I was recently lucky enough to visit Mauritius and had a blast.

Mauritius is an island country off the coast of East Africa, about four hours from Nairobi.

The island is small and you can drive the circumference in around six hours.

I was here for a badminton tournament so I spent most evenings at the stadium training, but otherwise, I was able to spend most mornings enjoying the beach and exploring.

When I landed I was met at the airport and delivered my rental car. And this will be my first travel tip for Mauritius – rent a car!

I hired my car using DiscoverCars and there are many good vendors to choose from. I chose the cheapest one and it all worked out great.

I had been hesitant because I’ve travelled much of Africa and (for me at least) driving on this continent is a big NO, but Mauritius was totally fine and felt more like driving in small-town Europe. As my trip progressed it became clear I’d made the right choice, as the car allowed me freedom to explore more of the island versus relying on the metro/buses. The roads are good quality and if you’re a comfortable driver back home you shouldn’t have any issues:

The drive from the airport to my accommodation was about an hour – longer than I expected. I chose to stay at the beach in Flic en Flac, and again, it was a great choice and I highly recommend it.

I visited three or four beaches during my trip and Flic en Flac was the best in terms of convenience, restaurants, safety and the beach itself. Several locals I met from the tournament also lived in Flic en Flac.

If you want a recommendation on where to stay in Flic en Flac, I stayed here. It’s a short 3-4 mins walk from the beach and very reasonably priced!

The first few days I spent lounging around the beach and checking out the area. The beach at Flic en Flac is large and stretches for at least half a kilometre and probably more.

There are street food shops all along the beachfront and you can get anything from noodles to ice cream to fresh coconuts for a few dollars.

One of the funny things about Mauritius is when they say “kebab” they actually mean a baguette/sub.

They call their kebabs “wraps” which I guess is normal, but beware that if you order a kebab you’ll actually be getting a sandwich.

Shout out to my friend Lauren at Never Ending Footsteps who posted about this semi-hidden roti stall called Farota aka Vinoda which sells classic Indian rotis for less than a dollar each!

I tried the fish, the chicken and the veg, all were delicious!

I also pumped out a solid amount of kilometres on the roads around Flic en Flac.

If you’re a runner, Flic en Flac is amazing. The streets are straight, flat and empty. You can run either beachfront or around the residential back roads. Both are great.

On my first fully free day, my mission was to knock off some tourist spots.

One popular one is the Chamarel Park which is toward the south of the island. There were a few beaches down that way I wanted to visit too.

It was a long drive from Flic en Flac, so I broke up the trip with a short detour to one of the waterfalls.

The Tamarind Falls are in the centre of the island and looked like a good target. I’m guessing there are a few other viewpoints for these particular falls, but the one I stopped at was underwhelming. If there’s a way to get closer though, they would be quite impressive.

Onto the famous Chamarel Geopark.

It’s quite a drive through long winding hilly roads, but not too hard to find.

It will cost you $12 USD to get in and within the park there’s a waterfall, some turtles, and the well-known Chamarel “7 Coloured Earth” Hills.

The waterfall is the first stop.

It’s a nice enough waterfall. You can’t swim in it, but you snap a photo at a few different viewing decks.

Then you drive down to the coloured sand dunes.

Let me be honest – when I saw the dunesI just thought they looked like piles of dirt on a construction site.

Okay, they’re all different colours but vaguely. Otherwise, you’re literally looking at piles of sand.

It’s supposed to be a showcase of different coloured volcanic sands, and if it was something you saw on the roadside it would be pretty cool, but to build a whole tourist park around it seems kind of OTT.

That’s nothing new in tourist attractions I guess, but it’s my job to be honest so there you go.

I didn’t spend much longer in the park, there’s a few things you can pay extra to see but I had a feeling they weren’t going to be my kind of thing.

Instead, the afternoon was still young so I took a cruise down to two nearby beaches in the south – Le Morne and La Gaulette.

Le Morne is a flashier beach with nice resorts and aimed at higher-end tourists. The beach itself is quite nice (at least the one I saw) but Flic en Flac is definitely better. Le Morne feels kind of far away from everything though, so I wouldn’t like staying down here if your goal is to explore the island.

La Gaulette is a short drive away and is aimed more at backpackers/budget travellers, but I saw some nice-looking restaurants around there too.

I ended up stopping into one for a quick curry and calamari to fuel up.

Is Mauritius cheap? I wouldn’t say cheap, but not expensive either. The above cost me 700 MUR, which is about $14 USD.

I would say that’s average for a budget restaurant. Obviously street food will be cheaper, and nicer restaurants more expensive.

The beach at La Gaulette is not as nice as Le Morne, in fact I wasn’t able to find an actual beach on Google maps.

I did manage to find the water and took this photo from a boat ramp.

Beautiful sunset, but definitely not a place for a day of sunbathing!

After the drive home it was time for a short walk at the beach and some dinner – I got myself a grilled fish on the Flic en Flac waterfront:

Overall, pretty fun day. Again – rent a car! Makes a huge difference in where you can go and what you can see.

My next free afternoon I had just finished training in the middle of the island and wanted something traditional and local.

Google led me to this traditional creole restaurant which was a mission to find (it’s up some winding residential back roads) but once I was inside it was beautiful!

It’s set in a big backyard garden and they serve a set menu of creole dishes.

The first course was fried plantain chips, fried eggplants, chili coconut dip and what seemed to be a bhuja/nut mix.

Next came the main course which was rice, lentils, radish (I think), potato curry, salted fish and cabbage, sausage stew, octopus stew, deer stew, and eggplant dip and chili dip on the side. As you can see – a pretty serious spread!

I’m sure you agree this looks epic, but how did it taste?

A few things were a little too salty, but overall it was great. The waitress explained that there was a specific order to eat things in (I’ve forgotten now) which I followed and I finished everything easily.

Finally, dessert.

It was a papaya jelly, a coconut tart and a cake (almond, I think?), and a shot of local flavoured rum.

Believe me when I say all three desserts were freaking delicious and I could have gone another round easily.

I tasted the rum but didn’t drink it, it was mild and sweet. I’m sure anyone who drinks alcohol would love it.

If you would like to visit this place, it’s called Escale Creole Restaurant. Bill was 1400 MUR ($28 USD) for one.

During my second week in the country, I was finally due to compete in the Mauritius International.

As you can tell I hadn’t been taking my preparation too seriously and had been more preoccupied with my holiday, but when in Mauritius, can you really blame a travel junkie for enjoying himself?

The tournament was at the Cote D’Or Stadium, which is the biggest sports complex on the island.

I lost (badly) in the first round. Not that I expected to go very far, but would have been nice to score more points!

Anyway, had an awesome time training with the Mauritian squad and meeting some athletes from around the world.

Now that I was truly on vacation, I had time to spend a day exploring the town centre!

Port Louis is in the centre northwest of the island, and looks like what you’d expect from a classic island city. Driving into Port Louis is a bit more busy than other parts of the island, obviously, but traffic is well behaved and not too stressful to navigate.

Walking around my first impressions were, in a word – dated.

Everything works, everything is clean and functioning, but there’s a lot of wooden architecture and it has an old, weathered look.

This is the central market, not far from downtown:

Another interesting thing you might not know about Mauritius is the population is more than 50% Indian. This comes through in a lot of the things you see in town. A lot of Indian style shops, Indian restaurants, Indian-inspired food etc.

One of the places I really wanted to see is Chinatown so I headed that way and spent a good hour walking around.

The Chinese population is not that big in Mauritius, so Chinatown is not huge either.

To be honest, there is not much to see there, but it’s cool to wander around and see what an African Chinatown is like.

Of course I needed to eat something, so I stopped into this noodle joint which smelled good and it delivered!

Another interesting observation – in every country I’ve been to where there are Chinese and Indian communities, they still speak to each other in their native languages. So Chinese people in New Zealand or Australia or South Africa speak to each other in Mandarin or Cantonese (not all the time, obviously, but it’s common). In Fiji you’ll always hear the Indian population speaking to each other in Hindi, same as the Indians in Kenya, Canada and so on.

However, in Mauritius, they all speak to each other in French!

The first few days was a surprise seeing Indian and Chinese families conversing with each other in fluent French. Then I met about five or six Chinese Mauritians at the tournament and learned none of them can speak Chinese, they all speak French at home.

I found that really interesting and it’s not something I’ve seen before.

I’m telling you that story because in this particular noodle restaurant, I noticed the owners talking to each other in Mandarin! So I knew the noodles would be on point and authentically Chinese Chinese (and they were)! I could’ve been on the streets of Shanghai and not known the difference. The place is called Soup Queen.

On my final day in the country, I went out for an easy lunch – an octopus salad, Mauritian-style fried rice, and then relaxed in the sand.

This kind of day sums up Mauritius nicely. There’s really not much to do except for eat and sit in the sun. But is that so bad?

I’d say it’s the best thing about the place 🙂

That brought my trip to a close and I was back at the airport the next day to fly out.

Overall, I loved my time in Mauritius and would love to go back. It’s safe, easy to get around, affordable, sunny, developed, and you can even practice your French!

Verdict from me: Rotten Tomatoes 10/10 highly recommended.