Grand Baie Tickets and Tours | GetExperience.com

Grand Baie is a sheltered bay on the northern tip of Mauritius, a fishing village that became the island's main resort strip without losing the village. The reef sits close in and the water inside stays flat, which is why the north is where the boats are: catamarans leave for Coin de Mire, the wedge-shaped islet offshore, and for Flat Island and Gabriel Island beyond. On land it is restaurants, a craft market and the busiest evening scene on the island bar Port Louis, with Pereybere up the coast, Trou-aux-Biches the other way.

What is listed against Grand Baie itself is not boats but air. Helicopter flights lift off from the Triolet pad, ten minutes inland, and take in the north coast, where the geography finally makes sense: the reef as one white line, the lagoon in three or four shades of blue, Coin de Mire from overhead, the resort coast running west. They come as a shared circuit of around twenty-five minutes and a shorter private hop — and the private one costs more while lasting less, because what you buy is the aircraft to yourselves and a departure time of your choosing.

Practical. Flights depend on wind and are rescheduled more than anything else on the island, so take a morning slot and keep the afternoon loose; May to November is the drier, cooler half and the more reliable one for flying, January to March the cyclone window. If the underwater waterfall is what you came for — the illusion of a cascade pouring off the shelf — it lies off Le Morne, the opposite corner of the island, and those flights leave from Chamarel rather than here. Boat trips from Grand Baie are a separate booking, usually half a day, leaving early while the lagoon is still glass. In the village, cards work in restaurants and cash in the craft market, where the first price is an opening bid; ten per cent is a generous tip and no percentage is expected. Reef shoes are worth the space.