There's more to Mauritius than beaches and sugar cane. Almost 70 square kilometres of the south west of the island is an amazing area of forest, waterfalls and stunning views known as the Black River Gorges National Park. I've seen bits of it before from the car on the way to Chamarel, but have never managed to get Merv off the sofa long enough to go hiking, which is a shame as the main entrance to the park is a ten minute drive from our house.
I finally made it to the park last week with some friends and it was lovely. Their children are quite small so it was only a short walk, but enough to show off the beauty of the park and make me want to go back again.
Unlike a lot of other places in Mauritius, the national park is well indicated and well maintained. At the main entrance near Tamarin, there's a car park, picnic tables, and signposts indicating the distance and direction of the various trails. There's also a visitors' centre but when I went it was closed because it had been vandalised.
I found out further into the walk that the Mauritius Tourism Fund and an association of 19 hotels have been working together to manage and improve the park for visitors.
We walked along a flat, shady trail through the trees. My five-year-old friend pointed out every termite mound we passed; I'm now an expert in termite mound spotting. I was also reliably informed that if you put all the termites in the world on one side of a set of scales, and all the humans in the world on the other, the termite side would be heavier. Nice. For the curious ones, that big, dark coloured thing on the tree in the middle of the picture is a termite mound.
Streams of varying sizes cross the path at several points. Some people stop each time to take off their shoes and wade across barefoot.
Some of us just get wet...
It was pretty cold! My shoes were almost dry when we reached the next one and had to do it all again.
The park is home to over 150 endemic plant species and 9 endemic birds. I wasn't organised enough to take a guide, so I couldn't identify them, and I imagine they're likely to be further into the forest than we walked, but here are some nice scenery pictures:
After about half an hour we reached our destination; a wider stretch of river with a pebbly bank where we sat down for a drink and the boys went in for a swim. It was lovely and peaceful until a group of hikers came along and spent ten minutes wrapping plastic bags around their boots before crossing the river. As they emerged on our side, we could see the bags were full of water, so it was a bit of a waste of time!
As with many places in Mauritius, there was also a small shrine built into a rock by the river:
The highest peak on the island - Le Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire - is in the middle of the park. There are three different paths to the top, one of which is less than 5km because you begin on the heights of the Plaine Champagne and you only actually have to climb 150 metres. I'm hoping to convince Merv to come walking with me, and that's where I want to go next. If the weather is right, there are some amazing views over the south of the island.
In the meantime, here are some shots of the gorges from the Plaine Champagne viewpoint:
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