49 Fun Facts About Mauritius

Mauritius lies east of which much larger island?

Madagascar. Mauritius lies well to its east and had no inhabitants at all when the Dutch claimed it in 1598, so its whole population descends from people who arrived later.

What is the capital and largest city of Mauritius?

Port Louis. French governor Mahé de La Bourdonnais founded it in the 1730s as a stop for ships rounding the Cape, and it lost much of that traffic when the Suez Canal opened in 1869.

Mauritius and French Réunion belong to which island group?

The Mascarene Islands. Réunion is still an overseas department of France, so the island next door to Mauritius is part of the eurozone.

Mauritius was named in 1598 in honour of whom?

Maurice, Prince of Orange. Admiral Wybrand van Warwyck named the empty island for the Dutch head of state in 1598; the Dutch gave up on it by 1710, but their name for it outlasted them.

Under French rule from 1715, Mauritius was known by what name?

Isle de France. The name lasted until the British captured the island in 1810 and brought back the old Dutch one, though the settlers kept their French language, laws and customs.

Which Dutch navigator set out from Mauritius in 1642 and became the first European to reach New Zealand?

Abel Tasman. On the same voyage he named his first landfall Van Diemen's Land after his patron; the island was later renamed Tasmania after Tasman himself.

Which American author's 1897 travel book records a local's boast that heaven was copied after Mauritius?

Mark Twain. In Following the Equator he reports one citizen's claim that Mauritius was made first and heaven copied from it, then adds that another citizen calls this an exaggeration.

Which British explorer, fresh from sailing right around Australia, was held on Mauritius for over six years?

Matthew Flinders. He put in with a leaking ship in 1803, and Governor Decaen, said to have taken him for a spy, kept him there even after Napoleon approved his release in 1806.

Which 1788 French novel by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is a love story set on Mauritius?

Paul et Virginie. Its author knew the setting first-hand: he had served on the island as an army engineer from 1768 to 1771, twenty years before the book came out.

Which crop dominated Mauritius's economy from the 18th century until independence?

The island was the British Empire's main producer of it.

After slavery ended, Mauritius's planters brought around half a million indentured labourers from which country?

India. The workers were shipped in to cut cane from 1834, and their descendants now make up about two-thirds of all Mauritians.

What did Mauritius become in 1992?

A republic. Independence in 1968 had left Queen Elizabeth II as head of state; 24 years later to the day, a Mauritian president took her place.

Which independence leader, whose name is on Mauritius's main airport, became the country's first prime minister?

Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam. A doctor by training, he won the first election held under universal suffrage in 1959 and went on to lead the country until 1982.

Mauritius's final court of appeal is based in which city?

London. Mauritius has been independent since 1968, yet its court of last resort is still a British tribunal, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

Which island group did the UK split from Mauritius in 1965 to form its Indian Ocean Territory?

Chagos. Britain removed the islanders to make way for a US military base, and in 2019 the International Court of Justice advised that the 1965 split had been unlawful.

Under the treaty Mauritius and Britain signed in May 2025, which island stays on a 99-year British lease?

Diego Garcia. The treaty gives Mauritius sovereignty over the surrounding islands while Britain keeps running the atoll's US military base; by early 2026 it was signed but not yet in force.

Satellite and aerial images of Mauritius's south-west tip appear to show which natural wonder?

An underwater waterfall. It is an optical illusion: the shallow shelf drops away to thousands of metres, and sand drifting over the edge looks like the sea pouring into a chasm.

Which autonomous island of Mauritius lies more than 500 km east of the main island?

Rodrigues. Most of its people descend from enslaved Africans brought by French colonists, and since 2002 the island has run its everyday affairs through its own regional assembly.

Mauritius's highest peak rises 828 metres, matching the height of which skyscraper?

Burj Khalifa. The peak, Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire, only just holds its title: Pieter Both, a rock spire crowned with a huge boulder, stands about eight metres lower.

Which natural process built the island of Mauritius?

Undersea volcanic eruptions. The lava is geologically young, yet its sands hold far older zircon crystals, which geologists read as traces of a lost continent, Mauritia, buried beneath the island.

Which flightless bird, extinct soon after human settlement, lived only on Mauritius?

The dodo. It was gone within a century of the Dutch landing in 1598, done in by hunters and, probably more, by the pigs, rats, cats and dogs that came ashore with them and ate its eggs.

What is the closest living relative of the dodo?

The Nicobar pigeon. DNA from the dodo remains kept in Oxford points to this colourful island pigeon of South-East Asia, which makes the dodo an outsized pigeon that gave up flying.

Which children's classic has a Dodo who organises a 'Caucus-race'?

Alice in Wonderland. Carroll's Dodo lets everyone run in circles, then rules that all have won and all must have prizes; the real bird had last been reliably seen in 1662, two centuries earlier.

Which of these endemic Mauritian birds has survived thanks to intensive conservation?

Pink pigeon. As few as ten were left in the wild before a captive-breeding colony set up by the Durrell trust rebuilt the flock to a few hundred birds.

Which religion has the most followers in Mauritius?

Hinduism. About half of Mauritians are Hindu, a legacy of the plantation workers shipped in during the 1800s; Christians, mostly Catholic, make up about a third.

What is the mother tongue of most Mauritians?

Mauritian Creole. It is built on French, the language of the colonists who ran the island until 1810, and it outlasted more than 150 years of British rule to stay the everyday tongue.

Which naturalist visited Mauritius in 1836 and rode the only elephant then on the island?

Charles Darwin. He spent ten days on Mauritius near the end of the Beagle voyage, and what surprised him most about the borrowed elephant, he wrote, was its 'quite noiseless step'.

The traditional music of Mauritius, rooted in the songs of slaves, is called what?

Sega. Singers make up the words as they go while the tempo climbs, and the dancers circle each other in short, shuffling steps; UNESCO lists it as intangible cultural heritage.

Mauritius is one of the few countries to get by without which institution?

A standing army. When the British garrison left in 1960, defence passed to the police, whose paramilitary Special Mobile Force and coast guard still do the job.

Which Mauritian street food is a soft flatbread stuffed with ground yellow split peas?

Dholl puri. Rolled around bean curry and chutney, it grew out of the flatbreads that plantation workers brought with them and remade with whatever the island had to hand.

Mauritius's Le Morne Brabant mountain became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008 as a symbol of what?

Resistance to slavery. Runaway slaves, called maroons, built hideouts in its caves and on its summit behind near-unclimbable cliffs; legend says some leapt to their deaths rather than be retaken.

Mauritius's UNESCO-listed Aapravasi Ghat was historically what?

A reception depot for indentured labourers. In 1834 Britain chose Mauritius for its 'great experiment' in replacing slaves with contract workers, and almost half a million of them landed here.

Which four colours make up the horizontal bands of Mauritius's flag?

Red, blue, yellow and green. Schoolteacher Gurudutt Moher designed the 'Four Bands' for independence in 1968, but the state honoured him for it only in 2018, months after his death.

Mauritius's first stamps, now among the world's rarest, were used in 1847 to post invitations to which event?

The governor's wife's ball. Lady Gomm's invitations carried stamps from a printing of just 500 of each value, and one of those envelopes sold in 2021 for more than eight million euros.

The Champ de Mars in Mauritius's capital has hosted which sport since 1812?

Horse racing. Its turf club is the oldest in the Southern Hemisphere, and the same ground was chosen in 1968 for the ceremony that proclaimed independence and raised the new flag.

Mauritius won its first Olympic medal in 2008 when bantamweight Bruno Julie took bronze in which sport?

Boxing. Mauritius had gone to every Summer Games since 1984 without a medal; Julie's run to the Beijing semi-finals was enough, because Olympic boxing gives both losing semi-finalists a bronze.

In 2020 volunteers in Mauritius stuffed sacks and tights with straw and human hair to fight what?

An oil spill. The bulk carrier Wakashio hit a coral reef that July and leaked about 1,000 tonnes of fuel, so islanders built floating barriers out of anything that would soak it up.

Which Nobel Prize-winning French novelist comes from a Mauritian family and also holds Mauritian nationality?

J. M. G. Le Clézio. He was born in Nice, not on the island, but his family had lived on Mauritius for generations, and the Nobel Foundation lists its 2008 winner under both countries.

In the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2023 Democracy Index, Mauritius fell into which category?

Full democracy. Mauritius was the only African country in the top tier that year and ranked joint 20th in the world, nine places above the United States, which the index rated a flawed democracy.

Mauritius provides which of these free to its citizens?

Health care and public transport for students and pensioners are free too.

Which Franco-Mauritian politician founded the opposition MMM in 1969 and finally became prime minister in 2003?

Paul Bérenger. He spent the 1970s as a trade-union organiser and waited 34 years for the top job, which came through a mid-term handover agreed with his coalition partner.

In 2017 Mauritius's prime minister Anerood Jugnauth stepped down mid-term and handed the job to whom?

His son. Pravind Jugnauth took over without an election in January 2017, then won a mandate of his own at the polls in 2019.

From its base in Mauritius, the registry AFRINIC hands out which resource across the whole of Africa?

Internet addresses. Mauritius was chosen from a shortlist of host countries in 2004, and a year later AFRINIC was recognised as the world's fifth regional internet registry.

As of 2022, which country was Mauritius's largest trading partner on its own continent?

South Africa. In 2022 it bought more Mauritian exports than any other country, edging out France, and it was also the island's third-biggest supplier of imports.

Which prized plants did French botanist Pierre Poivre smuggle out of the Dutch East Indies to grow on Mauritius?

Nutmeg and cloves. The Dutch guarded both spices as a monopoly; Poivre also served as the island's administrator and built up the botanical garden at Pamplemousses.

In 2015 Mauritius began a mass cull of which protected mammal over damage to its fruit crops?

A flying fox. The government had thousands of the island's fruit bats shot, although research cited by the IUCN at the time put the bats' share of the lost fruit at only a small fraction.

What is unusual about the sand dunes at Chamarel in Mauritius?

They are striped in seven colours. Iron tints the sand red and aluminium blue, and the grains sort themselves: mix a handful together and they settle back into separate bands.

Which animals from the Seychelles were released on a Mauritian islet to spread the seeds of its rare ebony trees?

Giant tortoises. Mauritius's own had been hunted out, so Aldabra tortoises were brought in as stand-ins; they eat the fallen ebony fruit, and seeds that pass through them sprout better.

Mauritius lies a little north of which line of latitude?

The Tropic of Capricorn. At about 20 degrees south, Mauritius has its seasons upside down for northern visitors: Christmas falls in the hot summer, which is also when cyclones strike.