Mauritius Geography, Climate & Nature

Mauritius is 1,100 nautical miles -- two thousand kilometres -- off the south-east coast of Africa, a volcanic island of the Mascarenes with Rodrigues and French Réunion, and its total land area with its dependencies is 2,040 square kilometres. The main island is of volcanic origin, a central plateau falling to a coast almost entirely enclosed by a coral reef and its lagoon; the highest point is Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire at 828 metres in the Black River range of the south-west, with Le Pouce and Pieter Both at 820 metres above Port Louis and Le Morne Brabant, 556 metres, standing alone on its peninsula at the south-western corner.

The Black River Gorges National Park covers 67.54 square kilometres of humid upland forest, drier lowland forest and marshy heath in that south-western range; Chamarel's Seven Coloured Earths and waterfall lie on its flank; the Trou aux Cerfs crater, 605 metres, sits in Curepipe on the plateau. Île aux Aigrettes off the south-east coast is a nature reserve.

Rodrigues lies about 560 kilometres to the east and has been autonomous under its own Regional Assembly since 2002; the Agaléga islands and the Cargados Carajos shoals are the other inhabited dependencies, and the Chagos Archipelago, split from Mauritius by Britain in 1965 for the base on Diego Garcia, is the claimed one. The exclusive economic zone covers about 2.3 million square kilometres of ocean.

Mauritius has two seasons and little between them: a warm, humid summer from November to April with a mean temperature of 24.7 degrees, and a cooler, dry winter from June to September with a mean of 20.4 -- a difference of only 4.3 degrees. The tourism board gives the year-round average as 25 and says swimming is always on the cards; the trade winds keep the east coast breezier and the south-west more sheltered, and the central plateau around Curepipe is cooler and wetter than the coast.

The hazard is the cyclone. Occasional tropical cyclones occur between January and March and disrupt the weather for about three days at a time with heavy rain; the advisories put the season at November to May, and the Mauritius Meteorological Services runs a well-structured system of phased warnings that hotels and the government information service relay. The tourism board's best time to visit is April to December.

Best Destinations by Month has the practical reading.

Mauritius is the textbook case of island extinction and of island recovery. Its only known native large animal, the dodo, was last reliably seen in 1662, within a lifetime of the Dutch landing; the lowland forests went to sugar; and by 1974 the Mauritius kestrel was down to five or six known birds. Since then the kestrel has climbed to about 400, and the Black River Gorges National Park -- 67.54 square kilometres of humid upland forest, drier lowland forest and marshy heathland, on UNESCO's tentative list -- holds the Mauritian flying fox and all of the island's endemic birds: the kestrel, the pink pigeon, the Mauritius parakeet, cuckooshrike, bulbul, olive white-eye, grey white-eye and fody.

Île aux Aigrettes, a nature reserve since 1965 and a scientific research station, keeps a relic of the coastal ebony forest and the rescued species with it; Rodrigues, 560 kilometres east, lost its own solitaire, the dodo's closest relative, and keeps its fruit bat. The lagoon and reef around the main island are the marine half of the inheritance, prone to riptides and home to the stonefish.

No species-level survey was consulted beyond the sources named in the data file; the figures are indicative.

The birds are the story. The Mauritius kestrel, five or six birds in 1974 and about 400 by 2019, and the pink pigeon and echo parakeet beside it, are seen in the Black River Gorges and on Île aux Aigrettes, where the conservation work that saved them is shown to visitors; the flying fox is the island's native mammal, seen at dusk over the forest. Everything else on land came with the ships -- the monkeys, the deer, the mongoose -- and the dodo, last seen in 1662, is in the museum.

In the water the lagoon is snorkelling and the reef is diving, with the advisories' caveats: riptides in certain coastal waters, stonefish stings that are rare but can be fatal and for which many hotels stock anti-venom, and beach equipment that may not meet international safety standards. This page says only what its sources say about the marine life, which is little; the dive operators are the people who know.