An island where you do not choose a hotel but a coast — west for sunsets and calm sea, north for nightlife, east for wind, south for kitesurfing
Mauritius is an island where the decision to make before the ticket is the coast: there are four, and each has a different sea, a different wind and a different price. The hotel comes second.
Where the visa is issued at the border, it comes without a fee, against a return ticket, proof of accommodation and a passport valid six months; the stays quoted vary between 30 and 60 days, and in practice you get as long as the booking. No vaccinations are required unless arriving from a yellow fever zone. Mauritius airport (MRU) is 36 km from Port Louis as the crow flies; Turkish connects via Istanbul (the Istanbul–Mauritius leg alone is about nine and a half hours) and Emirates via Dubai.
Each place has its own page — what makes it worth the detour, and how long you need.
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The island is small — sixty kilometres long — but slow to drive, so the coast you sleep on decides the kind of holiday. The west around Flic-en-Flac has calm water, being in the lee of the trade wind, and the sunsets; the north around Grand Baie has the restaurants, bars and trips to the islets; the east around Belle Mare has long sandy beaches and the trade wind that blows from May to October; the south is rocky, with Le Morne and the wind kitesurfers come for. Anyone who wants all of it changes hotel halfway — two coasts in ten days is the commonest plan that genuinely works.
The season is the reverse of the northern hemisphere's, and that brings the price down. November to April is their summer: hot, humid, with cyclones from January to March and the highest prices around New Year. May to October is winter — twenty-two to twenty-five degrees by day, the sea around twenty-three, and hotels a third to a half cheaper. That makes it the better half of the year, not the worse; only the east coast is windy then, so you choose the west.
How it actually was when we were there, and what was worth it.
The west coast of Mauritius has fewer rainy days than the east in every month of the year. The east has its window, and it is not…
Nearly three in four visitors to Mauritius sleep in a hotel. The island beyond the fence works, but by day — the buses stop early in…
A bird that could not fly and had no fear of people, wiped out within a century of the Dutch arriving — the last was seen around 1662. The skeleton in the Natural History Museum in Port Louis is one of the few real ones; most of the world's 'dodos' are reconstructions.
The constitution names no official language. Parliament works in English, the newspapers are French, and the street speaks Creole — French mixed with African and Indian words. A visitor gets by with either of the first two.
After slavery ended in 1835 the British brought workers from India for the sugar estates; their descendants are the majority today. That is why Mauritius is the only African country where Hinduism is the largest religion and Diwali a public holiday.
The mountain in the south-west sheltered slaves who fled the plantations. Legend says that in 1835 they threw themselves off the cliff on seeing soldiers — who were, in fact, coming to tell them slavery had been abolished. World Heritage since 2008.
Cane covers the hills and plains of the whole interior, and the stone piles between fields are volcanic rock that generations of workers carried out by hand. Most of the mills have closed; what remains is rum, and good rum.
The sand dunes at Chamarel have seven colours from the iron and aluminium in the volcanic soil; the colours never mix even in rain, and the soil itself is too poor in nutrients for anything to grow. The whole site is smaller than a football pitch; you look from the path, not walk on it.
This isn't a ranking — it's a route. Any one of these could carry a whole trip.
The national park in the south-western hills, with the island's last rainforest, waterfalls and a viewpoint over the whole south. Trails from an hour to a full day, through rainforest found nowhere else on the island. Go in the morning, before the cloud builds.
The oldest botanical garden in the southern hemisphere, from the 18th century, with giant water lilies two metres across and trees planted by visiting heads of state. An hour from the north coast; two hours to see, and the one cultural outing everybody does.
In the south-east by the airport, a lagoon with the best preserved coral on the island, entered from a public beach. Glass-bottomed boats, and snorkelling without a boat. Done on the first or last day, since the airport is ten minutes away.
A small island six hundred kilometres east, ninety minutes by air, with a lagoon twice the size of the land, no five-star hotels and people who live from fish. This is Mauritius fifty years ago; three days are enough and worth it.
A crater lake in the hills that is sacred to Mauritian Hindus — temples around it and a thirty-three-metre statue of Shiva. In February, for Maha Shivaratri, half a million people walk here. The rest of the year quiet, and free.
The dodo lived only on Mauritius and was gone within about eighty years of people arriving. No complete specimen survives. Everything known about it is assembled from bones and sailors' drawings.
Mauritius speaks Creole, French, English, Hindi and several other languages, often in the same sentence. The constitution names no official language. Parliament works in English by custom rather than by law.
Short answers to what people ask most before setting out.
Where a tourist visa is issued at the border, it comes without a fee, against a return ticket, proof of accommodation and a passport valid six months. The stays quoted vary between 30 and 60 days; in practice you get as long as the booking.
It depends on the month. June to August the west, because the east then has the trade wind and rain every other day; the east pays off from September to November, its driest months — January to April are its wettest and the cyclone season. The north is for people who want restaurants and evenings outside the hotel; the south for kitesurfing and hiking.
No. May to October it is 22–25 degrees by day, the sea around 23, rain is rare and hotels are a third to a half cheaper than around New Year. The only adjustment is choosing the west coast, since the east has the wind.
Keep going — these destinations and stories pair well with this one.
The Serengeti, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar in one country — and three different bills: the safari by the day, the mountain by the night, the island by an insurance paid at the door
A country of long distances and reversed seasons, driven on the left throughout
Two coasts the monsoon never reaches at the same time, and a north seen through smoke in March
The whole of Mauritius fits into one query — six questions and you know which of them suits you.
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All photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and are used under the licence stated beside each one.
