Advertisement
We all know that Mauritius is a gorgeous tropical island paradise with a fantastic infrastructure and awesome standard of living, but it’s also a place of wonder and mystery. Here are five strange things you may not have known about the island.
Crystal Rock
This gorgeous fossilised coral reef is a clear illustration of how coral islands are born. There are even plants growing on it. It’s a reminder of the fact that nothing is static – not sea level, not climate. Nothing. The only consistency is eternal wonder.
An underwater waterfall
This amazing optical illusion is formed when sand and pulverised coral plunge down from the coastal shallows to the abyssal depths off the island. It’s not a waterfall – technically it’s a sandfall, but that doesn’t have the same ring.
Advertisement
A mysterious link to the Ganges
With a beautiful temple, and magnificent statues of Hindu deities, including a 33 metre-high statue of Lord Shiva, the beautiful Grand Bassin crater lake is the most holy place for Mauritius’s Hindu people, who undertake an annual pilgrimage there. Part of the reason for the lake’s mystique is its symbolic link to the holy River Ganges in India. The link suggests that in some mysterious way the water in Grand Bassin – which is also called Ganga Talao, or ‘Lake of Ganga’ – is connected to the water in the Ganges. Well, that’s not so far-fetched. Science tells us that all the water on earth is part of the same eternal flux, so it is logical that every water molecule in Grand Bassin was once in the River Ganges. And vice versa, of course.
Giant water lilies
These amazing Amazonian giant water lilies are just one of the features that make the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden a must-see on your Mauritius bucket list.
Rainbow sands
The fabulous seven-coloured earth sand dunes are made up of seven different sands that have eroded out of the 600-million-year-old basalt. Each sand has a different density, grain size, chemical make-up and, of course, colour – red, brown, violet, green, blue, purple and yellow. The dunes themselves are off limits, but they can be seen to great effect at sunset. You can buy small bottles of the sand showing its distinctive layers. And, if you’re feeling curious, you can mix it all up and watch the various colour slowly sort themselves out and resettle into their separate bands.
