Mauritius Stopover: A Week Between Cape Town and Melbourne

Mauritius wasn’t originally somewhere we’d planned a trip around. It was somewhere we noticed on the map between Cape Town and Melbourne.

After several weeks of fairly intense travel, breaking up the flight sounded appealing. It also meant visiting another country.

We’re not country counters.

Well, we’re kind of country counters.

We like visiting new countries, but we’re not going somewhere that doesn’t interest us purely to add another number to the list. Mauritius passed the test because it conveniently broke up the journey home and appeared to have very good beaches.

There was only one problem. The flight connections meant we could either spend about two days in Mauritius or an entire week.

You can probably guess which one we chose.

A Week Doing Almost Nothing in Mauritius

The plan for our Mauritius stopover was simple: do nothing.

We’d been travelling for weeks, including an expedition cruise through the South Atlantic, several days in South Africa and considerably more disruption than we’d planned for. By the time we reached Mauritius, we weren’t particularly interested in sightseeing.

We spent our first four nights at SeaSense Boutique Hotel & Spa on the northeastern side of the island. Our room was spacious, overlooked the pool and beach, and was at the end of the property so very quiet.

Our plan was to do absolutely nothings. And we did just that.  We sat in the shade. We walked along the beach. We ate. We slept. That was pretty much it.

We did manage to add a new bird to our life list: a red-whiskered bulbul.

We hadn’t seen one before and assumed it was something reasonably unusual, so naturally we brought out the big camera and took a bunch of photos.

It didn’t take long to realise that bulbuls are everywhere in Mauritius.

Absolutely everywhere.

Driving Across Mauritius to Chamarel

After four nights at SeaSense, we picked up a car and drove across Mauritius to Chalets Chamarel on the southwestern side of the island.

It was a surprisingly pretty drive that took us across much of the island and eventually into the mountains around Chamarel.

This was also where things got slightly confusing.

Wild guava was in season, and locals were out harvesting it. We didn’t know this at the time.

From our perspective, people simply kept stopping their cars in the middle of the road, getting out and disappearing into the bushes.

It seemed weird.

 

Once we worked out what was happening, it made considerably more sense. Until then, navigating narrow mountain roads around mysteriously abandoned cars made the drive a little more interesting than expected.

Staying at Chalets Chamarel

Chalets Chamarel sits high in the mountains, almost on a saddle between two completely different landscapes.

On one side, we could look across toward the Indian Ocean and Le Morne Brabant. On the other were rolling green hills stretching across the interior of Mauritius.

Our chalet was huge, and once again we settled very quickly into doing almost nothing.

We actually slept in. Breakfast was late and served beside the pool. Dinner was served there as well.

There were more bulbuls, naturally.

Then at dusk, hundreds of bats appeared overhead.

And the sunsets here were 🧑‍🍳

Exploring Southwest Mauritius

We did eventually manage to leave Chalets Chamarel for a drive around the surrounding area.

But sightseeing wasn’t really the point of this particular week.

Mauritius had started as a convenient way to break up the long journey between Cape Town and Melbourne. Instead of spending two rushed days trying to see as much of the island as possible, we’d given ourselves a week and then deliberately done very little with it.

Four nights beside the beach. Three nights in the mountains. A couple of drives. A new bird that turned out not to be remotely difficult to find.

After the trip we’d just had, it was exactly what we needed.