Mauritius on your own: Milan’s budget, tips and what to see

Mauritius is perfectly doable on your own, even solo: I went alone, and my worries before the trip turned out to be pointless. Beyond the beaches it has waterfalls, dolphins, hikes and Hindu sites, and it’s clean. I’d especially recommend a catamaran trip to Flat Island and Gabriel Island, and a day in Port Louis that includes the botanical garden.

Quick factsby Milan Bez Mapy

How many days

At least seven; I stayed a week and fitted the itinerary into five full days

My budget

A week travelling solo cost me €1,657, including a €549 Turkish Airlines return flight

From the airport

€75 return through GetTransfer; the hotel wanted €130

Where I stayed

Azure Beach Boutique Hotel in Grand Baie, handy for day trips and the best beaches

Les 7 Cascades

The shorter trail, about 3 km, took me two hours; it’s steep and I got lost in the jungle three times

Not worth it

The Trou-aux-Cerfs crater; next time I’d happily skip it

Travelling around Mauritius on your own really is possible. I’ll admit I was a little nervous before the trip: could I manage, as a solo traveller, a destination so popular with couples who come here for weddings and honeymoons? And guess what? I needn’t have worried at all. A holiday in Mauritius without a tour operator is entirely possible and easy, whether you travel alone or with someone.

It had been a long time since a place took my breath away every single day. I thought Mauritius would be just ‘another exotic island with nice beaches’, basically a second Zanzibar. And it is, but on top of the beaches it also has beautiful waterfalls, dolphins, hikes and Hindu sites. The food? Not so much. And what’s more, it’s clean.

• Tip from Milan If you’re torn between Zanzibar and Mauritius, I’ve written a whole post comparing the two.

A brief history of Mauritius, for context

Mauritius is one of the most developed countries in Africa, and you can tell. I’ve been to several African countries, but none was as orderly and safe as this one. It’s a former Dutch, British and French colony, and it has excellent roads, a modern railway and polite people. ‘Thanks’ to colonisation you can get by in French and English, but people also speak Hindi and Creole, their own version of French.

Why the quotation marks around ‘thanks’? European colonisation destroyed cultures all over the world, wiped out customs and languages and enslaved local people. Paradoxically, it’s also why most former colonies are fairly well developed economically today. But that’s a topic for another article.

Mauritius drives on the left, and the plug sockets are British. You notice the large Indian community everywhere, since as many as 68% of Mauritians have Indian ancestry. The British brought them over as cheap labour, and their descendants still live here today.

Mauritius on your own: useful apps and tips

1. Airalo for a local SIM and mobile data. With the code MILAN1877 you get a discount on your first Airalo eSIM.
2. The GetTransfer website and app for the transfer from the airport to your hotel
3. GetYourGuide for booking trips and activities all over the island
4. A rather complicated website with local bus routes and departures
5. WhatsApp +230 5955 0305 to book a taxi with TaxiServiceMauritius

Is Mauritius safe?

Mauritius is the safest country in Africa: the Global Peace Index 2026 ranks it the most peaceful country on the continent. You can come here as a solo female traveller, as a family with children or as a group of friends on a hen party.

It’s the only country in Africa where I could ride the local buses safely, nobody pestered me on the beach trying to sell me something, and I often went for a run after dark. You don’t need to worry about a holiday in Mauritius: I travelled around the island on my own.

Cheap flights to Mauritius: what a good price is and when to book

Wait for a sale. Just recently a friend messaged me that she was looking at flights to Mauritius, but they were terribly expensive: around €900 return. I got mine in a sale for €549 with Turkish Airlines. I’ve written up my experience with Turkish Airlines in a separate review.

How long to stay in Mauritius, the best time to go and getting from the airport

I fitted the itinerary in this article into five full days, and I was there for a week. I’d give Mauritius at least seven days. It’s a tropical island in the Indian Ocean, so you can visit for most of the year.

May to December is the best time to visit, as the weather is drier and less humid. October to December is good too, with lower humidity and temperatures between 20 and 30°C. From January to April it can be more humid and rainy. Cyclones can hit roughly from November to April, most often from January to March. I was there in February and only just missed a cyclone that brought flooding.

• Tip from Milan For the airport transfer I recommend the GetTransfer app. You enter the airport and your hotel, and individual drivers send you their quotes. That’s how I found the cheapest airport transfer: I paid €75 in total, there and back. The hotel wanted €130 for the same return trip.

Paying in Mauritius: card or cash, and which currency?

I was pleasantly surprised that I could pay for almost everything in Mauritius with my Slovak debit card. Everything except bike hire and the local buses. For the whole week I took €150 in cash, which I changed into Mauritian rupees at a local bureau de change.

Here are trips and tours in Mauritius:

Where to get a local SIM card for data

I use Airalo. It’s an app for buying eSIMs for any country in the world. One gigabyte of data cost me €9. To be completely honest, a local SIM from a kiosk works out cheaper, but I still use Airalo because it’s so simple. That one gigabyte was plenty, as cafés and hotels have fast Wi-Fi and I only used data for WhatsApp.

• Tip from Milan With the code MILAN1877 you get a discount on your first eSIM in the Airalo app.

Where to stay in Mauritius

There’s plenty of accommodation in Mauritius, and where to stay depends on what you want to do. I stayed in Grand Baie, one of the better-known tourist towns, and I really liked it. Why Grand Baie? Lots of day trips start there, and the best beaches are within easy reach.

1. Grand Baie: This is where I stayed, and I liked it. It has good bus connections to Port Louis and nice beaches nearby.
2. Trou aux Biches is known for its beach and turquoise lagoon, good for swimming and snorkelling.
3. Flic en Flac and Belle Mare are ideal if you want a quieter atmosphere, beautiful beaches and water sports.
4. Le Morne: If you like surfing or kitesurfing, Le Morne is the place for you. It also has beautiful beaches and sunsets, but the sea here is wild and better for surfing than swimming.

Getting around Mauritius: local buses or a hire car?

I used local buses and taxis. Hiring a car is perfectly possible and common; just be ready to drive on the left, as Mauritius is a former British colony.

Of course, a car gives you a huge advantage and much more freedom, especially once you see how outrageously good the roads are. I honestly couldn’t get over it. Parking is free in most places. The only catch is that the locals are a little too fond of their horns and honk at anything that moves. Bolt doesn’t operate here. Since March 2026, Uber has only been available through licensed taxis from the local company Logidis (the Taxi by Ala-lila service).

Thinking of hiring a car? I compare the prices of the hire companies at the airport on Discover Cars. With traffic on the left, an automatic helps, because you don’t have to change gear with your left hand. If you don’t have a credit card, see my guide on how to hire a car without a credit card or a deposit.

Milan Bez Mapy’s top three places in Mauritius

If you don’t feel like reading the whole article and you’re short on time in Mauritius, say because you’ve arrived on a cruise ship, these are the three places I’d recommend most. You’ll find more detail on each further down.

1. Flat Island and Gabriel Island: I can’t remember the last time I saw water this clear. This is exactly how I picture a tropical holiday.
2. Les 7 Cascades: Hiking past seven waterfalls and swimming in Tamarin Falls was one of my best experiences on the island.
3. Coffee at La Demeure Saint Antoine: A colonial hotel with a garden that has to be seen to be believed. If you have time, book a table and stay for lunch.

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Things to do in Mauritius: Milan Bez Mapy’s picks

A catamaran trip to Flat Island and Gabriel Island from Grand Baie

Honestly, the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen were in the Maldives, but the ones in Mauritius come very close. Flat Island and Gabriel Island are two tiny islands about an hour and a half by catamaran from Grand Baie. They belong on your itinerary. Admittedly it’s a bit of a mass-tourism trip, with lots of catamarans anchored there, but the sea more than makes up for it.

The water at Gabriel Island is shallow, while at Flat Island you can have a proper swim. There’s even a lighthouse on Flat Island. I didn’t walk up to it because I’d left my flip-flops at the harbour, so if you go and it’s worth it, let me know. The only way to reach these islands is on an organised catamaran trip, which is what I booked.

A day trip to Port Louis and the botanical garden

I studied landscape architecture at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, so I love botanical gardens and visit one in every city I go to. The most beautiful I’ve seen so far is in Cape Town. The one here is the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden, often simply called Pamplemousses Botanical Garden.

It’s one of the oldest and largest botanical gardens on the island, named after a former prime minister of Mauritius, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam. One of its best sights is the giant water lilies, so sturdy that they can hold a small child. Their undersides are covered in spines to stop fish eating them.

The garden also has a zoo with tortoises. It’s worth walking over to the church in the town where the garden is, too: St François d’Assise Church, one of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen. Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, has plenty more to see:

• Fort Adelaide (the Citadel) has good views over the whole city
• The Port Louis markets are a bit wild, and you’ll find them close to the bus station
• The Blue Penny Museum is a great museum about the history of Mauritius, and it holds the famous 1847 Mauritius ‘Post Office’ stamps, among the rarest stamps in the world
• The Waterfront is a modern promenade, and I recommend Namaste there, an excellent Indian restaurant
• Aapravasi Ghat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the former port where indentured labourers from India arrived

A bike ride to the best beaches and colonial houses

The best beaches in Mauritius

Grand Baie has an excellent bike hire shop called E-LAB BIKE. I hired a bike there and rode round the nearby beaches. The best are at Pereybere and Trou-aux-Biches, and I also quite liked the beach at Azuri. Close to Grand Baie there’s also the small beach of La Cuvette. If you avoid it at the weekend, when it gets packed, you’ll enjoy it.

I didn’t visit all of them, but these are the ones most often named as the most beautiful. The ones I visited are in bold, with my own comments.

• Azuri: a beautiful beach, a bit out of the way, in a private town. They let me in on my bike without any fuss, but there are barriers at the entrance
• Grand Baie beach: a town beach, but still very pretty, with clean water
• Pereybere: a town beach, but still very pretty, with clean water, and one of the more popular ones
• La Cuvette: a tiny beach, packed at weekends, but otherwise great for sunsets
• The beaches on Flat Island and Gabriel Island: the most beautiful beaches I saw in Mauritius, and you can only get there on an organised trip
• Belle Mare
• Trou-aux-Biches
• Île aux Cerfs
• Le Morne

La Demeure Saint Antoine, a colonial hotel with a café

I found this hotel and café by chance as I was cycling past, and it became one of the best places I discovered on the island. The waiter, in a jacket, looked offended when I asked whether ‘this’ was a café and just muttered through his teeth, ‘We are a hotel.’ This colonial country house, La Demeure Saint Antoine, has stood here since 1830, and I spent several hours completely absorbed in its history.

Edmond de Chazal, who built it, named it after his mother, Antonia. He devoted his life to travel, to freeing slaves and to breeding rabbits, for which he rented Amber Island here in Mauritius. On the estate he built a sugar mill, a school and an infirmary for the workers. His son Régis inherited the house and moved to France with his two daughters, and that is where his granddaughter Claire was born. Claire inherited the estate, is now its sole owner and has turned it into a hotel and restaurant.

Craters, waterfalls, sights and hikes: everything to see in Mauritius

Here’s a quick rundown of the ‘compulsory’ stops in Mauritius.

Trou aux Cerfs, Chamarel, Seven Coloured Earth, Grand Bassin, Le Morne and Alexandra Falls

1. Trou-aux-Cerfs is a crater in the ground. For me it was a letdown, and next time I’d happily skip it. If you’re passing anyway, stop for five minutes so you can tick it off.
2. Chamarel Seven Coloured Earth Geopark has the best-known waterfalls in Mauritius, and it’s well worth a stop. The ticket also covers the Seven Coloured Earth.
3. Black River Gorges National Park
4. Alexandra Falls is a pretty waterfall in very pleasant surroundings.
5. Grand Bassin is an Indian temple town with two statues.
6. Le Morne mountain and the underwater waterfall, if you’re fit: the hike to the top is hard, but from up there you can see the underwater waterfall, which is an optical illusion.
7. Les 7 Cascades (Tamarin Falls) is, for me, the best attraction in Mauritius. There’s more about it below.
8. Notre-Dame Auxiliatrice Chapel is the best-known church on the island, thanks to its red roof.

Les 7 Cascades: swimming in a waterfall in Mauritius

My original plan was the hike up Le Morne, but that morning they closed the trail because a storm had wrecked the paths. My plan B was obvious: Les 7 Cascades, a hike past seven waterfalls with a swim in them.

I’ll be honest, the terrain is steep and dangerous, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to children, or to parents in the wrong shoes. Still, the moment I got into that waterfall, I realised Mauritius is my favourite island.

Tip from Milan I recommend the shorter route, and if someone offers to guide you on the way, take them up on it. I managed to get lost in that jungle three times. Maps.me is a great app for this, with all the paths through the forest marked.

Getting married in Mauritius

Some resorts and hotels in Mauritius offer wedding packages and services. They can help with the practical side of a wedding, such as booking the venue, accommodation for guests, flowers, music and more.

A marriage concluded in Mauritius is also valid in Slovakia. Once back home, however, a Slovak citizen has to have it entered in the special register (osobitná matrika).

My Mauritius holiday budget and how much money to take

Good to know: The budget below covers my trip in 2024. It’s my personal total of what I spent on that trip, not a current price list for Mauritius.

Is Mauritius an expensive holiday? Here’s an exact breakdown of everything I paid, how much and where. I think it’s good value, considering how cheaply I got my flights. If I’d travelled with someone, I’d have split the accommodation and transfers between us, which would have knocked another €300 off the total.

Mauritius exceeded all my expectations, and if I get the chance, I’ll gladly come back. You should go too, whether it’s for your wedding, your honeymoon or a solo trip. Mauritius is worth it.

Milan