Cotton Bay Hotel | Cotton Dive Center

Rodrigues

Rodrigues is, as it is currently said: “As the crow flies from Mauritius”. Towards the West, hardly 1h30 on board the small ATR 42 of Air Mauritius which lands smoothly on the landing runaway of Plaine Corail. Yet, everyone has the feeling of it is as almost an unwinding time machine which is taken while landing on this small island of 104 square kms.

Rodrigues is a timeless island. Authentic, always very close to its agricultural tradition which made it become, a sort of granary of Mauritius, since a very long time. Rodrigues is time, which takes time. A warm and proud population, which lives according to its own rhythm : that of rising at dawn, the last bus at 15h, waiting patiently to catch the octopus which will later be dried to make, with its lemons and its small pickled chilies, a culinary specialty of the island, long walks every day as if it was simply a question of rounding the corner of some rare sinuous roads or that of a hilly path.

As the crow flies from Mauritius, and as the 21st district of Mauritius as it is called, after having been dependant, Rodrigues resolutely affirms its specificity and its difference. An authentic and particular character which though coming from Mauritius, confers to the charge of scene. Named after the Captain Don Diego Rodriguez who stopped over there in 1528, it also had its own dodo, the solitary bird which has become extinct, and would have welcomed its first inhabitants towards 1691.

Later in 1810, it is as from its coasts that the British would launch their decisive attack against the French to conquer Mauritius, which was at that time Isle de France. Today represented by two parliamentary members, administrated by an Island Secretary and benefiting of a specific Ministry within the Mauritian Government, this has not less prevented to keep a different character and rhythm from those of Mauritius. A peculiarity which attracts a growing tourism. Besides its two main hotels, the Cotton Bay Hotel and Mourouk Ebony and a variety of boarding houses, other hotel projects are under construction.

Between a swim and a walk everyone can discover its brilliant and quarries where the bricks used for the construction of houses are cut with the band saw ; visit the Caverne Patate with its amazing stalactites and stalagmites , where the guide will take pleasure, when reaching the deepest part, to show to you the meaning of complete darkness when switching off the light of his torch; link to the Trou d’Argent where the sea is engulfed; going for a memorable picnic on the luxurious Ile aux Cocos where everyone, taste the grilled fish which anyone can catch; contemplate at Port Sud-Est the sea which, stretches endlessly in an extraordinary and changing painting of blue ; taste, from Pointe Venus, the quietness of the dusk descending on Port Mathurin before the appearance of Venus sparkling in the velvety night.

Simply, taking time to live. This luxury of a time elsewhere gone, here found back.