Bryony Gordon explores her grandfather's childhood haunts in Mauritius
Dozing in my arms after a 12-hour flight that consisted of only the occasional bout of sleep, my daughter was unaware that she had just become the first member of her family to visit Mauritius in 80 years. Outside Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport, a beautiful dawn was breaking, though our body clocks were convinced it was the middle of the night.
Inside the almost-new terminal, my daughter had begun to protest loudly at the immigration staff who had disturbed her slumber to check her face matched the picture in her passport (given it was taken when she was six months old, it didn’t).
At customs, with a screaming toddler point-blank refusing to get in the buggy, an officer asked to search our bags where he discovered - as did I - that my husband had purchased more than his allowance of holiday tobacco, meaning we could either pay a hefty fine or have the cigars confiscated. (“But I only smoke when we’re by a beach!”) It was late. Or was it early? We couldn’t work it out. We paid the fine, and I tried not to moan too much.
Us 21st-century travellers, even ones with small babes in arms, have it easy compared to the adventurous souls who wanted to take a voyage to the Indian Ocean back in the 1930s. It was 1933 when a 13-year-old Dennis Wilson was packed onto a Union Castle scheduled liner, which set sail from Southampton and dropped him and his parents in Mauritius six weeks later, where it then continued on its journey to India.
The intrepid Wilsons were an army family, and Dennis’s father, George, had been appointed District Coast Artillery for Mauritius, back when the island was still a British colony. Dennis Wilson, or Papa, as he is affectionately known in our family, is the father of my father-in law, grandfather to my cigar-chomping husband and great-grandfather to my whingeing daughter.
Papa would no doubt have appreciated the luxuries a Boeing 777 could offer, even in economy: free snacks, a range of movies, no rats. Instead he got six uncertain weeks on a mail liner, sailing to a life very different to that which he had left behind in England. Dennis, who would later go on to become a major in the British army remembers with a certain amount of fondness a “malarial swamp”. Paintings of the island back then still hang in his front room in Salisbury, an exotic reminder of a far away life.
The British invasion is different today, consisting as it does of droves of tourists lured to the island by package holidays. This, like most other modern luxuries that exist, is a source of amusement to my husband’s grandfather, who recalls arriving during the monsoon season, the only English boy in a class full of children speaking French.
Arriving at our hotel in the south of the island, we were stunned by the scenery; to Dennis, arriving in Mauritius must have been like landing on another planet. Dinarobin is situated on the Le Morne peninsula, a series of inconspicuous suites and restaurants nestled on the beach in the shadow of Le Morne, an almost 2,000ft mountain that is so dramatic you feel as if you might have accidentally walked onto the set of the latest Jurassic Park movie.
Standing on the beach, the Indian Ocean lapping at our feet, we felt quite overwhelmed by the beauty of what we were seeing - and found it hard to imagine how affected a teenage Papa must have been, arriving at a time when most people had to use their imaginations to picture what Mauritius looked like.
An island beyond Madagascar that was once home to Dodos? It certainly seemed like magic to our daughter, who is mostly used to the concrete delights that south London has to offer. She chased crabs along the beach and splashed in the turquoise sea; my husband found a sunlounger in the distance and lit one of his precious cigars.
The rooms at Dinarobin felt a little like mini villas - huge windows in the large bedroom look out to the verdant gardens and beach beyond, with doors opening on to your own outside area, the size of our living room back home. Our daughter padded around in the tiny slippers and towelling robe provided for her; there was an excellent kids club where we could take shelter from the sweltering heat if needed, though she preferred to spend her days in one of the umpteen pools available.
We could choose from Asian and Italian restaurants or pick our way through a buffet - my husband reminded me how lucky we were as we gorged on cuisine from around the world every night, given that Papa had to make do with a diet that consisted almost entirely of beef and bananas.
The tail end of a cyclone that had hit nearby Reunion island shut all the roads, delaying our trip to our next hotel and our visit to the area in which my daughter’s great grandfather had lived in as a young boy.
Vacoas is a bustling town with a population of just over 100,000, which lies about 12 miles south of the island’s capital, Port Louis - on its outskirts lies a smaller town called Curepipe, where Dennis lived with his parents in a bungalow as part of the married quarters. He would spend three years in this bungalow, before signing up and joining the army himself in 1936, shortly after his 16th birthday. As we waited out the storm in our air-conditioned hotel, we counted our blessings that the windows were only misting up.
Travelling north, we passed by tiny villages and Mauritian army camps whose red-roofed buildings still bore names such as Suffolk Mess and looked little changed from the ones that dotted the island during the 1930s when Dennis lived there. Were it not for the billboards advertising bank loans and fast food chains, we could have been seeing exactly what Papa did.
Not for the Royal Palm a tatty travel cot for the kids - our daughter’s bed would not have looked out of place in a royal nursery. We found ourselves places around the pool on sumptuous day beds, considered a trip on the hotel’s 20 ft yacht, and then marvelled as a beaming beach boy appeared as if from nowhere armed with enough buckets and spades and toys to keep all of Brighton’s promenade happy. But they were just for our delighted daughter.
Even the pizza here was seriously posh - dinner at the hotel’s trattoria, La Brezza, felt a bit like dining on the shore of Lake Como (as long as you could just ignore the palm trees, and the warnings of more cyclones). In truth, we could have been anywhere hot and beautiful in the world - this is Mauritius, for the very rich, the people who like to hang onto their luxuries wherever they are in the world, and to hell with the local culture.
Arriving at the Royal Palm Beachcomber Luxury hotel in Grand Baie, we felt as if we had been through three different countries and eras in one small car trip: the prehistoric verdant jungle in the south; the 1930s army camps in the middle; and then, in the north, a sort of westernised glimpse into the present day.
We were greeted in the hotel lobby by the type of five-star luxury that would not have looked out of place in Dubai. Certainly, it would have been a shock to young Dennis, who even today would probably struggle with the fuss that the staff made of each and every guest. The waiters seemed to be telepathic - before my husband had even produced a cigar they were coming at him with gleaming ashtrays and lighters. There were no rooms, just suites, which opened up onto the beach. Ours looked like it had leapt from the pages of Elle Decoration - it had a larger square footage than our home back in London.
We had no complaints, of course - it is hard to find anything to moan about when your daughter’s every whim is being catered to by an army of happy campers from the kids club, and there is a magnificent spa on site. But we thought we might skip the opulence of Grand Baie from the slide show when we returned to Salisbury. All that decadence might have given Papa a funny turn.
Indeed, boarding the plane back, finding ourselves unexpectedly upgraded, but our daughter still protesting about how hard it was to sleep, it occurred to me that none of us even knew we had been born.
Essentials
Beachcomber Tours (01483 445 685; beachcombertours.uk) offers seven nights in a Junior Suite at Royal Palm Beachcomber Luxury (telegraph.co.uk/tt-royalpalmbeachlux) on a half board basis, with a choice of complimentary land and water sports, return economy class flights from the UK and private hotel transfers from ￡2,590 per person sharing, departures in June 2019.
Seven nights in a Junior Suite at Dinarobin Beachcomber Golf Resort & Spa (telegraph.co.uk/tt-dinarobinbeach) on a half board basis with complimentary lunches, choice of complimentary land and water sports, return economy lass flights from the UK and private hotel transfers costs from ￡1,645 per person sharing, departures in June 2019.
