Mauritius beyond the resort: the island a sunbed never shows

Mauritius beyond the resort exists and works, but by day: the buses run until early evening, and a day outside the grounds is planned around them. Most guests never find out — by the Statistics Mauritius departure survey, nearly three in four sleep in a hotel, and more than half of those are on a package.

Who leaves the grounds

Of the guests who do not sleep in a hotel, the largest share stays with friends or relatives — one tourist in seven overall; around nine per cent take a villa or an apartment, and a guesthouse barely two. The spending gap is wide: a hotel guest spends nearly six times as much per night on the island as a guest outside one. The second group includes people staying with family, so this is not the difference in a room rate but in the way of travelling. That way is changing: in a single year the share of visitors on a package fell from 62 to 41.5 per cent.

The bus covers the whole island and you pay the conductor in cash, so carry small notes. The limit is not distance but the clock: routes through the villages and along the coast finish early in the evening, town routes a little later. The Metro Express links Port Louis with Curepipe through the plateau towns — Rose Hill, Quatre Bornes and Vacoas. For a day that is enough; for dinner in another town it is not, and the way back is then a taxi.

GuidePort Louis up close?Port Louis →

What you eat outside the hotel

• Dholl puri — a thin flatbread filled with ground yellow split peas, with curry and rougaille.
• Gâteau piment — fried fritters of ground split peas with chilli.
• Mine frit — fried noodles on a Chinese base with Creole spicing.
• Rougaille — a Creole tomato sauce with fish or sausage, over rice.

Day tripsTrips run from the west coast, with timings:Day trips from Flic-en-Flac →