Ile aux Aigrettes

The boat across takes minutes. Ile aux Aigrettes sits just off the south-east coast in Mahébourg bay, close enough that you can see cars on the coast road behind you, and the crossing is not the point. The point is that this small coral islet holds something the main island has almost entirely lost.

Mauritius was covered in forest when people arrived. What replaced it was sugar, and what went with it was most of the wildlife the island is now famous for having had. Ile aux Aigrettes carries the last decent stand of lowland ebony forest, and for decades it has been managed as a restoration project: introduced plants pulled out, native ones put back, and species reintroduced one at a time.

So you walk through a forest that is being rebuilt. Ebony grows slowly and the trunks are dark and straight; the canopy is low; the whole island can be crossed on foot without hurrying. Giant tortoises move through the undergrowth: Aldabra tortoises, brought in to do the job the extinct Mauritian ones used to do, cropping the growth and moving seed around. Pink pigeons are here, a species that came down to a handful of birds and was brought back by hand. Fodies and olive white-eyes are in the branches if your guide is good and you are lucky.

Your guide will also tell you, without drama, where the dodo bones were dug up, in the marsh on the mainland shore you can see from the island’s edge. That proximity is what makes the visit land. Everything you are looking at is here because somebody decided it would be.

It is a short, quiet, unglamorous morning, and it is the one that people who have done everything else on Mauritius tend to talk about afterwards. It goes well with a day on the south coast, since you are already at that end of the island.

Good to know

• Access is by guided tour on the reserve’s boat only, and numbers are limited. Book it well ahead of the dates you want.
• Closed shoes, a hat, water and insect repellent. The paths are flat but the walk is in heat.
• Stay on the paths and do not feed anything. Half the point of the islet is that it is managed tightly.
• Birds are wild. The tortoises will be there; the pink pigeon is a good morning, not a guarantee.
• The fee is set by the reserve and funds the work. We confirm the current figure in writing when we quote.