5 Relaxing Days in Beautiful Mauritius

Once I saw pictures of Mauritius, I quickly added it to my list of places to go.  It looked incredible!  Plus, I’m always up for visiting a tropical island, especially one in a location I’ve never been before, the Indian Ocean.

When I booked our United flights, I realized we could stop over in Mauritius for free on our way to Cape Town.  This seemed like a perfect way to start our trip.

We first flew on a red-eye to London, had a long layover in London, flew to Istanbul’s Ataturk where we had just enough time to grab some Turkish Delight and a snack, then took another red-eye to Mauritius.  In total, we had 21 hours of in air flying time, and it took 30 hours, 30 minutes to arrive.  We hired a shuttle company to drive us the 1 hour to the resort as we didn’t feel like landing and doing it ourselves after that much travel.

We were so happy to arrive especially once we saw our resort, the Victoria Beachcomber.  Mara was so excited she threw up in their lobby.  Ok, it was from motion sickness not happiness, but she did feel better after throwing up then seeing the place.

After checking in, we changed then headed to the buffet lunch as we were quite hungry even though our stomachs thought it was 6am.  And then it was time to relax and play!

After lunch, the kids were really excited to try water skiing.  They were able to stand up pretty easily holding onto the bar beside the boat.  They loved it!

Beckett ended up going out water skiing 3 or 4 times during our stay, while Mara went out twice.

Mara water skiing:

Beckett water skiing:

Over the next few days, we took advantage of the free kayaks, stand up paddleboards, paddle boats, water skiing, mini sailboats, and more.  The kids loved being able to go down to the beach and head out in one of the water craft.  Chuck and I took them out too, but loved watching the kids enjoy the ocean just as much.

For a small fee, they also had an inflatable chair that they drag behind a motor boat which looked like a lot of fun.  Chuck and Mara went first, followed by Beckett and I.  It was a lot of fun although I made the mistake of giving the driver a thumbs up meaning to go faster – oh, we went faster and we really started flying around.  It was awesome.  Until the next morning when I couldn’t walk and had to cancel out of scuba diving.  But it worked out as I went for a massage to help and had an interesting, but very good massage.  The kids really wanted to go on the chair again, so we sent them out on our last day.

Luckily my back was better the next day and Chuck and I were able to go out scuba diving then.  We only booked 1 dive and are glad we did as it was one of the worst dives we’ve ever done.  There wasn’t much coral and what was left was mostly in poor shape, plus there weren’t that many fish or anything of interest.  I thought the diving was supposed to be good in Mauritius, so we were pretty disappointed.  But it’s still nice to get in the water, so it wasn’t a total loss.  We did get to see a lot of clams, a moray eel, these neat sea cucumber type things that looked like fan filters, and I saw a lobster.

The resort also had free snorkeling trips where they’d drive out to a reef about 10 minutes away and let you snorkel for 40 minutes.  We all went our first full day and Chuck and the kids went the next day, but I stayed behind because of my back.  The kids loved being the ocean and got so excited pointing out all the neat things.

Aside from all the ocean activities, we enjoyed the all inclusive buffet and drinks.  They had juice cocktails for the kids and Beckett must’ve ordered 50 “Emotions” during our stay which were some mango, tropical fruit infusion.  The kids also had more sodas and shirley temples that you can count.  Chuck and I fully enjoyed the fruity cocktails and drinks of the day as well.

The buffet also had a rotating variety of food each night.  Despite that, Beckett had pasta with tomato sauce for every dinner.  Mara was more brave and discovered a love for calamari.  She also joined us at the seafood restaurant one night where we had a lovely 3 course meal with our toes in the sand as we watched the sun set.

On another night, we ate at the Italian restaurant on site.  We were so looking forward to an amazing Italian meal, but came away a little disappointed.

We also went to the one restaurant for snack time and got pancake/crepes and drinks.

When we weren’t eating, drinking, playing in the pool, or playing in the ocean, we enjoyed hanging out along the beach or around the resort.  It was so beautiful there.  And a great place to watch the sun set each night.

Too quickly our time was over and we headed to the airport for our flights to Cape Town.

Our time in Mauritius was even better than I hoped.  The kids have never been big ocean/beach fans, but they loved all the water sports and had an absolute blast.  The all-inclusive was absolutely the way to go as we didn’t have to think about the cost of all the food and activities and could just enjoy whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it.  And we really allowed the kids a lot of freedom so they were able to enjoy themselves without many parenting reins on them.

We also ended up with some great family time as everyone was so relaxed and happy and not distracted by work, electronics, to do lists, etc.  It was also a great way to start our trip to Africa as it let us adjust to the time change and let us recover from the flights.  It also set a nice, relaxing tone for the rest of our trip.