Mauritius

From Jabulani we flew back to JNB (only a one hour flight) - the Kampala reserve entrance is literally opposite the airport so the final transfer took less than half an hour.

We stayed overnight at the Intercontinental then left the following day on Air Mauritius arriving at 7pm (local time, +2 hours from South Africa). Business class on Air Mauritius was fine with FC and an early dinner served. Since it was late we had elected to just stay overnight at the airport Holiday Inn. 

The next morning we picked up our hire car from Penguin Car Hire and drove to the JW Marriott - a 1h30m drive away - along a pretty rugged 2 lane road with lots of cane trucks. The JW is located in the Le Mourne part of the island. It was a beautiful day - warm but very windy.

We were able to check-in early - our ocean front suite was totally amazing - we had a butler (whose role remained a bit of a mystery). There was a complimentary bottle of Jantz waiting for us. After unpacked we had lunch at the Boardwalk Cafe - right on the beach - a shared pizza, a beer and a G&T - about $AUD100. We had previously booked dinner at the same place - F&B prices at Mauritius resorts are sky-high but really similar to Sydney if you avoid red meat (e.g. lamb chops were $75 but my excellent fish of the day was $38).

After lunch we did a resort reco and beach walk - this must be the kite-surfing capital of the world - there were literally 100's of kite-surfers our on the huge lagoon in very strong winds. It was great fun watching them, realising that we were long past such a sport.

Many activities at the resort were complimentary - all water sports even water skiing, as well as yoga, pilates, guided walks, tennis, etc etc. The one paid activity we considered (dolphin watching) was $500 for 2 but it was a private tour - we gave it a miss. We had dinner at the Boathouse - shared salad and fish for both of us - the fish, particularly my fish of the day (snapper) was excellent.

Thursday Sept 26

We did a bit of a roadie up the mountain to an "adventure park" where we saw giant tortoises, coloured sands and the highest waterfall in Mauritius. On our way back to the JW we stopped at a supermarket which was well stocked except for fresh food - all we wanted was some tonic water and chippies for happy hour on our terrace. There was a bit of a mixup with our dinner reservation but we had dinner at the Floating Garden (pan-Asian cuisine) - Dieter's stir fried chicken was not to his liking but my prawns with a curry sauce was very nice. We decided it was not worth a repeat visit.

Friday Sept 27

We spent the day at the resort - complimentary snorkelling trip in the morning - there was very little to see inside the reef - then kite surf watching in the afternoon. We had dinner at the French restaurant and decide it was not worth a repeat visit mainly because the entrees were not at all to our liking.

Saturday Sept 28

We did another roadie up to the mountains and forests of Black River Gorges National Park - it had very little tourist infrastructure and no information - not even a map or a website - it was very interesting as you see the "real Mauritius".

By the time we got back to the JW around 3pm it was too late for lunch so we hung out for an early happy hour around 5pm - G&Ts (using our $12 bottle of gin from the JNB duty free) and some chips from a local supermarket (Kettle, our favourite).

We returned to the Boathouse for dinner stopping at their beach bar for sundowners even though the sun was already down. We asked to have the bill transferred to the restaurant but the drinks never showed up on the bill and our waiter told us to forget about it. Dieter had fish of the day and I had 3 giant grilled prawns.

Sunday  Sept 29

So our last full day at the JW. We pretty much lazed around the resort including a game of tennis. We finished off with another nice dinner at the Boathouse.

Monday Sept 30

We left this morning to drive (1h30m) to our next hotel, The Sofitel at Flic en Flac. The area appeared much more prosperous than the area around Le Mourne - lots of new development going on.  Even though our room was $700 vs $800 at the JW it seemed like we had lobbed off a couple of stars. The whole hotel looked very dated (it was built in the early 90's) and our "renovated" room looked like it had only a bit of a spruce up. Our disappointment was further exacerbated when we were advised their a la carte restaurant was closed for renovations and their main dining room was buffet only; however, they did have  a combined Chinese and a Japanese restaurant. When Dieter told the agent at check-in that we would not have booked here if we had known about the restaurant situation, she said we could do room service. Our 50 sq m room (which seemed much smaller) only had a small coffee table and one chair.

Anyway, we settled in and finally went for dinner at the main restaurant - the buffet was very disappointing (I was ready to move hotels) - and it cost 2200 MRU ($70) pp.

Tuesday Oct 1

Another day - we made the best of our disappointment - we took a private dolphin  watching and snorkelling trip which was very good - even outside the reef there weren't many fish and the coral was dark coloured and hard coral. We had dinner at the Chinese restaurant and were almost the only guests but the service was excellent, the overall experience was excellent compared to the buffet.

Wednesday Oct 2

We did a bit of driving around to the 7 waterfalls - it was a challenging drive as Google Maps clearly does not update its maps in a timely manner - i.e. it led us down a couple of dead-ends and rat-runs. The waterfalls were beautiful as were the surrounding valleys and mountains but there were zero tourist facilities.

Due to lack of options we had the buffet again for dinner - ho hum.

Thursday Oct 3

Last full day at the Sofitel - another resort day - then dinner at the Chinese again.

Friday Oct 4

We packed up and drove (1h20m) to the Lux* Grand Gaube for our final 4 days in Mauritius. We arrived at the Lux* around 11:30am to find it was fully booked and check-in would not be until 2pm - alas our dream run on early check-ins had run out. The place is clearly more upmarket than the Sofitel and had a real vibe about it. They tried to upsell us to the half-board package but after checking the menus at their a la carte restaurants we declined. We had lunch at the Beach Rouge (the beach front restaurant) - shared pizza and a beer and an Aperol Spritz - hit the spot. It had been raining on and off and this continued. At 2pm we got our room - quite lovely on the top (third floor) - with a huge terrace complete with outdoor bath and views over the water front. Since the Lux* is on a peninsula there are really 2 waterfronts. After unpacking we checked out the resort facilities which included 4 mod-grass tennis courts and the usual spa, gym, water sports center, etc.  We had happy hour at the bar at Bodrum Blue (the Turkish restaurant) which is right over the water. We followed this with dinner at Inti (fusion Peruvian cuisine) - the entrees where fine and mains not bad but not great (chicken for Dieter, sea-bass for me) - all in all quite exxy but still less expensive that the buffet (which is included in the half-board).

Saturday Oct 5

The intermittent rain had cleared to a beautiful but windy day. We did a bit of a drive around with the usual Google Maps mis-directions ... we played tennis at 4pm but the high winds did not make for a great game. We finished off with happy hour on our terrace (our $12 bottle of gin was getting to the end) then dinner at Bodrum Blue - very nice.

Sunday Oct 6

We  drove to Flacq about 45 minutes south on the recommendation of Anjali and Gautam (friends of R&R) - but the traffic was so backed up once we got there that we did not stop for long. We took the longer and more scenic road back to the hotel. We played tennis again at 4pm - winds still a factor then happy hour on our terrace (where we polished off the remained of our gin) then dinner at Beach Rouge - the entree (a salad with a fancy name) followed by pasta for Dieter and fish of the day for me - pretty good all in all. 

Monday Oct 7

Last full day at Lux* .... since our fight home was only at 11pm we were able to get a late check-out for about $100 - great value in our opinion. We had arranged to meet Robyn's friends for lunch at Grand Baie (a nice ocean town about 15 minutes drive from our hotel) - we had a pleasant lunch. Back at the hotel we showered and packed up then set-out to drive our hire car to the airport at about 6pm. Thank goodness we left in plenty of time - the one-hour drive took over 2 hours with monsoonal rain, the main road blocked by a major accident, Google sending on a wild goose chase and almost running out of petrol - I was sure we were going to miss our flight. Well did not and had well over an hour to spend in the Air Mauritius lounge which would rate about a 1 out of 10. The flight to Perth was fine - we landed around 9am.