This week’s dream: a blissfully unspoilt Indian Ocean island
It is one of the most remote islands in the Indian Ocean, lying 600km east of its nearest neighbour, Mauritius. And, though it has been inhabited for the past three centuries, Rodrigues remains a “blissfully peaceful” place, says Nigel Tisdall in the FT. Named after the Portuguese explorer Diogo Rodrigues, who visited in 1528, it was permanently settled by the French, after a few aborted attempts, in 1735. Many of its present inhabitants are descended from the enslaved people they brought from Africa. The British took over in 1809, and today, Rodrigues is an autonomous outer island of the Republic of Mauritius. It’s home to some 44,000 people, but has “barely any” traffic, has never been blighted by heavy industry, and receives fewer than 20,000 tourists a year.
The island is only 16km across at its widest, and from its highest point – Mont Limon, at 325m – you can see all its hilly farmland, and the “mesmerising” turquoise lagoon that surrounds it. Hire an e-bike to explore (Rodrigues is so safe, no one bothers with locks). At the Grande Montagne Nature Reserve, there’s a skeleton of the solitaire, a flightless bird unique to the island, which – like the dodo of Mauritius – was hunted to extinction. Also wiped out by humans were the island’s endemic giant tortoises, once so numerous that a visitor wrote you could walk on their backs “for a hundred paces without touching the ground”. You can see 4,000 Aldabra giant tortoises – their nearest relatives – at the François Leguat Reserve. And it’s worth taking a boat out to Île aux Cocos, an uninhabited island where seabirds gather in their thousands.
In the capital, Port Mathurin, you can discover Rodrigues’s traditional music and dance, known as sega tabour. There’s a lively market selling local treats, such as pickled sour lemon, and homemade papaya tart. And elsewhere there are some pleasant beach resorts. Two of them were recently taken over by the hospitality giant Constance Hotels – a sign, perhaps, that “change is coming” to Rodrigues – but hopefully not too fast.