Mountain and Lagoon

Nowhere on Mauritius is more than about ninety minutes from the airport. Le Morne is at the far corner, under the basalt monolith it takes its name from.

Le Morne Brabant is a UNESCO cultural landscape and climbable with a guide, booked ahead. Up and back before the heat.

The mountain shelters this stretch from the trade winds: six hundred metres of sand and the calmest swimming water on the coast, with One Eye breaking beyond it for the kitesurfers.

The seven-coloured earths, the waterfall, and a rum distillery on the way back. Inland Mauritius is the half most beach holidays skip.

Endemic birdlife and the island's one real forest. Dinner afterwards at East, where there is no menu — you tell the waiter what you like and the kitchen cooks to it.

Coast to coast, with the flyover of the underwater waterfall off Le Morne — a sand-and-silt illusion, and worth doing once. Prince Maurice is on the quiet east.

Suites on stilts over a private bay, which almost nothing outside the Maldives offers. The bay is a natural fish reserve fringed with mangroves.

Dinner on floating pontoons over the fish reserve. Nothing is anchored to the shore and the kitchen sends it out.

The east coast is where the championship courses are. A round, then the U Spa — Sisley, a heated pool and a cold plunge, set in the gardens.

The central market, then a Creole table d'hôte lunch — a home kitchen rather than a restaurant, which is how the food here is best met.