Tiny Islands

Today I’m going to share Ile Aux Cerfs and Ilot Mangenie, two beautiful islands just off the east coast of Mauritius and about a ten minute boat ride from where we stayed. Mauritius itself is a very small island and these neighbouring islands are about the size of one or two football pitches.We spent the most time on Iles Aux Cerfs as Le Touessrok has a boathouse there offering various activities for free. We tried out kayaks and pedal boats and explored the mangroves, trying to catch a glimpse of the monkeys. We also took a trip by speedboat to visit a waterfall. On the way we passed lots of colourful houses and a tree filled with sleeping Mauritian bats. The bats are endangered and theres been a lot of conservation efforts to increase the population so it was amazing to see them in their natural habitat.

We stopped on Ilot Mangenie for lunch with friends; it was completely idyllic. The dogs were strays who were hoping for scraps of food; you can see James is frowning at one rather persistent canine under the table but all in all they were very well-behaved, sitting patiently next to our table. There are over 400,000 stray dogs and they all look pretty similar as you can tell from the two I photographed. Strange to think they might all be members of the same family. James doing his best Hollister model impression.