Bel Ombre and the wild south, the coast of cliffs

The south of Mauritius has a different temper from the rest of the island. Waves break against cliffs of volcanic rock, fishing villages follow one after another, the beaches are wide and often deserted, and the interior is covered in cane, forest and tea bushes. People come for the calm, and for a coast road that runs in turn past beaches, cane fields and cliffs.

Bel Ombre is first of all an estate of 2,500 hectares, still dominated by the chimney of the old sugar mill, founded in the nineteenth century. At the heart of these lands, the Bel Ombre Nature Reserve covers 1,300 hectares of forests, rivers and waterfalls. It is explored with a guide, in two hours, on trails through endemic forest, as far as a waterfall where you can swim when the weather allows; along the way, century-old trees and sometimes monkeys, kestrels or the rare pink pigeon. Outings leave at 9.30am and 1.30pm, and booking is strongly advised. The estate can also be discovered by buggy, by 4x4 or on horseback along the beach.

By the water, Bel Ombre’s public beach unrolls some 650 metres of shoreline. Several hotels follow one another along it. Heritage Le Telfair bears the name of Charles Telfair, an Irish naturalist who lived on these lands in the nineteenth century; its architecture echoes that of the plantation houses, it offers only suites and it belongs to the Small Luxury Hotels of the World. On the same estate, Heritage Awali runs on an all-inclusive basis along a kilometre of beach. The SO/ Sofitel lines up ninety-two suites and villas designed by the architect Lek Bunnag, decorated with pieces created by the couturier Kenzo Takada. The Outrigger opens directly onto the beach, and Tamassa, whose name means party in Creole, arranges its 214 rooms in three crescents around four pools.

The Château de Bel Ombre, a historic house set in gardens, serves seasonal Mauritian cooking at lunch and dinner. In the village, the World of Seashells brings together 8,000 shells of 1,500 species, the lifetime collection of a Mauritian who inherited it from his parents and has never stopped adding to it. The estate also has two golf courses: the Château Golf Course, eighteen championship holes, and La Réserve Golf Links, a links course that hosts a stage of the DP World Tour.

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Saint-Félix, Riambel and the out-of-the-way beaches

Heading east, the coast strings together public beaches that grow ever larger and ever less frequented. Saint-Félix, 819 metres of shoreline, is reckoned one of the finest beaches in the south: milky sand, clear water that is shallow near the shore, but currents that can be strong further out. It houses one of the Beach Authority’s four offices on the island. The Shanti Maurice occupies some fifteen hectares there, between forest and beaches, with a spa of seven thousand square metres and a rum shack stocking more than two hundred and fifty rums.

Further on, Rivière des Galets has the longest public shoreline in the south, some 1,530 metres. Terracine has a kilometre. Pomponette and Riambel, opened to the public in 2017, remain out-of-the-way beaches; Pomponette more than quadrupled in size in 2025 and now covers 18.8 hectares, the largest public area in the south. All along this coast, the currents and the reef call for caution in the water.

At Souillac, the village at the island’s southern tip, the ocean no longer lets itself be approached. Gris Gris beach, public since 1940, is not made for swimming: the currents are strong, the waves immense, and people come to walk, to look at the cliffs and to listen to the roar of the sea. From the beach you can make your way to La Roche qui Pleure, where the waves smash against the rock. A short walk away, the Telfair Garden, planted with tropical vegetation, leads by a coastal path to a wild sandy beach facing the cliffs.

The poet Robert Edward Hart withdrew to Souillac in 1941. After a cyclone destroyed his first house, his friends built him a pavilion of coral stone by the water, La Nef, where he died in 1954. The house, which became a museum in 1967, keeps his writing table, his library, his violin and his manuscripts. Admission is free; the museum opens on weekdays, except on Wednesday mornings, and on Saturday mornings.

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Waterfalls, tea and vanilla

The interior of the south is a matter of water. At 2.5 kilometres from Souillac, Rochester Falls drop ten metres down a wall of sharp-edged rectangular blocks, and people swim there in hot weather, keeping away on days of heavy rain. The Léon waterfall is reached by an easy four-kilometre path; you can swim behind the fall, as far as a cave. The Mamzelle waterfall, on a hidden path known mostly to local people, calls for two hours and a guide.

At Rivière des Anguilles, La Vanille Nature Park has since 1985 protected more than a thousand Aldabra giant tortoises, which roam freely beneath the trees of a former vanilla plantation. Close by, the Domaine de Saint Aubin, a former sugar estate, lays out its spice gardens, its vanilla orchids and its rum distillery, and serves lunch in a listed colonial house. Saint Aubin is one of the three stops on the Route du Thé, along with Bois Chéri, the oldest tea plantation on the island, where a guided walk among the tea bushes ends with a tasting. Vanilla tea is the one to try.

Higher up, at Chamouny, the Vallé park opens its trails every day, leading to three waterfalls and to a Land of Twenty-Three Colours, whose hues come from iron and aluminium laid down in layers. It also has the longest zipline on the island, a kilometre and a half long.