La Vallée des Couleurs

The day starts high on the central plateau, at Trou aux Cerfs in Curepipe: the crater of an old volcano with a road running round its rim. On one side you look down into a wooded bowl; on the other, out across half the island to the mountains and, on a clear morning, the sea. It is cooler up here than at your hotel, and often damper.

Then south, down off the plateau into the hills above the south coast, to La Vallée des Couleurs. It is a nature park rather than a single sight: a long valley of forest, streams and paths, with plants that grow nowhere but Mauritius among the ordinary ones, and the coloured earth laid bare on a slope in the middle of it all.

The earth is red, ochre, violet and grey, in bands that shift as the light moves over them. The park keeps its own count of the colours, and the number is higher than you will manage yourself. It is the same kind of ground as the earths at Chamarel, volcanic rock weathered into clay, in a different kind of day: there you stop at a rail and look, and here you spend the day moving through a park.

The walking is the best of it. Paths drop to waterfalls, fuller after rain, and climb to a viewpoint where the south coast lies below you, cane fields running down to the sea. Nobody hurries you, and the valley is big enough that the people on the zipline overhead are the main reminder that anyone else is there.

The activities are there if you want them: ziplines strung across the valley, a mountain-kart track down the hill, guided treks and quad bikes by the hour. You choose on the day and pay at the park, and nobody in the party has to do any of it for the day to work.

Lunch is yours to choose from what is open in and around the park, and your driver-guide knows the options. Then the long drive back to the coast in the late afternoon, with red earth on your shoes.

Good to know

• Activities are paid for at the park, and each has its own minimum age and rules. We check what is running, and what suits your party, before the day.
• Closed shoes with grip. The paths down to the waterfalls are uneven and often wet.
• The hills are cooler and wetter than the coast. A layer and something waterproof, even on a bright morning.
• Lunch is not included. Carry a card or some cash for it and for anything you decide to try.
• Insect repellent for the forest, and water for the climbs back up.