Our darkish sedan pulls up, depositing two blinking and frazzled honeymooners within the heat of a Mauritian morning. We’re led into an unlimited, shady loggia with stone columns and a ceiling of hand-carved wooden. A songbird is warbling from its perch someplace within the pair of palms sprouting both aspect of a splashing fountain. Having lately accomplished a 12-hour flight, all this area, gentle and greenery is like the start of a second life. Sure, the honeymoon is off to begin. There’s only one drawback: I’m right here with another person’s accomplice.
No, it’s not like that. However whereas this explicit honeymoon is a sham, cooked up between colleagues within the identify of analysis, Mauritius is the actual deal for post-nuptial journey. The African island nation has been a honeymoon hero for many years however it’s having a second all the identical. It’s not arduous to see why. Simply traversed however spacious sufficient for seclusion, Mauritius affords up its powdery seashores and coastal mountains; clear seas and kaleidoscopic reefs; delicacies that borrows from throughout the Indian Ocean; and better of all, that feeling of being on ‘island time’ that helps you jettison all worldly issues on the plane door.
THE LUXURIANT: MARADIVA VILLAS RESORT & SPA
The identify Maradiva means ‘divine sea’, and this beatific resort earns its moniker with ease. Its luxurious villas are unfold over pristine grounds in Flic-en-flac on the island’s sundown coast, skirting a protracted stretch of seaside on a curved bay. From these sands, you look throughout a turquoise lagoon to the greenery-swathed mass of Le Morne mountain on the far finish of the horseshoe. This sea is certainly divine – heat, clear and residential to a pod of dolphins that visits Maradiva’s stretch of water most mornings. Even so, your brush with rapture begins lengthy earlier than you get all the way down to the water’s edge.
Take that arrival: the indulgent sense of area and lightweight, the fountain, the birdsong… Okay, the fowl was a stroke of luck, however the remaining is a fine-tuned act of choreography that dissolves all reminiscence of airports and emails. If it labored its magic on me, anybody arriving with marriage ceremony bells and bliss on their thoughts will certainly be doubly enchanted.
In truth, in all places I am going at this lodge, there’s a way of room to spare: strolling via the gardens planted with indigenous botanics, posting up on the sunset-facing bar for Mauritian rum cocktails, even taking a pew on the seaside, the place there’s 15 metres or so between every set of sunloungers so that you gained’t really feel such as you’re eavesdropping on different friends (or vice versa). Time feels ample too, not least with a private butler who arranges all the pieces, something, at a second’s discover. Elsewhere, you may really feel responsible for lounging round your villa an excessive amount of, however with a non-public plunge pool and a secluded terrace made for eating à deux, right here it simply is smart.
In fact, there’s a lot to tempt you out of your lodgings. There are 4 eating places, one in every of which is our dinner date, the splendid and salon-esque Cilantro. Right here we’re handled to a veritable feast of Indo-Mauritian classics together with curried scallops, tender lamb biryani and fiery madras. Our wine is a broody magnificence: a deep, darkish Saint Julien plucked from Maradiva’s walk-in cellar, the place an all-star assortment is displayed in a vitrine of light-reflecting glass. Followers of Man Ritchie’s Netflix present The Gents will recall villain Stanley Johnston’s fondness for uncommon vintages of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Effectively, they’ve that right here…
There’s way more than meals to deliver you collectively. You may e-book in for a pair’s remedy on the vacation spot spa, helmed by an Ayurvedic physician who’s made the artwork his life’s work; request candlelit dinners in a maharaja tent on the sand; sightsee from a chauffeured Rolls-Royce; or strive a cooking class with the chef of showstopping Japanese restaurant Haiku. In truth, the workers right here would possible discover a method to make all that occur in a single day, must you want.
THE HEDONIST: LUX GRAND BAIE
Lux Resorts has made a reputation for itself in Mauritius, and for good purpose. Its quartet of accommodations, scattered throughout the island’s prime coastlines, unite what’s finest about island life. They’re luxurious but down for time. Fashionable, however not treasured about it. Mischievous, however by no means on the expense of leisure. Alas, this fake honeymooner solely had time for 2, however they make a high-quality double act, balancing indulgence with feet-in-the-sand repose.
Lux Grand Baie is an ode to the ocean and Mauritius’ seafaring heritage, designed to a flowing and sculptural scheme by British designer Kelly Hoppen and JFA Architects. All the things leads again to the ocean right here: the very first thing you see is a sail-shaped constructing housing the cavernous foyer with its quadruple-height ceiling. The road of sight cuts proper via, so the second factor you lay eyes on is the aquamarine water on the opposite aspect.
I arrive working late for my rendezvous with the spa, so I’m whisked upstairs to my sea-facing suite. I must be prepping for a day of well being however my eye lands on a complete cake left as a welcome reward. It’s clearly meant for 2, however with that just-married spirit of ‘I might eat you up’, I carry it throughout the brink to my terrace. From my perch, I look out over the tropical gardens, the seaside membership (replete with photogenic candy-cane-striped loungers), a duo of swimming pools and the seaside itself, the place workers are standing by with cubes of watermelon and iced mint-and-lemon water.
Ten minutes later, I’m in one other world. All gentle curves and free-form furnishings, the spa deposits you within the yr 2050. With no fellow terrestrials in sight, I pad across the lounge in my gown, sipping an energy-boosting concoction of herbs. The pre-treatment questionnaire tactfully omits querying whether or not you’ve consumed 400 grams of baked items previous to embarking in your voyage of wellbeing. Put up-massage, I transfer on to the thalassotherapy circuit, for which a complete ground is put aside. Floating in a single pool, with a monastic arched ceiling set with pinprick lights like stars, I lose all sense of time and place.
It’s 9pm. My would-be spouse and I are in a sales space at Ai Kisu, the lodge’s darkly decadent Japanese restaurant. We’re on the crowning second of an eight-course dinner that includes delicate sushi, Wagyu beef and seared tuna steaks. A gleaming bowl of caviar has simply been positioned in entrance of us, balanced on a mattress of seaweed billowing with smoke (truly liquid nitrogen). Solely this hasn’t been wherever close to a fish, it’s pastry chef Simon Pacary’s ‘caviar phantasm’, a sense-teasing citrus dessert that performs tips in your thoughts whilst you chunk into it.
With a pre-sunrise begin on the playing cards, this may be a smart time to retire. However after a couple of sakes and a yuzu-laced gin cocktail, we will’t resist a look-in on the nightclub throughout the corridor. It’s a weekend, in any case…
THE BEACH BUM: LUX BELLE MARE
We’ve had our kicks. Now what’s wanted is languor within the type of leisurely seaside membership lunches, afternoons basking on the sand, bowls of home made gelato… Enter Lux Belle Mare, quintessentially coastal in seems and hooked up to what’s, for me, the standout seaside of the journey, a large stretch of talcum sand on a promontory the form of an arrowhead.
There’s no mistaking the colors right here: my suite is all shiny whites and gentle coral and sand tones. Furnishings in bleached ash or sure with rope supplies the ending maritime flourish. It’s a timeless palette however is in actual fact all new: Lux Belle Mare suffered a hearth in 2022 (no-one was damage due to a heroic efficiency from the workers), which was became a possibility to offer the whole lodge a brand new look.
This transformation has had a very placing impact on the eating places. Having spent a day searching a neighborhood market with stalls piled excessive with succulent Mauritian fruit and veg, we arrive at restaurant Amari with an outsized urge for food. This Indian fine-diner has panels of intricate latticework and partitions of pink-clay coated in murals that run from the blonde-wood flooring to the ceiling, depicting Gustav Klimt-like timber of life.
The menu was created by Vineet Bhatia, India’s first chef to web a Michelin star (now two) and one of many stars of streaming sequence The Remaining Desk. With its punchy flavours and limitless spice medleys, I discover Indian dishes arduous to finesse in my very own (restricted) cooking. However boy, are you able to depend on Bhatia. Classics listed here are remodeled by the subtlest hints of cardamom, pistachio, aniseed and different flavours I can’t categorise. The desserts too are a triumph; his tackle kulfi, India’s traditional iced candy relationship again to the sixteenth century, is so refreshing I might nearly return to the starters for a second spherical.
The subsequent day brings much-needed repose to the ultimate 24 hours of our compressed minimoon. We place ourselves beneath a string of palms on the lodge’s knockout seaside, rising solely to raid the parlour dispensing freshly-churned gelato. The hours evaporate with the morning clouds.
A notice on that: if, like me, you might be of Pictish paleness, don’t underestimate the ability of the Mauritian solar on a cloudless day. I finish the journey wanting just like the langoustines topping my salad on the seaside membership. By late afternoon, my hue is alarming sufficient that the spa therapist takes one look earlier than graciously switching my remedy to a full-body aloe wrap.
En path to our ultimate dinner, I’m waylaid by a unprecedented sight. Bathed in rouge lighting and dangling from a metal pole, 4 Peking geese flaunt their flesh from an image window. That is the doorway to Duck Laundry, the lodge’s purveyor of Sichuanese, Shanghainese and Cantonese delicacies. Now, if that imaginative and prescient doesn’t stimulate your urge for food, I don’t know what’s going to. Wanting down at my very own scarlet pores and skin, I determine in solidarity to go along with a ‘you might be what you eat’ method. It proves the precise selection, establishing a final supper so good that, on our approach out, I nearly flip to the geese and say ‘I do’.
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