Paradise In Reach

A spontaneous holiday, we booked on 24/12 and flew out 26/12 to Mauritius for 7 nights. We spent the first 4 nights at Le Recif Attitude (http://recif-hotel-mauritius.com/ ) which is a lovely, newly opened, pristine hotel just below Grand Baie. We spent most our time sleeping, reading, sleeping some more and lying on the dreamy beach. We did two scuba dives. We dived a coral reef where we got attacked by a really unhappy trigger fish and we dived a ship wreck. Our hotel was on a coral reef so snorkeling was far more my cup of tea and just as pretty, in only my opinion. My very good friend Gilly bean worked for Club Med in Mauritius so we surprised her one night with a visit. How wonderful for her to be able to live in Mauritius.

After our stay at Le Recif we headed to the South of the Island, near the airport to Le Preskil. This was another super larnie hotel with 400 guests, three bars and restaurants, two pools, to die for food and lots of water sports. We spent 3 nights in complete luxury and loved every minute. We enjoyed a day on a catamaran travelling to Ile aux Cerfs, where we snorkeled and tanned while being fed seafood and drinks. We had fantastic weather and took many deep breaths as we strode through the manicured gardens and paddled out to nearby islands, truly soaking in such beauty.

For New Year’s Eve we had a roaring party and sat on the pier to enjoy the fireworks display at midnight. On our way back to the room we discovered giant-killer-antelope-eating-leather winged-monkey faced-super scary bats!!! The next night we literally stalked the vicious looking things in the fruit trees outside our room to make sure we weren’t seeing things the night before. These bats were HUGE and dive bombed us whenever they saw us. We threw things at them and shrieked like 8 year old girls as we explored the wildlife of the island like the real nature lovers that we are.

Mauritius is beautiful. It is rapidly developing and becoming commercial. It has several economic challenges which the skinny street dogs are testament to so I’d only recommend staying at a hotel. I returned the following year and we hired a house which was far less glamorous with the frequently water cuts and power cuts. Tropical Mauritius offers rich natural beauty and is only a 4 hour flight from South Africa. I can’t wait for my third trip.