Heading down the east coast

We had an early breakfast and were on the road by 9am. As it's Saturday the roads aren't quite so busy, so we made good progress.

We visited 2 aviation monuments today, the first to commemorate the first flight from Reunion to Mauritius in 1933, which landed near the beach at Mon Choisy. The second monument was for the crash of South African Airlines Flight 295, which suffered an onboard fire and crashed into the sea off the east coast in 1987.

We took the inland route today and stopped at the former railway station at Mapou (with plans for a railway museum on the site). Mauritius had a railway network with 250km of track, from the 1860s until 1964, initially built to support the sugar industry. After almost 50 years absence, in an attempt to ease traffic congestion, rail returned to the island in 2020 with a light rail system, but with only 25km of track and 19 stations, from Port Louis to Curepipe.

We drove through a number of villages, and visited a former sugar mill at Belle Mare, which is in remarkably good condition considering it closed in 1875. We reached our east coast accommodation at Trou d'Eau Douce just after lunchtime. Time to walk to the local supermarket for supplies and enjoy a leisurely afternoon on the rooftop deck.Læs mere