What has happened so far...

On 10 January, after a fond farewell at Zurich Airport, we took off for Paris. We left on time at 23:30. After a while the pilot told us that he was turning round again, no, he hadn't forgotten anything, but one of the engines was having problems, so we landed back in Paris at around 01:00, then the docking didn't work and after 20 minutes we were able to get out and were taken to hotels. At 03:30 we fell into bed and on Thursday afternoon we travelled on to Mauritius.

We finally arrived on Friday morning. The immigration formalities went smoothly, we got all our suitcases and stocked up on alcohol in Duty Free. Our new car was delivered to the airport and we were able to make our way to our new home.

Our landlord Tim and his wife Sahra were already waiting for us, and to our astonishment there was still a lot going on in the villa. Well, as it turned out, the previous tenant had handed over the house in poor condition and much too late. So everything could not be put in order as promised. But it's fantastic here and we'll show you the whole house later.

As we had an active cyclone warning, we first had to organise ourselves. So we drove to Birgit and Uwe's, where we parked our things and then went shopping for a few days. The cyclone came and the power went. No problem, we had a generator. It was tested beforehand and worked well, but when it was supposed to run, it didn't work as well. But after a few hours we had power again. A tree had pulled down a power line in our region. There wasn't much going on here, a bit of strong wind and rain, in Port Louis it looked very dramatic, over 400mm of rain fell from the sky in 45 minutes, which logically can't be swallowed up, the cars swam through the streets.

Two days later, cyclone warning again, the storm had actually just formed over us and fortunately moved southwards without causing any damage.

As we had nowhere to go anyway, we first drew up a list of defects, which then became quite long. After the storm, we looked at it with Geraldine, our estate agent, during the inventory takeover and then sent it to our landlord. On Saturday he arrived with a large contingent, electricians, cleaning team and painters were instructed on what to do. The work started and a few days later, everything looked much better.

And then Milaine, our household help, came to help us, so that after just a few hours the rough stuff - the oven is now almost as good as new - was done. We are glad to have her.

Official stuff... We need a residence permit, so we were told that everything was ok and that we should pay the fees, but we couldn't do that. As we were busy in the area anyway, we went to the office. There we were allocated a PC, of course the site went down and the server was probably restarted. And lo and behold, the payment app worked again. Of course, we were then asked if there was anything else that needed to be added to the documents (of course this was not in the instructions). Now we are waiting for the on-site appointment.
We need a confirmation of residence for the pension fund from the Swiss embassy in Pretoria. After 30 days and a fee of CHF 80, we received the requested documents. After the third enquiry, the last one was via Facebook, we also received an answer.

Buying furniture in Mauritius... We didn't want the 50-year-old sofa (it had been reupholstered once), so the gardener got it. We chose something nice in a furniture shop near Port Louis. We had already seen the shop at the Salon de Maison. We were very surprised, we bought and paid in the shop at 10.30am (with our new bank cards, which only worked after we asked our bank advisor again). Now we were amazed that the delivery was made at 2pm even though the shop is 50 kilometres (an hour's drive) away from us.

Internet connection in Mauritius from my.t. Tim supported us and exerted his influence. On Monday we filled in the form and on Wednesday morning the technicians arrived, three of them, to install the router and repeater on the glass connection, and now we have a fast connection to the outside world. We are pleasantly surprised.

Today we're getting a parasol for the seating area, then we're covered for the time being.