Mauritius guide
Exuberantly Creole
Mauritius is the sugar-cane island of the Indian Ocean. Fields of cane cultivation, broken only by small villages, stretch over a wide plateau above the tropical white sand beaches, breezy bays and glorious seascapes.It was also the island of the dodo, a large, flightless bird whose good-natured simplicity resulted in the poor creature's total extinction.The island forms part of the Mascarene Archipelago, all that remains of an ancient land mass which once united Asia and Africa. To the southwest lies Reunion Island, with its savagely beautiful volcanic landscape, while some 560 km (350 miles) east appears Rodrigues Island, a mere dot in the ocean, surrounded by even smaller islets and reefs, and an integral part of Mauritius.
Small as Mauritius is, covering only 1,865 sq km (720 sq miles), it is one of the most densely populated places in the world and supports some 1 million people, most of them descendants of Indians brought in to work the sugar plantations after the abolition of slavery. There's also a large Chinese community and a number of Creoles, descended from French colonists. Africans and Malagasy add to the mixture of races and religions, one happy result being that there's nearly always a festival going on in one of the great variety of Hindu or Chinese temples, mosques or Christian churches.
On the jittery world market of today sugar is an uneasy staple commodity. Increasing tourism partially helps to counteract unemployment and low incomes: a good airport, magical beaches and the flowery loveliness of the resorts beckon visitors in ever greater numbers. Inland, mountains rise in lonely splendour and you may glimpse a Java deer vanishing into the bushes. Bamboo thickets, lagoons, plunging waterfalls and delicately pretty Creole buildings are all part of the Mauritian scene.
On this island the French writer, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, some 200 years ago, set his idyllic and tragic romance of two love-struck adolescents in Paul et Virginie, a novel that helped usher in the Romantic movement. Mauritius knew its most glittering moments in the middle years of the 19th century. Joseph Conrad and Mark Twain both dropped by at different times. Baudelaire visited for three weeks, and wrote of a port filled with masts and sails and air haunted by the scent of green tamarinds. Darwin, naturally, couldn't resist this naturalist's paradise, and the HMS Beagle put in here on her famous voyage. Seen from grey, drizzly Europe, it appeared like a dream of rare flowers, foaming cascades, airy colonial houses and balmy days.
Independent since 1968, Mauritius is hard at work now keeping down its population growth and pushing up its income. The friendly inhabitants of all the rainbow of races will confide their problems but will also express their optimism in the progress being achieved by their welcoming, Indian Ocean homeland. For Mauritius has a fascinating past, an inviting present and a rosy future.
