Rodrigues: A Desert Island Hideaway

  • A public bus on the road to Anse Mourouk, one of the vividly colored bays that scallop Rodrigues’s south coast.

    A public bus on the road to Anse Mourouk, one of the vividly colored bays that scallop Rodrigues’s south coast.

  • Draw-net fishermen heading out across the shallows

    Draw-net fishermen heading out across the shallows

  • Rodrigues's tiny capital, Port Mathurin, overlooks a vast lagoon on the north coast of the island

    Rodrigues's tiny capital, Port Mathurin, overlooks a vast lagoon on the north coast of the island

  • In a village shop inland from Port Mathurin

    In a village shop inland from Port Mathurin

  • Marie-Line Comarmond at Cases a Gardenias, the guesthouse that she and her Belgian husband run on the island's northeast coast

    Marie-Line Comarmond at Cases a Gardenias, the guesthouse that she and her Belgian husband run on the island's northeast coast

Click image to view full size

A far-flung dependency of Mauritius, the island of Rodrigues combines Creole charm with one of the most alluring settings in the Indian Ocean

By Kate Eshelby

While I sit comfortably on the veranda of Villa Mon Trésor, gazing at a palette of Indian Ocean flora, Marie-Louise Roussety, my host, hands me a rum punch. a freshly plucked hibiscus bloom pokes out of the glass, and the scent of citrus fruits wafts up the garden path.

Port Mathurin

Rodrigues’s tiny capital, Port Mathurin, overlooks a vast lagoon on the north coast of the island

Unlike Mauritius to the west, Rodrigues, the smallest and remotest of the Mascarene Islands, is quiet—and I have come to sample local life by staying at a few of its guesthouses. Whereas Mauritius bursts with glitzy five-star resorts, Rodrigues offers a homier brand of comfort, with more than 40 maisons d’hôtes yet only a handful of hotels. Six hundred kilometers from the Mauritian mainland, tourism is in its infancy here. And that’s just as well. As one fellow visitor tells me, “In Mauritius’s big hotels, they’re friendly because it’s their job to be. But here, it’s genuine.”

Villager from Port Mathurin

In a village shop inland from Port Mathurin

Villa Mon trésor is at anse aux anglais, or english Bay, the place where British troops and east India Company sepoys landed in 1809 to snatch Rodrigues from the French. Out front, Marie-louise’s garden explodes with fruit trees—lemon, fig, passion fruit, and avocado—while the house itself is homely, yet exotic, with bright colors and terra-cotta pots full of plants. “I like a house to live,” she says. After a breakfast sweetened with homemade preserves and Marie-louise’s awardwinning honey, I walk to the weekly Saturday market in nearby Port Mathurin, the capital. Home to about 6,000 people—less than 20 percent of the island’s predominantly Catholic population—it’s a compact town, with low-rise buildings that recall Wild West saloons set among huge banyan trees. On market day the streets are lined with basketwork and pandanus handicrafts and tables of homemade pickles, chutneys, and tourtes rodriguaises—a thick-crust pie with a jammy filling of coconut and papaya.

Share this Article

Related Posts

Travel in Mauritius: A Day in Port Louis

A day in the life of Mauritius’s unsung capital, Port Louis.