holiday to mauritius

aakayb

hi

does anyone know any the best priced websites for holidays to mauritus?

is it cheaper to book a package deal or book flight and hotel separately?

am planning to go in july for 10-14 days.

System

Try Mercury Direct (can't remember website, search via Google).

TMFTP

Spoke to Travelman about this recvently - he recommended Hayes & Jarvis.

https://www.hayesandjarvis.co.uk/

Nile

Went to a different destination with Hayes & Jarvis and had a bad experience with them so personally wouldn't use them again or recommend them.

I've sent a PM to the original poster.

System

company in Glasgow who specialise in Mru and Dubai, went on Educational with them recently to view their propertys have to say it was fabulous. sorry meant to say company called If only....

Juicy_Tube

Mauritius is just wonderful-hope you find a good deal!

Do All-Inclusive if you can as it is very expensive. This is the only place where we haven't done this and boy did we get a shock for our bill!! Dinks etc, are outrageous..
Be warned. But have a fab time, a truly wonderful place, more so if you get the right deal..

cathryn107

We went to mauritius with ebookers (no connection - they were just really good) a couple of years ago and had a wonderful time - it's certainly the cheapest but not the conventional way of doing it. I went for about 2 1/2 weeks B&B incl flight for about £650 (based on two sharing). Most holidays start at at least twice that price.

99% of Mauritius holidays seems to be the all-inclusive, never leave the hotel for a fortnight type of deal. Why bother? You could be anywhere. The Ebookers deal places you in a B&B in Grand Baie (really a small holiday town, but the main tourist area) about a street away from the beach. I think that they now offer other B&B hotels but only Les Orchidees, where we stayed, is really central. It's a sweet clean basic hotel with a tiny pool.

Ignore people who say there's nothing to do in Maurituis.
Can't recommend it enough.

A few points:

Very very safe and friendly place. Engligh and French spoken almost equally well (I never made it past GCSE French and had virtually no problem)

There's no such thing as a private beach - everyone has the right to settle down on the area between low and high tides, so you can access every bit of coast. There are many great beaches, and the island is small enough to explore easily.

We hired a car, which is really cheap, to explore, but used the bus to visit Port Louis, the capital, a couple of times.

The capital is very interesting - it has one of the last two stuffed dodos in the world in its museum. Terrifyingly, in the fish section they've sewn teddy-bear eyes into all the fishy exhibits. arghhhhh! Very few tourists go to Port Louis - we went to the photography musuem and there were so few people there the curator gave us a tour!

Good shopping - Mauritius makes a lot of designer goods for Ralph Lauren etc, so there are lots of cheap tourist shops.

Great scenery - there's an extinct volcano, great moutains, tea plantations, a very good botanic garden at Pamlemousse with giant tortoises, and a huge Hindu temple and lake complex called Grand Bassin with lots of monkeys and giant eels, a model ship-making factory and a Guinness distillery.

You can do a speedboat or sailboat day trip to Ile aux Ceauf or similar.

Grand Baie has great restaurants - very reasonable (indian, Thai, creole, Chinese, Italian etc) and you can eat a different cusine every night, sip cocktails on the sand. It also has a huge hypermarket, the Super U, where you can get food, wine, cheap snorkels and internet access. We were fortunate enough to turn up at a local bar on its opening night so the German owner fed us free cocktails all night. ;D Lots of French and German tourists - Americans and Brits have not really discovered Mauriitius.

It's a mainly Hindu island and we were lucky enough to be there during Diwali, the festival of lights. The place was lit by candles at night and you couldn't even go to the internet cafe without being offered free cake!

I would really recommend this above the usual resort-type holiday. Most of the resorts are in the middle of nowhere - my other half had a colleague who went to one on honeymoon and confessed to being 'bored' by the second week (no idea what his new wife made of this!). We did a great deal of sightseeing and actvities and also a great deal of relaxing. You can still veg even if you're not in a 5* resort!

If I can't persuade you away from a resort, at least try and stay near Grand Baie or get a hire car. It would be a shame to stay in the hotel for two weeks and not explore.

There's a good lonely planet guide to Mauritius.

Hope this helps. We've typed this with very fond memories!

Cathryn & Ian

Coo-Heid

sorry, not sure of any good deals

aakayb

have booked the flight, £505. now am looking for accomodation.

EstherPester

hubby has booked for my 40th next year with Mercury Direct £1000 each all inclusive.
Planning to stopover in Dubai on the way back - does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Murtle

not sure when you're going to Dubai - but so long as it's not in their hot season then brilliant - you can also get him to buy you some nice gold jewellery - and stock up on pressies for people whilst you are there!!!!

Not sure if you want advice on Mauritius or Dubai???