More dynamic and vibrant than ever, Mauritius, beyond the beauty of its beaches and the quality of its art of living, reveals its true face and the extra soul that makes it unique. We discover a mixed culture irrigated with numerous artistic talents and know-how; a population turned towards the future but concerned about the preservation of its traditions and the plurality of its roots; a composite and varied heritage to be discovered through festivals and festivals, museums and historical buildings; a generous nature and inland areas that lend themselves to the practice of all outdoor sports
Eclectic and colourful festivities
A land of passage and mixing, colonized successively by Holland, France and England, Mauritius is home to many communities. It is a complex and yet altruistic and tolerant melting pot of people from India, Europe, China and Africa; cultures that give the island its identity and express themselves on a daily basis through colourful festivals. All you have to do is look at the local calendar: certain fixed holidays of the Christian calendar year (Christmas, New Year) or of the national calendar (feast of the arrival of the Indian enlisted, feast of the abolition of slavery, national holiday) are combined with the moving dates of Indian cultures (Divali, Thaipoosam Cavadee, Maha Shivaratri, etc.).), Chinese (Spring Festival) and Muslim (Eid El Fitr)... not to mention festivals that do not entitle all communities to a public holiday but are massively followed by all communities (record absenteeism rates) such as All Saints' Day, Easter, or the Hindu festival of joy, fire and colour: Holi
Without being ostentatious, the fervour here is real and palpable; the attentive traveller will be able to notice in the gardens of private individuals or on the edge of certain beaches, here an altar, there a miniature temple covered with offerings. In January and February, the month of the Tamil ritual of fire marches, it is not uncommon to see colourful processions of men and women in traditional clothing wearing high vases covered with leaves and garlands. During the great night of Shiva or Maha Shivaratri, thousands of Hindus walk along the roads leading to the Great Basin Lake in the south of the island, whose water is considered sacred as that of the Ganges: an impressive sight for all holidaymakers of this period (February 2016, March 2017, with the date changing according to the lunar calendar). During the Chinese New Year's Eve celebrations, in February, the whole island resonates under the banging of firecrackers, while the dragons thrill the streets of the capital... Everywhere, and more and more, local hotels and tour operators relay this cultural richness by creating themes associated with the religious holidays of the moment or by inviting travellers to join in processions and processions, which is very easy in Mauritius, a nation renowned for its extreme openness and sense of sharing and welcoming
Port Louis: economic, historical and cultural capital
To take the pulse of the island and its diversity, head for Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius and seat of government since 1735, the date of the arrival of the French governor Mahé de Labourdonnais. Capital of the island and the only port in the country (free port status), this heterogeneous and confusing, atypical and hectic city encourages the traveller to accept to get lost. The latter will certainly be dense and punctuated by centres of interest (Place d'Armes, Government Hall, Jummah Mosque, Chinese Quarter, Champ de Mars, etc.).), but will be less revealing of what makes the city's diffuse charm: its joyful agitation, its eclecticism, the timid omnipresence of tin and wooden houses in the shade of buildings, the small shops on the doorstep of large companies, the jeans that rub shoulders with the saris, the bric-a-brac of Chinese shops, the freshness of a tropical garden in the courtyard of a Creole house, these old-fashioned residences at the corner of the alleys, the scents of dholl-puris and chilli cakes mixed with those of spices or fruits at the edge of the stalls overflowing the streets..
Co-creators of My Moris, Mauritian intellectual Shakti and Belgian anthropologist Maya promote an immersive approach to the capital through, among other things, walks to discover the unusual and little-known shops that abound in the city - a route known as "Discovering old trades". More than entering shops or workshops, it is above all a question of coming to meet the craftsmen still in activity (tinsmith, printer, tailor, barber...), a way of giving meaning to each of the itineraries, of sharing moments of life, of revealing this Mauritius from the inside so generous and favourable to moving or funny discoveries
Porlwi by Light: the festival of lighting
Unless you prefer an even more atypical night approach, which is the opposite of the bureaucratic reality of the city. Mainly composed of administrations, swarming by day but deserted by night, Port Louis is depopulated with the sunset. But on these 2, 3 and 4 December, hundreds of thousands of onlookers and travellers (600,000 in 2016) converge from all over the island to blend into the enchantment of lights. Like the Lyon Festival celebrated every December 8, Porlwi by Light is a total sensory and intellectual experience, aimed at highlighting the city's architectural heritage, highlighting the diversity of Mauritian culture and, above all, bringing the population together in a common artistic community spirit, a catalyst of ties and pride. On 50,000 m² of pedestrian spaces spread over the port enclosure, the commercial spaces of the Caudan and the historic sites of the old town (Jardin de la Compagnie des Indes, Place d'Armes, Appravasi Ghaat, Théâtre de Port Louis, former prison, etc.), the 2016 edition, initiated by both local artists (photographer Eric Lee, digital special effects specialist Nicolas Schaub, Street Music Moulin, China or Royal groups, etc.), will be held in the heart of the city.) and international (Austrian illustrator Frau Isa, Chinese painter Xingxing, Berlin graphic artists of the Quintessenz duo, French street artist Seth, etc.)), revealed several luminous and sonorous creations, murals, concerts and exhibitions, street animations and playgrounds... without forgetting the scents of street food and street vendors so characteristic of daily life in Mauritius - a way for tourists on holiday in the island to feel the Mauritian soul at the festival and to capture, as a snapshot, the many facets of the national cultural kaleidoscope
Kréol International Festival: the expression of Sega culture
Another event, another highlight of the richness of local culture, the Kréol International Festival, created in 2006, takes place every year for a week at the end of November-early December. The objective of the event, open to all, in a spirit of celebration and dialogue between peoples: to raise awareness and promote Creole culture, which counts more than 18 million people throughout the world - Mauritians, Reunion Islanders, Seychellois, Martinican... - and constitutes a significant part of Mauritian DNA. While it is easily trilingual in the country, the common language, for all social categories and ethnic communities combined, remains Creole, a simplified and distorted dialect of French, whose origin dates back to the times of French colonization and the need for a language to meet the communication needs between masters and slaves on the one hand, and between slaves of diverse origins on the other. Emigrants from India in the 19th century naturally appropriated this language and enriched it with Hindi terms or expressions. The Chinese did the same, hence this unique language, specific to the country
At the same time, traditional music, which is also a dance, the sega, conveys the same panoply of the island's original history: that of Afro-Malagasy culture, which can be found in the lyrics, musical instruments (ravanne, maravanne and triangle) as well as in the rhythms, lascivious and wavy. Widely represented in hotels, partially modernized by certain groups and marketed for export, sega remains the most widespread Mauritian art form, as shown by the annual program of the Festival international Kréol. Each edition is indeed accompanied by concerts, songs, dances, music workshops, but also regattas, conferences, readings, interventions by well-known academics or writers... who express themselves all over the island, while Creole cuisine is revealed in all its flavours in the ovens of the great chefs. This highlight and highlight of local cultural life ends with the traditional Gran Konser, the most important in the Indian Ocean to date, bringing together the best of the Creole scene in this part of the world.
Growing cultural initiatives
More confidential, but no less revealing of the development of the local artistic scene, other festivals, spread out over the years, underline the importance of the Mauritian cultural and creative industry. Kaz'Out, an open-air music festival whose last edition was held on 5 November 2016, testifies to this contagious desire to "get out of the box" to discover the best of alternative and contemporary music: hip hop, maloya nomadic, progressive seggae, electro live, etc.
Dombeya delights residents and tourists on holiday in the South during 3 days of festivities in Mahébourg with a 100% local musical programme (next edition from 27 to 30 October 2017). One Live Muzik Festival surges each year on Port Louis with an eclectic set that surfs on a wave of roots, rock and reggae
Île Court, an international short film festival, is a window on a different cinema and offers a surprising world tour of contemporary cinema. Hosted by workshops, round tables and professional meetings, the festival is not only a meeting place for all short film actors in the Indian Ocean region, but also a factory with levers to set up and carry out a film project to its completion - 28 short films have been published in 6 years
Moris Dime: revealing immediate pride
"Highlighting historical know-how and promoting today's talents, preserving the memory of the place and the transmission of human pride through art" is one of Mauritius' great ambitions for the 21st century, which Meta-Morphosis, a cultural engineering agency, wishes to convey. As Axel Ruhomaully, photographer and co-creator of the company states: "Behind the white sandy beaches, behind the economic miracle we have known for nearly 50 years, thousands of men and women have made Mauritius what it is today. Regardless of culture, religion or region, each Mauritian has been a spark that now makes our island shine on the international scene. Every Mauritian is part of what Mauritius is today and what MORIS DIME will be" - Mauritius tomorrow in Creole
On the eve of the Republic's 25th anniversary (12 March 2017) and the 50th anniversary of its independence (12 March 2018), Mauritius must therefore become a place of national and international inspiration and creation for 500 days, drawing its source from local heritage, crafts and know-how. Officially launched in November 2016, the operation welcomed a first transfer of international ambassadors, already engaged in multi-purpose and multiple projects alongside local craftsmen and artists. The great French perfumer Blaise Mautin, creator of perfumes for prestigious hotels around the world, has therefore set about drawing up an inventory of the scents and flavours specific to Port Louis. Magda Sayeg, an American urban artist specializing in knit graffiti (or the art of dressing posts, statues and buildings with knitted yokes), is currently assembling a gang of Mauritian knitters to dress the unattractive walls of the old Europa Hotel in Curepipe. Will Pierre Matter, a French sculptor exhibited in Paris, Singapore, Miami, London etc. and a specialist in bronze work and the association of recycled metal objects, give shape to new creations made of materials collected in former sugar factories - the premises of a future museum?
And so many other talents and achievements to come in fields as varied as street art, writing, printing, painting, painting, musical composition... everything that can give resonance to Mauritian heritage and allow it to be shared with the widest possible audience, including travellers, trained in the short or medium term in this human and creative experience that could definitely change the face of the island, well beyond 500 days. So, Mauritius: the island of a thousand facets?
Qualitative and touching museums
In any case, it is more than ever the new flagship of most local tourism stakeholders. Responding to the expectations of an increasingly independent and curious traveller who, rather than letting himself be taken on already traced roads, would decide for himself which paths to follow, Mauritius opens his heart and soul: jumps the locks of its castles, knocks down the gates of its ancient hunted, discovers its paths, snorts, repairs its old stones, spreads its magnificent trees, offers its heritage even sometimes decati to criss-cross as one would stroll along the old maritime routes to meet a distant, and nevertheless visceral, part of our history. In Beau Plan, not far from the historic garden of Pamplemousses (the original vegetable garden of Governor Mahé de Labourdonnais in the 18th century, then the botanical garden - currently one of the most visited places on the island), the Musée de l'Aventure du Sucre, located in a former sugar factory, is an imposing project that brings together, in a modern and interactive scenography, a gigantic amount of information on the history of Mauritius through that of sugar production, inseparable from the island's future since successive colonizations
A few kilometres away, at the entrance to Port Louis, the Aapravasi Ghat Museum and Memorial Site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recalls that Mauritius welcomed no less than 420,000 workers from India from 1849 to 1920 and was the very first experimental platform for engagement - the world economic system set up by the British to abolish slavery and replace African labour in sugar plantations. Within walking distance, not far from the port, the Blue Penny Museum, in addition to its collections of prints, books, ancient lithographs, maps and navigational instruments, etc., underlines the island's importance in the history of world philately through an exceptional collection of locally produced stamps, including two of the most famous and expensive stamps in the world: one of the two 1 penny Post Offices and one of the four 2 pence blue unused Post Offices. Just a little further away, in the heart of the old Port Louis, beyond the large central market opened in 1828 and resonating for decades with uninterrupted babbling, the Musée de la Photographie, nestled in an old 18th century residence, houses a collection of old cameras and thousands of photos from the past..
An architectural heritage to discover
Elsewhere, like so many curiosities and footprints tattooing the island with a distinctive seal, there are tangible witnesses to the island's economic past and its cultural diversity: basalt stone factory chimneys, sugar mills, traditional pirogue construction workshop or boat model making workshop (one of the most developed crafts on the island), white mounds of Tamarin salt flats, multicoloured and picturesque Tamil temples, pagodas, mosques, giant statues in front of the Great Basin sanctuary, churches from today and the past.....
Elsewhere, they are plantation houses transformed into restaurants or cultural sites, and where you can go back in time for a lunch or a stroll in ancestral parks: château de Bel Ombre in the south (gastronomic restaurant with a golf course and an outdoor activity area), Demeure Saint Antoine in Goodlands in the north (restaurant and guesthouse), Eureka in Moka in the centre (Leclezio family house, restaurant, museum and gardens), Domaine de Saint Aubin near Souillac (restaurant, botanical course, Maison de la Vanille, Éco-musée du sucre et du rhum...), Domaine des Aubineaux on the central plateau (house-museum, restaurant, park)... These last two residences are part of a gastronomic and cultural tour called "La Route du Thé", spiced with tastings and visits including that of the Thé de Bois Chéri factory, still in operation.
The keystone of this protected heritage and transformed into a museum, the superb Château de Labourdonnais: a proud 19th century neoclassical building built on two levels, with a double gallery with colonnades and shingle roof. Furnished with English and French antiques representing a dual influence in terms of lifestyle and decoration, the residence is located in the heart of a fully active agricultural farm with its distillery (rum produced and sold on site), its old orchards, its fruit production (jams, juices, ice creams and exotic fruit paste - restaurant on site)
More exclusive and secret, the Fondation Maniglier celebrates the alliance of a local historical building (an old stone sugar mill) and a work of international importance, that of the artist-painter Maniglier, Matisse's last student, whose paintings find, on the old basalt walls, an exhibition space equal to their plural creativity. A centre of life and discussion devoted entirely to the knowledge of art, the Foundation is an open place where you can taste delicate dishes among the canvases, consult the books in the library, and immerse yourself in the mad charm that, like an identity framework, sets Mauritius apart from many other island destinations
The inland: havens of sports all over the place!
The inland lands themselves, long neglected, are finally opening up and revealing their tropical beauty: waterfalls, valleys and mountains, lush forests, rocky walls, hills from which to look at the cane plantations, rivers, beautiful Creole huts and the ocean. As a sign of the times, more and more operators, once exclusively oriented towards the lagoon, now offer combined land and sea, just like this southeast excursion, which begins with a mask and snorkel dive in the sublime bay of Mahébourg, and continues by motor boat to the estuary of the Champagne River, continues in quad in the cane fields and hills, takes a lunch break at Falaise Rouge in front of the historic site of the naval battle of Vieux Grand Port (the only one ever won by Napoleon - see the inscription on the Arc de Triomphe) before sailing in return mode to the coast.
More than that, the green heart of Mauritius, once wild and inaccessible or private and reserved for the hunting of large landowners, becomes a breeding ground for excursions and sports outings in all directions! You can practice: quad biking, buggy, karting, mountain biking, electric biking, Segway, horse riding, canyoning, hiking, via ferrata, pendulum jumping, etc. You can slide by zip line over the ravines, enjoy a wide angle freefall jump over the lagoon, spend days or half-days in areas organised for outdoor leisure (such as Casela, l'Etoile, Frederica, Chazal...), discover the island's original endemic vegetation in protected biodiversity sanctuaries such as the Ferney Valley or Ile aux Aigrettes..
Races are organized and trails are being set up, attracting more and more athletes every year, such as the Royal Raid, an 80 km trail in the mountains with more than 5,000 metres of altitude difference
And everywhere, in the heart of each region, golf courses (currently ten 18 holes and several 9 holes), combined with high-level infrastructure, help to establish Mauritius' reputation as a major golfing destination, via superb panoramic courses over the intense green of tropical vegetation and the bluish shades of the lagoon surrounding the island.
Lagoon and beaches... But Mauritians first and foremost
Yes. The lagoon. Of course. It is internationally renowned that the beaches are very beautiful too, at least as much as in our dreams of an island paradise. That, like the multivitamin interior, there are many activities that can be done there: sailing or catamaran cruise, submarine safari, seakart speedboat (world exclusivity) stand-up paddle, kayaking in the mangrove swamp, kitesurfing (international spot in Le Morne in the south-east), deep-sea fishing (recognized spot), scuba diving or diving with mask and snorkel (famous seabed), glass bottom boat, underwater walking, water skiing, outboarding, surf..
Unless you simply forget the grey and shivering sadness of the European winter in the slight swaying of the fins against a background of blue sky: a nap under the coconut trees, while the ocean roars in the distance on the coral reef and comes to us as soft and docile. Made the same in the ambient air: soft and pastel
There was originally the attractive strength of Mauritius, in this palette of soft tones, but as a shine or a surface patina. The background colours as well as the palpitations of the heart have always been elsewhere, discreet but increasingly tangible: in the kindness of the welcome and curiosity of the other, in the spontaneity of human relationships, in this melting pot of roots which, juxtaposed on a territory that is quite small, encourages inspiration and encourages the sharing of ideas
Energized by a creative and connected youth, this pluriculturalism, now in full expression, multiplies experiences at all levels of the journey and serves as a resonance fund for the incredible effervescence of the destination today!
Smart info
When? When? Pleasant climate all year round. Particularly enjoyable mid-seasons (October/November and April/May)
Getting there. Allow about 11 hours of flight.
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