Heading southwest towards Souillac from the busy area around the airport, you step back into a far more traditional, rural Mauritius of cane fields and small village communities.
The village of L’Escalier takes its name from Baron Daniel l’Escalier, a French officer. There is a road here, which winds through sugarcane fields to Le Souffleur, a blowhole formed in the rocks of the coast. (See What to see in Southern Mauritius, page 160).
Rivière des Anguilles (Eel River) has the atmosphere of a country village. It has all the essentials: petrol station and ATMs, plus plenty of fruit and vegetable stalls and pavement vendors. Just south of the town is La Vanille Réserve des Mascareignes, formerly known as the La Vanille Crocodile and Tortoise Park (see What to see in Southern Mauritius, pages 159–62).
North of Rivière des Anguilles is the immaculately maintained Britannia Sugar Estate. The odour of warm sugar pervades the air and workers swathed in protective clothing tend the sugar crop. Just north of here is a turning to the village of Camp Diable and the Tookay Temple, an impressive colourful temple in the midst of the cane fields.
Further north on the main road (A9) is the turning to Grand Bois, which is surrounded by fields of tea bushes belonging to the Bois Chéri Tea Estate. One can only marvel at the women who work in the fields plucking the tea leaves with mechanical precision and dropping them into their wicker baskets. Their speed and dexterity is even more amazing when you consider how meagre the rewards are. They work from 04.00 to midday and are paid about Rs5 per kilogram picked; on a good day they can pick around 60–80kg. The leaves they pick are transported to the nearby Bois Chéri Tea Factory, which has produced tea since 1892. It is worth taking a guided tour of the factory and museum, followed by a tea tasting. (For details, see What to see in Southern Mauritius, pages 159–62.)
Off the road to Souillac, 2km south of Rivière des Anguilles, is Le Saint Aubin, an attractive colonial house built in 1819, which has been transformed into a wonderful restaurant (see opposite). You can learn about vanilla, sugar and rum production and enjoy the tropical gardens. The anthuriums grown here are of the andreanium type and have been grown in the region for nearly 200 years, but it is only during the past 30 years that the growing of anthuriums has become the first horticultural industry in Mauritius. The wax-like leaf (actually the flower spathe) is normally pink although some varieties are blood red and others white. The plants, which bloom all year, are grown in humid, warm conditions under vast awnings of netting.
The fishing town of Souillac lies midway between the east and west corners of the island. It is named after Vicomte de Souillac, Governor of Mauritius from 1779 to 1787, who encouraged settlers to develop the south of the island. There is a ponderous, black stone Roman Catholic church here dedicated to St Jacques. It was built between 1853 and 1856, and restored in 1997.
On the coast in the town are the Telfair Gardens. Charles Telfair was a British planter who arrived with Governor Farquhar in 1810 and took over the sugar factory at Bel Ombre. He published pamphlets on his enlightened treatment of slaves which only won him censure from abolitionists. He was a keen amateur botanist. The garden bearing his name is mostly lawn, badamier (Indian almond) and banyan (Ficus benghalensis) trees, and drops steeply down to the sea. It is a popular picnic spot for locals, but bathing in the sea below is dangerous because of currents.
Across the road from the ocean, the building that houses the police station was used in the 18th century to accommodate slaves working on the sugar plantations, who every morning would walk down to the wharf at Port Souillac. After the opening in 1878 of the Rose Belle/Souillac branch of the Port Louis to Mahébourg railway line, the building was used for train passengers. The railway closed in 1954.
A little further along the coast, is the site of the house where Robert Edward Hart, half-French, half-Irish Mauritian poet and writer, spent his last years. In 1967, the house was turned into an evocative free museum. In 2002, the Mauritius Museums Council was forced to rebuild the house because of its poor condition, but it has been kept as close to the original as possible. Hart is buried in the cemetery on the point across the bay. He shares it with a number of British and French soldiers and drowned seamen whose tombs have been defaced by the fierceness of the elements. Bones were scattered around the graveyard by the cyclone of 1962.
Inland from Souillac are Rochester Falls. The falls are signed from the main road just west of Souillac and reached on foot by following signposts through cane fields. Fed by water flowing down from the Savanne Mountains, they are not high but reveal vertical columns created in the rocks by the constant pounding of the falling water.
Also inland from Souillac, about 10km north of the town, is La Vallée des Couleurs, an exposed area of the stratum under the earth’s crust, similar to the Seven Coloured Earths at Chamarel.
On the coast just beyond Le Nef is Gris Gris, a viewpoint where black cliffs drop away sharply. There is a beach where swimming is dangerous, despite the apparent shallow lagoon formed by the reef that runs close to the shore. The name Gris Gris is associated with local witchcraft. There are deep chasms in the cliffs surrounding the beach which lead to a distinctive headland known as La Roche Qui Pleure (The Crying Rock), so called because one of the rocks here is said to resemble a crying man. You can walk out on the headland to look for the face but take care, as the path is steep and the rocks uneven. The rock that you’re looking for is on the furthest point, facing out to sea. When the waves roll in water drenches his face and he is then crying.
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