Mauritius Beyond the Beach: A GlobeFoxing Dispatch
Notes on diversity, nature, and modern tourism from an Indian Ocean summer
This is the second installment of a series covering my trip to Mauritius. You can read more about the journey to get there, here.
When faced with the prospect of another dark, cold winter in Northern Europe, combating an array of disease infiltrating our house courtesy of Leo’s daycare, it’s difficult to romanticize a white Christmas.
Over the past two years, we have cheated winter by pivoting from our usual mountain escapes to warmer climes in Spain and Portugal, but one thing was always missing. Despite it being, on average, twenty degrees Celsius warmer and having three extra hours of sunlight a day than in Copenhagen, it was still technically winter and not warm enough for a proper beach vacation.
When planning this year’s holiday, we knew we would finally have to embark on a long journey with our toddler in order to have our cake and eat it too. We considered the Caribbean (too expensive and somewhat volatile at the moment), Thailand (always great, but better to be able to tour it extensively when Leo is a bit older) and East African islands.
I had previously been to the Seychelles, so we chose Mauritius on a whim. Not much research went into it (I probably shouldn’t admit that since it is my job to plan travel in bespoke fashion…). All we knew was we would be traveling to the Southern Hemisphere in the heart of summer, fly for around twelve hours and, finally, swim.
We had no idea what a magical corner of the world we would land in.
Mauritius at a glance
Location & Geography: Island nation in the Indian Ocean, about 800 km (500 miles) east of Madagascar and ~200 km east of Réunion. Total land area is about 2,040 km² (788 sq miles).
Population & Society: Population ~1.24 million. Highly multicultural society: majority Indo-Mauritian, with Creole, Sino-Mauritian and Franco-Mauritian communities. Religiously diverse: Hinduism (47.9%), Christianity (32.3%) and Islam (18.2%) are the main practiced faiths.
Languages: English is the official language of the National Assembly; French is widely used in media and business. Mauritian Creole is the lingua franca most used in daily life.
Many histories, one identity
We disembarked with groggy-eyes following two overnight flights and we were greeted in French by our transfer shuttle to the hotel. This was somewhat perplexing. I understand French and can approximate speaking it — poorly — thanks to my other latin languages, but the little research I had done showed that Mauritius had been a British protectorate from the early 1800s up until it’s independence in 1968.
However, as I later found out, Mauritius has switched hands multiple times and that diverse legacy has endured. The Dutch were the first Europeans to use the island for commercial purposes, primarily to extract the indigenous ebony wood and sugar cane. It was the French, however, that began to settle the island as a colony in the 1700s and instituted French as the operational language. Then, the British seized it as part of the Treaty of Paris, instituted the use of English and, while transitioning away from slavery, brought indentured servants over from India.
As such, Mauritius, despite being such a small and isolated place in the middle of the Indian Ocean, is remarkably diverse. You can hear the mix of ethnicities from Asia, Africa and Europe in the constant switching between languages. As one guide explained to me, “Our school system follows a British curriculum, so our books are in English, but our teacher explains them to us in French and we think in Creole1.”
On one trip around the island, we saw churches across the road from statues of the Hindu goddess Shiva and mosques on the other side.
The cuisine has also benefited from this cultural fusion and offers something for everyone, whether that be a fish curry with prata, spicy lamb biryani, juicy tiger prawns, crepes or beef bourguignon2.
Traveling to Mauritius often felt like being in multiple places at once, but, crucially, everyone I met, regardless of their ancestral or ethnic background, identified as Mauritian and embraced the nation’s diversity as a strength. Whichever way you look at it — whether through their relatively high literacy rate or it being the safest country in Africa — this is a very encouraging case for multiculturalism in a world where the prevailing political rhetoric seems to be turning against it.
Eternal summer
It rained almost every day while we were there. Fairly suboptimal for a beach vacation, right? However, the showers lasted about three minutes before the sky cleared up and the sun was back stronger than ever3.
While touring the island, we were introduced to twenty-one different micro-climates, including one in the center of the island, which tends to be under a permanent cloud.
The tropical climate makes Mauritius a year-round destination, where seasonal temperatures do not fluctuate greatly. Cyclones usually occur between January and February but only bring about three days of heavy rain on average — unlike in the Caribbean, where booking at the wrong time of year can not only upend a vacation but also be downright dangerous4.
Beyond the shoreline
From the sky, the first thing that struck me about the island was how green it is. It is an agglomeration of enchanting dark green peaks surrounded by translucent turquoise water.
It’s always very tempting to admire an island like this as a beach paradise that should be seen with your feet in the sand or on a boat from the water itself, but what sets Mauritius apart is the nature beyond the sea.
Whether that be a dormant volcanic crater, cascading waterfalls in the middle of what seem like unspoiled nature reserves, an ebony forest or a seven-colored earth geopark.
What seemed like unspoiled greenery was not so straightforward. At the time the first European settlers arrived, Mauritius was home to some of the world’s rarest indigenous flora and fauna. Ebony wood forests prevailed5. Due to there being no terrestrial mammals, flightless birds like Dodo (an odd cross between a pigeon and Big Bird from Sesame Street) lived alongside multicolored Geckos.
However, with the introduction of various invasive species throughout the colonial period, most of the indigenous varieties were killed off. The ebony trees were blocked off from sunlight by invasive Chinese Guavas planted by settlers and Dodo went extinct due to a combination of hunting and the introduction of other invasive mammals.
Nowadays, only 2% of the endemic forest remains, but associations like Ebony Forest, which we visited while on the island, are working to reforest and protect the indigenous flora and fauna of Mauritius. Mauritius as a whole is promoting such conservation initiatives as part of their tourism brand, to raise awareness around topics that would otherwise not cross a tourist’s mind, but can build a long-term attachment to the place.
A blueprint for tourism in the 21st century
This idyllic slice of paradise in the Indian Ocean has not always been a tourist destination. In fact, for most of its history, it was very difficult to reach. All of that changed around twenty years after independence when, due to the expiration of EU quota protections for Mauritian sugarcane exports, the economy was forced to diversify.
The government embarked on an ambitious project to build a high-end tourism industry and the corresponding infrastructure from scratch. The first large resorts started to pop up throughout the nineties (initially many French groups but a lot of local players, as well as American chains, have entered since) and a sector that in the beginning brought tens of thousands of tourists, now brings close to 1.3 million per year — a number greater than the population of the island itself.
Counterintuitively, the island does not feel waterlogged with marauding tourists. The tourism sector deployed a very explicit strategy to prioritize high-value, low-impact travel, emphasizing space and promoting eco-tourism — an area they are now at the forefront of.
Aside from the sheer impressiveness of building a robust tourism industry from scratch (10-15% of GDP), it is also an example of how, with the right investment and positioning, over-tourism in other areas can be tackled by promoting the spreading out of tourism. In Europe, for example, the Mauritian case could inspire the EU to address over-tourism concerns in its main destinations like Spain, by investing in accelerating the development of Albanian tourism, providing a win-win for all involved.
Many economies and tourism sectors will have to adapt their approach over the next few decades due to climate change and rising living costs. The Mauritian case showcases a way to square the circle, while tackling some of the primary concerns the twenty-first century has raised about tourism, namely the impact on the environment and local populations.
It goes without saying that I can’t recommend Mauritius enough. I will be providing more details on an upcoming GlobeFoxing piece about the property we stayed at, with a focus on traveling there with young kids.
If you found this piece interesting, then I encourage you to check out the first installment from this journey, where I wrote about the journey to Mauritius from Copenhagen (via Dubai) in-depth with some airport rants sprinkled here and there.
That’s all for this edition! For all of those reading GF for the first time this year: Happy New Year! Thanks for your support and, if you like what you are reading, please share it with your friends and family.
Happy travels,
N.V. Foxes
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Mauritian Creole is a French-based creole with plenty of English influence and was described to me as similar to that spoken in New Orleans and Haiti, half a world away. For example, instead of saying bonjour, they say bonzour.
I wasn’t ambitious enough to eat this in thirty degrees Celsius heat, but Maria did and said it was lovely.
The sun was one of the strongest I’ve ever experienced, stronger than in Costa Rica and rivaling the Australian sun. Missing one spot on my back in the late afternoon sunset on one of our first days resulted in a bad burn patch, in spite of my lounging exclusively in the shade.
I also want to state for the record that I have nothing against the Caribbean. I’ve travelled extensively throughout it (Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Turks & Caicos, USVI, BVI, Riviera Maya, Belize, Guatemala, Jamaica, St. Martin) and Maria and I spent part of our honeymoon in Jamaica. What I’m trying to do with GF, however, is open up the world of travel to alternative spots that you may have otherwise not considered, in an effort to provide unique experiences and to spread tourism out from the usual, overly-trafficked hotspots.
This is the wood that was used for the black keys on your grand piano. They weren’t always painted on.
We spent a full month in Mauritius over Christmas last year, and this tracks so closely with our experience — especially the sense of layered identity and how deliberately the country has shaped tourism instead of being overtaken by it.
What surprised me most was exactly what you name here: how multiculturalism isn’t just visible, it’s owned. Everyone we met identified first as Mauritian, full stop. That confidence felt rare — and quietly hopeful.
Also yes to the rain-that-isn’t-rain and the beyond-the-beach magic. Le Morne still stops me mid-sentence when I think about it.
Beautifully observed piece. It captures the texture, not just the postcard.
💛 Kelly
“Our school system follows a British curriculum, so our books are in English, but our teacher explains them to us in French and we think in Creole.”
This quote is great. It's an excellent example of how multiculturalism finds a way to work.