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Golden Dust

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Thanks to an excellent privately developed local site at


https://www.mauritius-buses.com/


we have been able to make more sense of Mauritius’ dense bus network.


Yesterday we decided to visit a place near the aptly named Cape Malheureux commemorating a shipwreck which inspired enlightenment writer Bernardin De Saint Pierre to write his immortal ‘Paul et Virginie’.


The first part of our bus journey was on an express bus which meant that for over thirty minutes we were holding on for dear life as a somewhat clapped out Leyland rushed at break neck speed through a countryside of sugar cane plantations and papaya trees.


We reached the town of Goodlands, a very busy shopping centre with a colourful Hindu temple.

Transferring to a more leisurely vehicle we arrived at our destination, the quiet fishing village of Poudre d’Or.


At the end of a promontory stands the monument to one of the most famous shipwrecks in literature.


The ‘Saint Geran’, a ship belonging to the French East India company, was launched in 1736. Her first sailings were from Pondicherry under the command of captain Laurent Dupleyssis. In 1744 with a cargo of food for Mauritius, which was suffering from a terrible drought, she was shipwrecked off the island’s northern coast. Just nine out of her crew of 149 survived.

It was this event that inspired Jaques-Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre, a French civil engineer and botanist living on the island, to write a novel which for many marked the new sensibilities of the romantic movement. In Bernardin’s story the heroine meets her fate by drowning when the ship she is returning on from France is wrecked on the lethal reefs of Mauritius. Could anyone have saved Virginie? The fact is that she could have saved herself if only she had taken off the cumbersome eighteenth century clothes she was wearing but which she kept on out of a sense of modesty. Ah well!


After our visit to the monument’s site, which also holds a much more recent memorial to another drowning, we walked to Poudre d’Or’s local eatery where we tucked into an appetising biryani, just one dish characteristic of an island which, true to its nature as an oceanic crossroad, invites cuisine from Africa, India, China and Europe into a deliciously assorted melting pot of flavours.

Leaving the beach at sunset

we concluded our evening by attending a rumbustious session of the island’s traditional music form, the Sega which incorporates elements from both Africa and India. For long despised by more prudish authorities this lively dance has encapsulated the spirit of the island in much the same way as reggae has done for the West Indies.

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Towards the Black River

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After lunch we continued our island exploration by visiting a rum factory. Until recent times sugar cane was the most important crop on the island and Mauritius rum is reckoned to be some of the best on the planet. First we visited the equipment used in extracting sugar from the cane and the fermentation vats.

Second, we were invited to sample different rum varieties including coconut and vanilla flavoured tipples. The rum works were surrounded by a lovely garden.

We then entered Mauritius’s largest natural park the Black River gorges and forest. This forms part of the Chamarel region, one the most scenic areas of the island. Reaching a viewpoint we spotted the Black River dividing into two spectacular waterfalls known as Alexandra falls.


In the luscious forest surrounding us the trees included tropical pines, palms and baobab. There are several hikes to be made from here. Unfortunately we could only manage a short walk with the time at our disposal but Mauritius is truly a rambler’s paradise.

A section of the forest has been laid bare to reveal an astonishing phenomenon, that of different rocks displaying a variety of colours from blue, through brown to red according to the ferric amount they contain. I’ve seen photos of these rocks revealing much more lively shades than we were able to capture. Is that due to the way the sun’s rays hits them at different times of day I wonder?


Further down was a paddock containing giant Aldabra tortoises. There wasn’t a peep from any of them, not even a twitch from one of if their flippers. Perhaps they were hibernating? I don’t quite think so since, although Mauritius is now entering its winter season, temperatures remain well into the high twenties.


We returned in twilight via Port Louis, the Mauritian capital. Traffic around here was intense even in spite of a stretch of six lane motorway. More practical to solve congestion around the city is the 26 mile long metro light railway, built with help from India, which has recently been inaugurated. It goes to the town of Cure-Pipe which used to be the place where the old steam locomotives would have their boilers cleaned out – hence the name. For until 1960 Mauritius used to have an extensive standard gauge rail system covering the whole island. From that time to 2019 it was bereft of chemins de fer. Now, in common with many other world urban centres, railways are making a comeback.