Mauritius before the tourists — volcanic ridges, pink sand bays, and the world's best kite-surfing flat
Rodrigues is the forgotten sibling of Mauritius, 650km to the northeast in the Indian Ocean — an autonomous region of Mauritius that most Mauritians haven't visited. It's a volcanic island of dramatic ridges, terraced market gardens, and bays of every pink-white colour, enclosed in one of the world's largest lagoons. The village of Anse aux Anglais still feels like 1970s Mauritius before the resort boom. The island has world-class kite-surfing at Anse de la Balise, endemic birds found nowhere else, and the Giant Aldabra tortoise lumbering through the forest. The cuisine blends Creole, African…
Rodrigues was the last land discovered by Portuguese navigator Diogo Rodrigues in 1528, who found it uninhabited. The Dutch used it briefly, then the French East India Company established a settlement in 1726, importing enslaved Africans to work the land. A French naturalist marooned here in 1691, François Leguat, wrote the first natural history of an oceanic island. Britain seized Rodrigues in 1809 and used it as a staging post for the conquest of Mauritius. The island's relative isolation — it has one small airport and irregular ferry connections — has preserved a way of life more tradition…