Mauritius – Helicopter – Sightseeing Flight
To get to know the island of Mauritius from a bird’s eye view, we decided to charter a helicopter. This starts at the airport and picks us up directly at the hotel for a sightseeing flight over the island. The flight had to be organized by “Air Mauritius”, as there is still no company here that offers helicopter sightseeing flights as a package. The organization was correspondingly complex…. and the price.
The helicopter lands next to the hotel on an open meadow…..completely unspectacular and without obtaining a permit…… (probably completely unthinkable in Old Germany). Here on the island of Mauritius, this is handled in a completely less complicated way.
The aircraft, we were promised, is newer and the pilots are to be trained by Air Mauritius. So we don’t have any big concerns and are already looking forward to the probably magnificent view of the island from lofty heights.
We start across the lagoon. On the right you can see the small offshore island “Ile Aux Cerfs”, which belongs to the hotel and maintains its own small beach business here. In the background, the open sea and the border to the outer reef can be seen, where the water quickly reaches a depth of several hundred meters. The outer reef can be recognized by the small white stripe in the photo below the horizon.
We also fly over the interior and are amazed by the varied landscape. To the right is a waterfall that flows into a small lake. The island has a large population of game. From the helicopter we see numerous large herds of native deer species, which find enough food in the wide grassy and shrub landscapes.
Up to 25,000 animals are said to live on the island. Around 3,000 animals are released for hunting every year. These measures are necessary to reduce the game population to a level necessary for the ecological balance. Otherwise, the animals would deprive themselves of their food source, as there are no more natural enemies on the island.
The flight takes about two hours. We got to know much of the northern island and the interior from the air. From the helicopter we were able to get a first impression of the diversity of the island. We will take advantage of this and carry out our further explorations selectively by car.
After our pilot has dropped us off directly at the hotel, he says goodbye to us again with a short lap of honor. We enjoyed this exciting and informative short trip and now we have to process the new impressions. For the next few days we have planned to explore the island with a rental car. We want to take our time and also spend the night in various places on the island, as day trips on the local roads are simply too stressful.
We are already excited to see what new impressions we will gain on our next stages.
