St Aubin Colonial House
A preserved 1819 plantation house with a rum distillery, vanilla and spice gardens, and a famous table-d'hôte lunch.
Domaine de Saint Aubin is a step back into colonial Mauritius. The elegant plantation house dates to 1819 and is built partly from ship's timber; today it is a heritage site you can tour, surrounded by tropical gardens, an anthurium nursery and a working vanilla plantation that gives the estate its name.
In the grounds there's a traditional rum distillery, the Maison du Rhum, where you'll see fresh sugar-cane juice turned into the estate's agricultural rum and taste it, sometimes flavoured with vanilla or coffee grown on the same land. It is one of the anchor stops on the Tea Route, alongside Bois Chéri.
Many visitors time their trip for lunch: the veranda restaurant serves a Mauritian set menu built largely from the estate's own produce, and it is worth booking ahead.
South Tours
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Vallée des Couleurs Nature Park
A 450-acre adventure park with 23-coloured earth, the longest zipline in Mauritius and a 350m Nepalese bridge.
Gris Gris & La Roche qui Pleure
The wild southernmost point of Mauritius, where open ocean crashes against black cliffs with no reef to stop it.