to go swimming, even though it was raining! The Indian Ocean was a turquoise colour and was very warm.

Something interesting about Mauritius is that everyone speaks French! This is because, like Canada, Mauritius was once a French colony. I wish I remembered more French from when I was in school, it would have been very helpful.

Wow, you have so many questions! I'll do my best to answer them soon.