Île aux Cerfs

The island is reached by a short speedboat transfer from the mainland pier at Trou d'Eau Douce, and the transition from the working fishing village to the turquoise lagoon is immediate and complete — within ten minutes of leaving the dock you are on a beach of powdered white coral sand that slopes so gently into the lagoon that you can walk 50 metres out and still be chest-deep.

The beach that curves around the island's sheltered western shore is consistently ranked among the most beautiful in Mauritius, the sand fine and white, the lagoon shaded from deep blue to pale aquamarine by the changing depth of the reef platform, and the island itself covered in casuarina pines and filao trees that provide natural shade along the back of the beach.

Snorkelling over the outer reef drop-off is the most accessible marine activity; the reef flat is shallow enough to wade in many places, but the drop-off at its edge reveals the full complexity of the reef wall — brain corals, fan corals, anemone gardens and reef fish in dense populations that reflect the relative isolation of this part of the east coast.

The Ile Aux Cerfs Golf Club, designed by Gary Player, occupies the island's southern tip and features a nine-hole par-3 course that plays across the full width of the island, with water hazards on six of the nine holes and the 7th tee positioned to give a panoramic view across the entire lagoon to the distant Dorsale mountains.

Water sports operations on the beach are run by independent operators who rent kayaks, pedal boats and snorkelling equipment from a row of beach kiosks; there are no large resort facilities on the island, keeping the scale genuinely intimate despite the significant daily visitor numbers brought by the boat operators from the mainland.

The island is privately owned and there is a single beach restaurant serving seafood and Mauritian Creole dishes at prices that reflect the captive market; the quality of the cooking is generally good and the setting — eating grilled fish at a wooden table in the shade of the casuarinas with the lagoon in front — is an experience that justifies the premium.

The approach by boat from Trou d'Eau Douce passes through the southern passage of the reef that encloses the Trou d'Eau Douce lagoon, and the channel crossing is itself scenic: the water colour changes from the muddy green of the shallow inshore zone to the vivid blue of the ocean-side reef drop-off within the space of a few boat lengths.

The white-sand beach and turquoise lagoon of Île aux Cerfs are among the most consistently celebrated in the Indian Ocean and represent the visual archetype of a Mauritian tropical island.

The island is large enough to absorb significant visitor numbers while still maintaining an intimate scale, with enough shade, snorkelling and space to feel genuinely isolated from the mainland.

The Gary Player nine-hole golf course offers one of the most scenically located short courses in the world.