GETTING THERE

DIRECT flights to Mauritius cost from around £530 return with British Airways. ba.com Suites at the St Regis Mauritius cost from around £485 per night B&B, and around £721 per night for Manor House Ocean Suites stregismauritius.com

Escaping wartorn Europe, they were denied entry into British Palestine with around 1,600 shipped on to Mauritius, then a British colony. Detained until the end of the Second World War, over one hundred died in the camp’s inhospitable conditions and lie buried in the Jewish section of St. Martin Cemetery.

After the war, the majority chose a new life in what was then Palestine. Today’s small community — where in 2000, they celebrated the first Bar Mitzvah since the war — is unrelated to those once detained here. There’s also a small museum remembering this darker chapter of Mauritian history.

There are happier reminders of the island’s history to be found too, not least in the island’s food with its Indian, Chinese and European influences. At Le Manoir Dining Room — one of the resort’s five restaurants — I try fragrant and spicy Mauritian vegetable curry and palm heart salad. With a fresh taste not dissimilar to artichoke, the palm heart comes from coconut trees and can only be harvested every seven years; a scarcity which explains its local name of ‘Millionaire’s salad’.

And in the hotel’s 1904 bar with its murals of traditional Mauritian life, I make time for signature cocktail La Belle Creole Mary. At the sister hotel in New York, barman Fernand Petiot invented the Bloody Mary in 1934; now each hotel in the collection has a locally inspired interpretation. In true Mauritian style, the exotic twist includes plantation rum and aloe vera juice.

Because in this palm-fringed playground there’s always something unexpected to discover: an island Eden where wildlife, culture and adventure are never far away.