Trou aux Biches and Mont Choisy, beneath the casuarinas of the north-west

Between the bustle of Grand Baie and the capital, the north-west coast of Mauritius unrolls a string of casuarina-lined beaches, sheltered from the prevailing winds and turned towards the setting sun. Trou aux Biches and Mont Choisy are its two best-known names, but the coast continues south through Pointe aux Piments and Balaclava, as far as Turtle Bay. Here you will find a calm lagoon, tables with your feet in the sand and hotels of every size, from a boutique hotel of thirteen suites to a great estate of thirty-five hectares.

Mont Choisy beach curves in a long ribbon of white sand around a turquoise bay fringed with casuarinas. Public since 1982, it covers 16.7 hectares and borders the sea for nearly 1.4 kilometres: the longest shoreline of any public beach in the north. Its water, calm and very clear, is its first attraction; people swim, snorkel and take to water sports, and food stalls sometimes set up in the shade of the palms. The name is also spelt Mon Choisy: it is the same place.

The beach has been redeveloped: a car park of around fifty spaces with places reserved for people with reduced mobility, open-air showers, outdoor fitness equipment, picnic tables, a new toilet block and more than five hundred plants replanted. Mont Choisy is also one of the four beaches on the island where sea access for people with reduced mobility is being prepared.

Mont Choisy Le Golf, an eighteen-hole championship course designed by Peter Matkovich on former cane fields, opened in 2017. Outcrops of black volcanic rock, water features, banyans and casuarinas shelter canaries and red fodies, and the round ends at the clubhouse with a Kitsoz, a grapefruit cocktail drawn from the estate’s orchards.

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Trou aux Biches, the sunset lagoon

Further south, Trou aux Biches runs alongside the village of the same name. Its public beach brings together three sections: the one facing the former aquarium, nearly 700 metres of shoreline, public since 1940 and so among the oldest on the island; the police station section, since 1984; and the section facing the Casuarina, since 1991. Nearly a kilometre of sand in all. You can walk a long way in the shade of the casuarinas, settle on a sun lounger facing the lagoon and watch the sun go down. Several diving schools are close by, and a submarine takes visitors down to the wreck of the Star Hope.

For lunch, La Plage Beach Club sets its tables on the sand, beneath coconut palms and Indian almond trees, every day from 9am to 9.30pm. On the same coast road, Le Pescatore, where chef Pramod Gobin cooks fish and seafood on a Creole veranda facing the sea, opens from Tuesday to Saturday. At the Trou aux Biches Beachcomber, the Indian restaurant Mahiya looks out on the sunset.

South of Trou aux Biches, the public beach of Pointe aux Piments holds a quiet record: nine sections along the same coast, more than any other beach on the island, for 12.3 hectares and nearly 2.6 kilometres of shoreline. The largest, Pointe Cimetière, runs to around 740 metres. A little further on, at Balaclava, the Baie aux Tortues, or Turtle Bay, is the island’s first marine national park. The Oberoi, set on its shores, runs its snorkelling trips there, and the grounds of the Maritim, at Balaclava, preserve the Balaclava ruins, an eighteenth-century national monument.

At Le Goulet, further south still, swimming is dangerous in places, and the police post lookouts there on crowded days.

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Where to stay on this coast

At Trou aux Biches, the Trou aux Biches Beachcomber spreads over thirty-five hectares of tropical garden and nearly two kilometres of beach, with twenty-seven villas grouped into a village. Le Cardinal has just thirteen suites, all facing the lagoon. The Casuarina, opened in 1973, combines rooms and family cottages in a garden of bougainvillea. Le Sakoa, sixteen units, is now run by the Constance group, and the Wonders Beach, eighteen rooms reserved for guests over twelve, stands a few steps from Mont Choisy. On that beach, the Coral Azur has a sailing centre recognised by the Royal Yachting Association.

At Pointe aux Piments, Le Méridien, all suites, stretches along a kilometre of sand and keeps its Nirvana wing for couples. The Victoria Beachcomber, facing the marine park, caters above all to families, and the Villas Mon Plaisir have been welcoming guests since 1994 in forty-eight rooms facing the lagoon. Récif Attitude, seventy rooms for adults only, looks out over a marine park. At Balaclava, The Westin Turtle Bay, Le Jadis and The Ravenala Attitude, all three of them entirely made up of suites, share the shores of Turtle Bay.

Finally, at Triolet, in the north, the Maheswarnath Mandir, founded in 1888 by Pandit Sanjbunlall Ramsoondur and dedicated to Shiva, is the largest Hindu temple in Mauritius: white columns, floral decoration and brightly coloured sculptures, around a sanctuary that holds a Shiva Linga, the goddess Parvati and the bull Nandi.