When our trip to Australia didn’t work out, we had to pivot and made a last minute decision to visit Mauritius instead.
That ended up being a great choice as we spent two wonderful weeks there. If you’re not familiar with Mauritius, it’s an African country which is an island in the Indian Ocean.
You can read more about Mauritius here where I shared more about its history and our thoughts on the country. In this post though, I wanted to share 20 fun and interesting things to do in Mauritius which are all things we did there ourselves. There are also several bonus ideas at the end for activities that came recommended by other people but which we didn’t have a chance to do.
To give you an idea of where all these activities are in Mauritius, I’ve pinned them all on Google Maps which you can find below. All the blue pins are the things we did ourselves and can recommend, while the yellow pins are the additional recommendations we received that we didn’t get a chance to check out.
1) L’Aventure du Sucre
L’Aventure du Sucre is one of the top-rated activities on the island and it’s not hard to see why. For many years, sugar cane was the country’s key industry; it’s still an important part of their economy, but tourism now generates more income.
L’Aventure du Sucre is a museum housed in a former sugar factory that tells the history of sugar in Mauritius. It’s a fascinating museum – I had no clue there was so much you could learn about the sweet stuff!
Once you’ve finished exploring the museum, the fun doesn’t end. A decent amount of the sugar grown in Mauritius is used to create rum and the museum offers a rum tasting as part of the ticket price. The rums we tried were very good, with Lazy Dodo rum being my favorite.
2) Rhumerie de Chamarel Restaurant & Rum Distillery
L’Aventure du Sucre isn’t the only place where you can try out the island’s rum. While staying at the Hilton Mauritius Resort & Spa, we booked a taxi to take us to a number of nearby attractions, one of which was Rhumerie de Chamarel – a rum distillery where you take a guided tour of the facility and try several of their rums.
After trying out the seven rums that are included as part of the tour, they offered the option to pay a little extra to try up to six or seven more of their premium rums. You can pick and choose which ones you want to try, but seeing as we had a designated driver Shae and I both decided to try all of the additional rums! That included small batch rums, an 8 year rum, rum finished in different barrels – whiskey, port or sherry, etc – and more. They all tasted very good and was worth paying the extra for.
3) Black River Gorges National Park
Black River Gorges National Park is one of three National Parks in Mauritius and is the largest of the three. The park has 60 miles of trails, although we didn’t have a chance to do any hiking there. On one of our excursion days where we visited several attractions, we stopped at one of the overlooks at Black River Gorges National Park to see its beauty from above.
We also spent a few minutes hanging out in the parking lot to watch all the monkeys there.
4) Chamarel Waterfall
After visiting the rum distillery in Chamarel, we continued on to a nearby waterfall. Chamarel waterfall has a bedrock made from two separate lava flows as a result of Mauritius’s volcanic past. With water falling more than 300 feet, it’s the highest waterfall in Mauritius.
5) Chamarel Seven Colored Earth
Another nearby attraction is Chamarel Seven Colored Earth. As the name suggests, it’s an area that contains earth that has seven different colors. It had been raining on the day we visited and so the colors didn’t seem to be as vivid as they might normally be, but there was still clear differentiations in color.
6) Chamarel View Point
With all these other attractions in Chamarel, it’s also worth stopping at Chamarel View Point as that gives some nice views of the ocean on the west side of Mauritius, including the small island of Ile aux Benitiers.
7) Grand Bassin Temple
Despite being an African country, two-thirds of the population of Mauritius have Indian heritage. As a result, almost half the country’s religion is Hinduism.
At about 1,800 feet above sea level is a crater lake called Ganga Talao which is also known as Grand Bassin. This is home to the Grand Bassin Temple which is an important location for Hindus, so much so that many people make a pilgrimage there.
Outside the temple are a couple of giant statues. One is of Lord Shiva and stands 108 feet tall.
The other statue is of Durga Mata.
8) Snorkeling
Mauritius is a great place to go snorkeling due to all the marine life and coral reefs around the island. Many beachside hotels will provide snorkel equipment for free as part of your stay, but if they don’t – or if you’re not staying at a hotel – you can rent or buy snorkel equipment.
We went snorkeling a few times; one time when Shae was out by herself there was a triggerfish who was very territorial and nipped her on the knee!
9) Swimming With Sea Turtles (Trou-aux-Biches, But Elsewhere Too)
This entry could in theory have been included in the snorkeling section above, but I feel like it needs its own mention as it was such a special experience.
Shae and I booked this excursion on Viator (our affiliate link) which included some time swimming with sea turtles at Trou-aux-Biches. We were a little concerned that the weather that day would be too bad to be able to swim with them, but it held out and we had an amazing time. There was only one sea turtle that day, but it was an incredible experience nonetheless. He was much larger than I’d been anticipating and while we were careful not to swim too close to him so as not to scare him, he swam towards us so closely several times that we thought he was going to swim into us!
Here’s a video Shae put together of the experience.
10) Panorama Citadel
Above Port Louis, the capital city of Mauritius, there’s an overlook giving some great views of the city.
11) Fort Adelaide
Right next to that overlook is Fort Adelaide, a citadel constructed with basalt blocks that were hand cut. It was built from 1834-1840 and could hold 200 soldiers, although it never ended up needing to be used in battle.
It’s free to visit Fort Adelaide, so it’s worth having a quick exploration as you can walk around its ramparts.
12) The Red Church (Notre Dame Auxiliatrice Chapel)
An iconic spot in Mauritius is Notre Dame Auxiliatrice Chapel which is known more colloquially as The Red Church for obvious reasons. It’s in Cap Malheureux on the northernmost part of the island and has a beautiful backdrop.
It’s still used as a church and so you can get married here if you’re considering a destination wedding.
I loved the altar in the church as it’s been constructed using a couple of large pieces of volcanic rock from Mauritius.
13) Kuan Fu Tea Factory Shop
One of our excursion days included a stop at Kuan Fu Tea Factory Shop to go tea tasting. The building itself is a bit nondescript, but it’s prettier inside. The tea tasting was complimentary and included all kinds of claims about the health benefits of their tea which on TV in the US would likely have a disclaimer that “These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA”. 😉
I like tea, but normally only English breakfast tea with milk and a couple of Splenda, while Shae hates tea. She was a good sport and tried it anyway and didn’t think it was bad which is in fact high praise from her when it comes to tea. I wasn’t a fan of their green tea, but I think that’s just because I don’t like green tea. Their black tea was very good though even though it didn’t have any milk and sweetener in it.
I’d have been interested in buying some of their black tea, but it was very pricey, presumably to make up for the fact that the tea tastings were free. As a result, we didn’t buy any and we weren’t pressured into buying anything before we left which we appreciated.
14) Central Market, Port Louis
Port Louis is the capital city of Mauritius. In addition to the tea tasting and visiting Fort Adelaide, we made a quick stop downtown to explore the market there. Seeing as Shae and I are normally on a full-time 50 state road trip in the US, we don’t tend to buy “stuff” as we don’t have anywhere to put it. It was therefore fun walking around the market, but we didn’t buy anything for ourselves.
15) Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden, Pamplemousses
Just a few minutes from L’Aventure du Sucre is Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden in Pamplemousses. The entrance fee for non-Mauritian residents is a very reasonable 200 Mauritian Rupees (~$5 USD). You can also pay ~$1.50 for a one hour guided tour which, if you’re not in a hurry, seemed like it would be worth it. Our excursion only included about 45 minutes at the botanical garden in order to fit in all the activities that were planned for that day, so we decided to make our own way around the gardens.
One of the most interesting parts of the botanical garden was their giant water lilies pond you can see in the above photo. They were enormous, so we took a photo with Shae’s hand in the photo to give a better sense of their size.
16) St Aubin Distillery
There are several rum distilleries in Mauritius. I’ve already mentioned Chamarel earlier and another one we visited was St Aubin Distillery. A visit to St Aubin is well worth it because not only is it a distillery, but there’s much more to see there. Before doing the rum tasting, we walked around the grounds where there are gardens, a mini farm, a museum, spice garden and Vanilla House where you can learn a surprising amount about vanilla, particularly how it’s cultivated and grown in Mauritius.
The best part of the experience though is the rum tasting! It started off with a tasting of four rums – white, gold, dark and black – all four of which were very good and came as a decent pour.
St Aubin also makes their own line of liqueurs which we saw stocked all around the island. We got to try pretty much all of these and they were all excellent. I was surprised at how good the melon one was; while I like melon, I’m not always a fan of melon-flavored things as they can taste artificial, but this was very good. I think my favorite was the pina colada one though.
17) Gris Gris Beach
A few people had mentioned Gris Gris beach being a beautiful spot to visit, so on our way back to the hotel from St Aubin our driver stopped there so that we could check it out. It was indeed a beautiful beach, although he warned us that it can be dangerous swimming there due to the currents and waves.
18) Maconde Viewpoint
Also on our way back to our hotel that day we stopped at the Maconde Viewpoint. It’s on a sharp corner of the B9 road running along the south of the island, with ~20 steps taking you up to provide nice views of the Indian Ocean.
19) Aapravasi Ghat
I mentioned earlier that two-thirds of Mauritians have Indian heritage. A key reason why that’s the case is because once slavery was abolished, plantation owners still required workers that they could pay very little. Many Indians subsequently entered indentured servitude to go and work in Mauritius.
Aapravasi Ghat is a Unesco World Heritage Site that honors the history and legacy of the ~450,000 Indian indentured laborers who moved to Mauritius from 1834-1910.
The location of Aapravasi Ghat is where they once arrived in Mauritius and briefly stayed while their registrations and contracts were organized.
20) Mauritius Postal Museum
The Mauritius Postal Museum is only about a minute’s walk from Aapravasi Ghat in Port Louis. It features a replica of the world’s first postage stamp which can be found in the Blue Penny Museum which we didn’t get to during our visit.
Other Things To Do In Mauritius
In addition to the above list of 20 things to do in Mauritius that we ourselves did, we received several more recommendations of other things to do there. We didn’t get a chance to do all of them, but I wanted to list them below in case a) we return to Mauritius, and b) you’d like even more suggestions of things to do on the island.
Many thanks to all the people who gave us recommendations, particularly to Vincent who gave us the majority of these suggestions, with most of the other suggestions coming from the comments on this post I wrote on Frequent Miler.
- Blue Penny Museum – Confession time. It turns out that the Mauritius Postal Museum wasn’t where we meant to go and we didn’t realize until I wrote this post! We’d seen that Mauritius has a museum that has a Blue Penny – the earliest postage stamp – and that there’s a Mauritius Postal Museum. Early on in our stay we’d also seen that there was a Blue Penny Museum, but for whatever reason had forgotten about that. That’s how we ended up at the Mauritius Postal Museum and saw a replica of the Blue Penny postage stamp, not the original one at the Blue Penny Museum. Oops!
- Ile aux Cerfs – We received recommendation after recommendation to visit Ile aux Cerfs (pronounced eel-oh-surf and which means Deer Island in French). This small island apparently has some of the nicest beaches in Mauritius and is on the eastern side of Mauritius. Shae and I spent our last four days in Mauritius on the eastern side, so we’d planned to visit Ile aux Cerfs then, but the weather had other ideas. It was stormy that entire time which wouldn’t make for beach weather, so we decided to give it a miss.
- Blue Bay – The same goes for Blue Bay. This is on the southeast corner of Mauritius and we were told it has great snorkeling with marine life. Once again though, the terrible weather and rough ocean meant snorkeling wouldn’t have been worthwhile for us. A word of warning though. There was an oil spill a few years ago which apparently affected the coral in and around Blue Bay, so the snorkeling there might not be as good now as it once was.
- Ile aux Aigrettes – Nature reserve
- Mahebourg – Try the market and street foods
- Grand Port – Not good memories for Brits though – one of the worst British naval defeats during the Napoleonic wars.
- Caudan Waterfront in Port Louis – Mostly shops, but there was still a poutou – steamed rice/coconut dessert-seller there when Vincent was last in Mauritius
- Foods To Try
- Fried street food
- Alouda (desserty milky cold drink, scoop of ice cream optional)
- Karay Mario – great place to have a Mauritian/Creole lunch
- Dhall purri
- Roti / farata
- Gato pima (if you can swing it, try with hot bread and butter. Aka “dipain diberre gato pima”)
- Halim
- Dipain kebab (shawarma sandwiches). If you’re around Victoria bus station, there’s a good shop there
- In Chinese restaurants (if you’re in Chinatown in port Louis, just ask in retail shops where you can find those)
– bol renversé
– Sui kiow / moon kiow - Briani – Mauritian style biryani
- Samoussa
- Gato arouille (taro fritters)
- Mine frit (stirfried noodles)
- Casela Nature Parks – Some recommended this, but when Shae looked at the reviews it seemed like recent reviews suggested the animals didn’t seem in great shape. Perhaps they had financial problems during the pandemic.
- La Vallée Des Couleurs Nature Park – Has “23 coloured earths” and other activities (zipline, ATV, etc).
- Bois Cheri Tea Factory – Has tours and tastings and optional lunch
- Le Morne – If you like hiking, Le Morne (also a Unesco site) is a fantastic climb, overlooking the ocean – that’s where the “underwater waterfall” is, although that picture is not really replicable without a drone/helicopter. Doable without a guide, but Vincent did use one last time. Don’t sign up for fancy guide/tours at $50+/person though, he thinks that’s a ripoff. Their guide cost ~$15 for two people, but he didn’t speak much English (he probably knows French though).
See All Posts From This International Trip
- Lions & Quokkas & Scorpions, Oh My: A Month In Australia, South Africa & More
- We Were Denied Boarding To Australia – Here’s Why
- Flight Review: Lufthansa Business Class – Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) To Frankfurt (FRA)
- Flight Review: Eurowings Discover Business Class – Frankfurt (FRA) To Mauritius (MRU)
- Some Thoughts On Mauritius
- Hotel Review: Hilton Mauritius Resort & Spa
- Hotel Review: Le Méridien Ile Maurice (Mauritius)
- Restaurant Review: Sunset Filaos In Pointe Aux Piments, Mauritius
- 20 Fun & Interesting Things To Do In Mauritius (+ Many Bonus Ideas)
- Hotel Review: Holiday Inn Mauritius Mon Tresor
- Flight Review: Air Mauritius Economy Class – Mauritius (MRU) To Johannesburg (JNB)
- The Awesome Drive Between Johannesburg & Kruger National Park
- 50 Animal Photos From Kruger National Park In South Africa Taken With Our Phones
- Kruger National Park: 13 Tips For A Successful Self-Drive Safari
- Elephant Kisses – Meeting Tswale In South Africa
- Kruger National Park: 30 Photos Taken With Shae’s Nikon Camera
- Doing A Kruger Park Bush Braai With Royal Safaris
- Marloth Park: Like Living In The Best Zoo Ever
- Hotel Review: InterContinental Johannesburg O.R. Tambo Airport, South Africa
- Flight Review: Qatar Airways Business Class (Qsuites) – Johannesburg (JNB) To Doha (DOH) To Miami (MIA)
- Hotel Review: Hyatt Regency Oryx Doha, Qatar
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