Mauritius is one of those places I’ve always wanted to visit. It has not disappointed.

Nothin’ but photos of this beautiful island. One after another after another. Enjoy.

(Note: Mauritius also rhymes with pernicious, seditious, and suspicious, but those words fall a bit short in the tone-setting department.)

There are two phrases that reference dodos. Well, maybe there are more, but I’m only aware of two.

The first is “dumb as a dodo,” which indicates extreme stupidity, and the other is “Going the way of the dodo,” which means “to disappear or to go extinct.” The two sayings go hand-in-hand.

But do you know what a dodo is? Or, more accurately, was?

It’s an extinct flightless bird that was found on Mauritius, but nowhere else in the world.

It was a big bird — 3 feet tall and probably weighed nearly 40 pounds. Scientists think it had brownish-grey feathers, yellow feet, a tuft of tail feathers, a grey, naked head, and a black, yellow, and green beak.

But what about those dodo sayings?

Early sailors said dodos were fat and clumsy, and since they had no natural predators on Mauritius, they had no fear of these famished Europeans roaming their beaches. As a result, the naive dodos would walk right up to the sailors, who took the opportunity to club the trusting birds over the head to secure dinner for themselves and their shipmates. The sailors, probably no geniuses themselves, looked at the dodos’ repeated trusting behavior and said “These birds certainly aren’t very bright, are they?” Hence, the phrase “dumb as a dodo.”

The first European sighting of the dodo was in 1598. Far as they can tell, so many sailors clubbed so many dodos over the head that they were extinct by 1662. That gave the innocent Indian Ocean avian the unenviable title of first species whose extinction can be laid directly at the feet of humans. Hence, the phrase “going the way of the dodo.”

Rest assured, however, that the extinct dodo lives on in Mauritius in the form of carved, cast, printed, and embroidered namesakes created to separate tourists from their rupees.

I’ve been alternating between wearing two caps on this trip. One, given to me by my neighbor Doug, says “San Jacinto, Texas 1836.” That’s where and when the state was founded. The other, which I bought for myself, is embroidered with the shape of the state.

I just realized that when people ask where we’re from, I no longer say the United States. Nope, I now say, “Texas.”

That inspires one of two responses: (1) “Cowboys!” or (2) A wrinkled nose and an “Eeeeew” sound.

For those who have given us the second response, here’s the Texas National Anthem:

Jamie and I went to see Ray Wylie Hubbard at a small venue in the heart of Dallas about a month before we left on this trip. He closed the show with this song and he didn’t really have to sing it because the entire sell-out crowd sang it for him.

I would jump up on my soapbox and tell you how completely unwarranted and grossly unfair Jamie’s comment is except for one thing. It’s true.

Unfortunately, my DNA is inescapable. There’s not a damn thing I can do about my pink, freckled, unsexy Dutch epidermis. I call it The Dutch Disease.

Mike Myers captured the problem perfectly with the Dutch villain in his 2002 comedy Goldmember. It’s my dermatologist’s favorite movie. I think he’s buying a ski chalet in Aspen with the money he’s made cutting and freezing pre-cancerous spots off various parts of my anatomy. (YouTube removed the original video, so I have no choice but to use this odd video that compares Goldmember to the Pope. Sorry.)

If it weren’t for freckles and precancerous spots, I wouldn’t have had any color at all.

This subject is only worth mentioning because we took a walk through the jungle today, and despite the fact that I was under a thick green canopy all day, my face now looks like Jamie warmed it up in a frying pan.

Sigh. The Dutch Disease, indeed.

I admit it (kind of proudly). Before I met Jamie I was a bit of a womanizer. I used to say that I wanted my epitaph to read:

“A leader of men, a chaser of women.”

I had gone out with some wacky, wonderful women before Jamie but I thought each of them had fatal flaws. To be fair, a number of them may have been under the mistaken impression that I also had a fatal flaw or two. However, if any of them had thought that, it would have exposed yet another of their fatal flaws. A Catch 22, to be sure.

Many of you reading this know the story of how Jamie and I met, but I love the story and never tire of telling it. (In order not to be thought of as having a fatal flaw, Jamie merely smiles in a wooden, Stepford Wives kind of way each time I tell it and pretends she still enjoys it.)

So at the risk of boring good friends, here is the story of how Jamie and I met:

I am a fanatic about my teeth. I get them cleaned every three months. I was always scheduled with the same hygienist, Denise, and during each teeth cleaning session she never failed to ask about my dates for the last three months. She always got in trouble with the dentist because we laughed so much and so loudly and had such a good time.

After each cleaning I’d go to the front desk, pay whatever money was due, and schedule my next appointment. I never paid much attention to who I was paying.

Then one quarter I sat down across the table from this incredibly beautiful woman. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I must have her, I thought.

“Are you new here?” I asked.

“No, Mr. deYong,” she replied. “You’ve been paying me every three months for the last four years.

Impossible, I thought. I could not have overlooked this incredible beauty for four years. Just not possible.

I found out that the stunning woman’s name was Jamie.

UPDATE: In my defense, Jamie’s appearance had undergone a huge change. She had switched her hair color from blonde back to its natural brown, had lost fifty pounds, and perhaps most significantly, had left her husband and was no longer wearing a wedding ring. 

I went home determined to ask her out. But how? I couldn’t just walk back into the dentist’s office and bluntly ask. She surely had a list of suitors a mile long and I reasoned that if I waited for my next appointment — three long months away — she would be swept away by one of the Newport Beach dental practice’s numerous wealthy patients.

Then my excuse arrived in the mail — my dental insurance statement. One of the many idiosyncrasies I got from my father is that I hate to owe money. So I ripped open the insurance envelope and discovered that my insurance company had paid every cent I owed my dentist. But I’m a creative guy and I figured I could use this insurance as an excuse to go back into the dental office.

After a few days, I worked up my courage and walked into the dentist’s office. There was Jamie, the object of my desire, sitting at the front desk with Denise, my hygienist, deep in conversation.

Of course, I was not about to ask her out in front of her friend. Getting rejected is bad enough. Getting rejected in front of someone else would have been even more painful.

So when Jamie said, “How can I help you, Mr. deYong,” I said, “Well, I hate owing money and I haven’t received anything from my dental insurance, so I just wanted to make sure my payments are up to date.”

Jamie looked me up in the computer and said, “No, sir. You’re all paid up.”

We did a little small talk for a few seconds and then I realized it was time for me to go because I had no excuse to stay and Denise did not look as if she was going to leave the front office. So I left.

But I stood down the hall at the door to the elevator and thought, No way. I’m here and I’m not leaving without asking her out. So I waited a few minutes, assuming that Denise would soon go back to work and I would be able to ask Jamie out without a witness.

Tick-tick-tick. A few minutes passed, enough that I felt safe, and I walked back into the dental office.

That damn Denise was still sitting there gabbing away. Why the woman wasn’t cleaning someone’s teeth and generating some income for her employer is a mystery to me. She was clearly a slacker intent on ruining my life. Or at least my weekend.

They looked at me and Jamie said, “How can I help you now, Mr. deYong?”

I had not planned on this so I didn’t really have an answer.

“Uhhhhhh,” I cleverly remarked. “Do you validate parking?”

Jamie stamped my parking ticket and I left the office and walked back down to the elevator.

But I am not a quitter. I stood there at the elevator getting my nerve back up. After giving that damn Denise plenty of time to go back to work, I walked back into the dental office again.

She was still there gabbing with Jamie as if it were part of her job and she’d get in trouble for not doing it to the best of her ability.

Neither Jamie nor I remember what excuse I came up with this time, but once again I left without asking her out.

I ended up going into that office four times and leaving without asking four times. And I lay my failure at the feet of that damn Denise and her unwillingness to do the job for which her employer was paying her a pretty penny. Had she been my employee, her slothfulness would have been grounds for immediate termination.

Well, it turns out that as soon as I walked out of the office the first time, Denise turned to Jamie and said, “I think he’s here to ask you out.”

“Oh, no,” Jamie replied. “Mr deYong wouldn’t ask me out.”

Needless to say, each time I returned Denise became more insistent that my purpose was to ask Jamie out.

That being the case, one would have thought she could have excused herself to make the process easier for me. But no, she seemed to take great delight in extending my torture.

It gets worse.

After my fourth unsuccessful visit to the dental office, I went home. I thought, No, this is stupid. Call the dental office and ask Jamie out over the phone. At least that damn Denise will be out of the loop.

So I called.

“Hi, Jamie. This is Jim. I was just wondering if you’d like to go to lunch on Friday.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally Jamie blurted out, “I’ll have to ask Denise if it’s ok.”

Denise again.

Damn that woman. Damn her to hell. Must she interfere again?

Let’s bring this novel to its long overdue conclusion.

Jamie called me back and said, “I can’t go to lunch, but I could go to dinner.”

We went to dinner. We both say it was the best first date we’d ever had. That was 22 years ago tonight. And I have yet to find a fatal flaw in the woman. She’s perfect.

Oh, by the way, there was a very logical reason that she had to ask Denise if she could go to lunch with me. Turns out the dental practice was closed every Friday afternoon. Jamie and Denise had just started a little business on the side and had made a commitment to each other to work on that business every Friday afternoon. Coincidentally, I had asked her to go to lunch on a Friday. She didn’t want to go back on her word to Denise, so she said, “I’ll have to ask Denise if it’s ok.”

And the rest is history.

Oh, by the way, five years later Denise was Jamie’s matron of honor at our wedding.

Love you, ‘Nisey.

I’ve taken some bad flights in my time. Some really bad flights.

I was once seated next to a morbidly obese mother whose gelatinous girth overflowed into my seat. As if that weren’t bad enough, she had a colicky baby that cried all the way from LAX to Fiji. (Considerable evidence existed to support the theory that the baby was not the only one in the family with digestive issues.)

On another flight I sat next to a sick businessman who fell asleep on my shoulder, drooled on me, and then, just for good measure, repeatedly coughed a deep, phlegmy cough all the way from San Jose to Los Angeles. The flight was non-stop and so was my fear of tuberculosis.

There have been others, but who am I to complain when Jamie and I just experienced the best flight in the history of aviation thanks to Air Mauritius. Our flight from Antananarivo, Madagascar to this paradise in the Indian Ocean was truly unbelievable.

How? Let me count the ways:

1. They unexpectedly upgraded us to first class. Jamie was in seat 1A and I was in seat 1B.

2. There were 36 seats in first class, but only three passengers — Jamie, me, and a Mauritian businessman who was seated on the other side of the plane. There were four flight attendants in First Class, which means we had more than one flight attendant per passenger. Of course, that presented us with certain serious conundrums. Who should I ask to top off my fresh-squeezed orange juice — Arianne or Joel? Who should bring Jamie another champagne — Sanjog or Kentish? Could I ask one to fluff my pillow without offending the others?

3. After we took off, Arianne told us she had a special Mauritian treat for us. Next thing we knew she was pouring us each a glass of vanilla rum distilled only on Mauritius. (As you know, I’m not much of a drinker, but this was the best alcohol I’ve had since the infamous “Three Amigos & the Crimean Cognac” incident aboard the Russian train.)

4. I’ve saved the best for last. Air Mauritius announced that our flight was boarding 30 minutes ahead of schedule. As soon as all the passengers were aboard, the plane backed away from the terminal and we took off. Let me repeat: We took off 30 minutes early. Seriously. I’ve probably taken a thousand flights in my life and NEVER had one leave early.

Best of all, this wonderful flight took us from the third world hellhole of Madagascar to the Indian Ocean paradise of Mauritius.

That alone would have made it qualify as the best flight ever. The other stuff was just icing on the cake.

One more post about poverty, then we’ll move on to more pleasant topics. I promise.

I used to work with an Indian art director named Sudhir. We became good friends and he eventually revealed to me that he came from a wealthy Indian family. Not just your run of the mill wealthy. No, we’re talking about extreme wealth.

I once asked Sudhir why he worked a middle class job in Los Angeles instead of going home and leading a life of incredible luxury. His answer surprised me.

“I would rather be a middle class American than a wealthy Indian.”

That answer made no sense to me, so I asked him to explain.

“My parents beg me to come home,” he told me. “They say, ‘If you come home we will put you in charge of the steel mill or you can run the rubber plantation.’ But I cannot stand to see the horrible poverty in my own country. We live in a compound, but you cannot stay in the compound forever. As soon as the gates open and the Rolls Royce pulls out, it is overwhelmed by beggars who live just outside the gates. I cannot stand to see it. But even if we gave away all our money, the country is so poor that it would still be filled with beggars.”

So Sudhir immigrated to the United States and became a middle class American.

I don’t think I ever comprehended what his story meant until we visited Madagascar.

Some stories to demonstrate:

The shuttle: We shared the shuttle from our hotel to the Antananarivo airport with a very funny, but very frazzled Aussie woman. She has been in Madagascar for 27 days and was just plain done with the inescapable poverty and difficulty of travel in the third world. She described Madagascar as “nothing but airplanes and potholes.” Perhaps, but we would respectfully add the words “corruption and chaos.” More about that later.

The chaos inside the airport: We’ve never seen anything like the chaos when we arrived at the Antananarivo airport. Instead of applying for entry visas before you arrive in Madagascar, you apply for them after you arrive at the airport. In theory, that sounds like a simple concept. In reality, you are required to stop at four different booths with no signage — none in Malagasy and certainly none in English — and get your paperwork stamped by four different bureaucrats before you were allowed to exit the airport. There also seemed to be some very flexible prices charged for the aforementioned visas. And to top it all off, they only take cash, no credit cards. Of course, none of the foreign visitors have any Madagascar currency because the ATMs and bank booths are on the outside of the terminal, on the other side of security. The result is that hundreds of newly arrived tourists are all milling around and standing in what they hope is the right line. The whole thing looks like a scene out of The Year of Living Dangerously or The Killing Fields. In the end, getting out of the airport was a 90-minute ordeal.

The chaos outside the airport: Just as you get your visa and walk through the security gate and start to think, Wow, that was crazy, you get slapped up the side of the head with a new dose of crazy. Guys wearing official-looking yellow vests take your suitcases. This seems legit, you think, until they walk out the door of the terminal and hand your bags over to a beggar. No, that’s an inadequate description. A horde of beggars descend on your suitcase, all vying to carry it, roll it, move it somehow toward an awaiting taxi. Then they all want to be tipped. We tipped a bunch of them, but one who didn’t get tipped knocked on Jamie’s window and said, “But I touched your suitcase.” He didn’t carry it. He didn’t roll it. He didn’t do anything except touch it.

Don’t hold your iPhone near the window: I told this one earlier, but the it’s worth repeating. We were in a taxi going from the airport to our hotel. The pothole-filled streets of Antananarivo were packed — absolutely packed — with bicycles, pedestrians, tuk tuks, dogs, and assorted and sundry others. As our taxi wended its way down the street, our driver continually honked to warn everyone and everything to move aside and let us through. It was a warm day, so I had my window down and pulled out my iPhone to check something. The driver immediately warned me not to hold it near the window — because someone would surely reach in and snatch it out of my hand.

The shoe store: Shoe stores in Antananarivo and elsewhere sell used shoes. Perhaps I should say they sell used shoe, because they sell one at a time. Yes, that’s what I said — they sell individual used shoes.

You won’t believe what he did to the ox: On our drive between the Isalo Rock Resort and the Tuliara airport, we had to stop when we came upon an oxen-drawn cart stopped in front of us in the middle of a one-lane bridge. One ox’s hooves were slick, making the pavement very slippery for the poor beast. Its legs were splaying dangerously and it refused to move out of fear that it would fall. The two young drovers were beating it unmercifully with sticks the size of broom handles, but the beast refused to budge. Finally, one of the frustrated young men reached down, grabbed the poor animal’s tail, lifted it toward his mouth and bit down as hard as he could. The startled ox jumped as if…well…as if his tail had been bitten. He jumped forward, pulling the cart across the bridge. To repeat: the kid bit the ox’s tale. I grew up on a dairy farm and I know for a fact what is usually found on a bovine’s tail. As a result, I wouldn’t bite one if you paid me.

Bribery is a way of life: A couple decades ago it came out that some big American company was found to have landed foreign contracts by bribing foreign officials. Of course, the liars and frauds in Congress were horrified by this incomprehensible concept (probably because they had not been the recipients of the company’s largesse). They held hearings where they were allowed to huff and puff and display their unquestioned ethics in front of the TV cameras for the consumption of the rubes back home. American companies doing business overseas were dumbfounded. “This is how business is done overseas,” they insisted. “It may not be the way things are done in the United States, but it’s how they’re done in foreign countries.” Their betters in Congress feigned horror and passed a law forbidding American companies to bribe foreign officials in order to land contracts. Well, let me tell you that Congress was full of the same stuff that was probably on that ox’s tail. Everyone bribes everyone in Madagascar. Want to park your car in that parking lot? Bribe the attendant. Want to move quickly through the police inspection roadblock. Bribe the cop. I am not exaggerating. I have seen small bills folded up and surreptitiously slipped from one hand to another more times than I can count. It’s so common that it’s just assumed.

Put it all together and I suddenly understand what my friend Sudhir was talking about.

On the other hand, his family had a Rolls Royce. (Nah, just kidding.)

A happy little girl dancing in the dirt with her duck.

A boy sharing his chameleon with Jamie. Nothing’s free out here, so the cost of sharing was 5000 Malagasy Ariaries.

No matter where we go, kids are always drawn to Jamie. And vice versa.

Yes, the Avenue of Baobabs is beautiful. But right next to that beauty lies incredible ugliness in the form of poverty. You really need to shoot your baobab photos at just the right angle to avoid coming face to face with it. A change in perspective gives you…well…a real change in perspective.

Jamie took some shots that show you exactly what I mean.

Yes, there’s a small village of mud huts adjacent to the baobabs. It may be possible to be poorer, but I can’t imagine what form that would take.

Little girls are little girls no matter how rich or poor they may be. It doesn’t take any money to draw a hopscotch grid in the dirt and have a ball. She probably doesn’t think there’s anything unusual about living in a hut made of mud and sticks.

We were stopped to take a photo of a lone baobab when this procession passed our taxi.

Note the little boy sitting atop the cart. He’s keeping a wary eye on us as they approach AND as they move away from us. “Who are these strange people and why are they taking our photos?”

If I were to land the Morondava Tourism Bureau’s advertising account the first thing I would do is convince them to change the name of this attraction from “Avenue of Baobabs” to the much more alliterative “Boulevard of Baobabs.”

Other than that, I wouldn’t change a thing. For once, the internet didn’t lie. These trees are spectacular and the difficulty in getting here was well worth it.

As you drive toward the the Avenue of Baobabs, you see one of these hundred foot oddities dotted here and there on the horizon. There’s no reason to suspect that you’ll suddenly come upon twenty-five of them jutting up in a group from the surrounding rice paddies and meadows.

A tree doesn’t get this big overnight. Scientists believe they may be around 800 years old.

The locals call the Avenue of Baobabs “Renala,” which is Malagasy for “Mother of the Forest.” Sadly, they are all that remains of the dense tropical forests that once spread across the entire nation.

These baobabs didn’t originally stand in isolation, but as the number of people increased and forests were cleared for agriculture, the number baobabs decreased.