Given its small size—just 108 square kilometers—most of the island’s seductions are found in or around the sea. The diving is particularly good. There are coral species here that are found nowhere else on earth. I spend several days flippering among emperor fish, Moorish idols, and brilliantly colored table and branching corals that festoon the reefs off the south coast. The kite surfing is excellent, too, thanks to steady trade winds. you can even whiz over steep-sided valleys on a zip line—a leap of faith that pays off in bird’s-eye views of the lagoon’s magnificent mantle of electrifying turquoise.

Between these adventures I return to Cases à Gardenias, the island’s most sumptuous guesthouse and the home of Belgian-Mauritian couple Fernand Verbeeck and Marie-line Comarmond. Both are artistic types—he paints, she was a stylist in France—and their house is full of elegant furnishings from their previous home, a château in Bordeaux. It’s all very romantic; my room is surrounded by lush tropical gardens that are lit by lanterns in the evenings. “We get a lot of honeymooners,” Fernand says. I don’t doubt it for a moment.

All around are untouched beaches, many accessible only on foot and completely deserted, save perhaps for a grazing goat. I walk the cove-scalloped coastal track from Fumier to les Graviers, and around each fist of headland look down onto water so clear it is practically invisible. Farther along, I’m surprised to see men walking on water. On closer inspection, it turns out they are standing on submerged sandbanks to hunt for octopus, a popular—and chronically overfished—delicacy.

I pass a village of fruit-colored houses set among spiky pandanus trees. Skiffs lie in the shade on the edge of the beach, and rows of octopus hang from wooden racks to dry in the sun. A man wearing a trilby hat stands in his doorway. Stillness pervades. this is Rodrigues; it leaves you utterly relaxed.

Originally appeared in the October/November 2012 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“A Drop In The Ocean”)