Grand Baie

Grand Baie began as a sheltered anchorage rather than a settlement. The wide bay on the north coast, sheltered by reefs and by the cape at Pointe aux Canonniers, gave boats a safe anchorage, and a fishing village grew up behind the beach with cane estates inland.

The decisive event of the area's history happened here. In late November 1810 a British force of several thousand men came ashore at Grand Baie, near Cap Malheureux, and marched south to take the capital, ending French rule over the island within days. For the next century and a half the north remained agricultural — sugar, market gardening and fishing — with Grand Baie a modest weekend retreat for families from the capital and the plateau towns.

Tourism changed it in the later 20th century, when the calm, shallow, reef-sheltered water of the north proved ideal for sailing, diving and day cruises. Hotels spread along the bay and out to the headlands, the fishing jetties filled with catamarans, and shops, restaurants and bars took over the village street. The town now runs on visitors, while Triolet and the inland villages a few kilometres away carry on much as before — a contrast that defines the whole of northern Mauritius.

For a resort, Grand Baie is unusually mixed. Its year follows the island's crowded religious calendar rather than a tourist season: Maha Shivaratri in February or March empties the villages as pilgrims walk south to the sacred lake in the highlands; Cavadee brings Tamil processions to the kovils; Divali lights the roads in autumn; Eid and Chinese New Year are marked by the town's Muslim and Sino-Mauritian families; and the Catholic parishes hold their own feast days. The temple at Triolet, a few kilometres inland, is the biggest Hindu temple on the island, and the first pilgrims to Ganga Talao set out from Triolet in 1898.

The sea shapes local identity as much as faith. Fishing families still launch pirogues from the beaches at dawn, and skippers, boatmen and dive instructors are familiar figures on the waterfront. Sega — the drum, rattle and call-and-response music that came out of the songs of enslaved Mauritians — is played in bars and at hotel evenings, and seggae, the local fusion of sega with reggae, is heard alongside it.

Manners are relaxed but not casual. Creole is the everyday language, French the language of business and much of the signage, and English is widely understood. Visitors who greet shopkeepers before asking a question, dress modestly away from the sand and agree prices in advance will find the town straightforward and good-humoured.

Grand Baie itself had a resident population of roughly 12,000 at the 2011 census, though the number of people in the town on any given day is far higher once staff commuting in from Triolet, Goodlands and the surrounding villages, and visitors staying along the coast, are counted. It lies mainly in the Rivière du Rempart district, with its western part in Pamplemousses district.

Almost everything here depends on tourism: hotels and guesthouses, restaurants, dive centres and boat operators, taxi drivers, shops and the building trade that serves them. Around it, the older economy persists — sugarcane and vegetable plots inland, fishing from the beaches, and small businesses along the Triolet road — and a growing number of residential estates house Mauritians working in Port Louis as well as foreign residents.

The day starts early, with fishing boats out before dawn and shops opening by eight; the middle of the afternoon is hot and quiet; the strip fills again in the evening, when the restaurants and bars are at their liveliest. The pressures are those of a small place that grew fast: traffic on a coast road never built for it, pressure on water and drainage, rising land prices, and erosion and coral damage in a bay used heavily by boats.

Eating in Grand Baie divides between what the visitors eat and what the town eats, and the second is the more interesting. Vans and pavement counters sell dholl puri — thin split-pea flatbreads wrapped around bean curry, tomato rougaille and chilli chutney — along with gâteaux piments, the fried split-pea and chilli fritters eaten by the handful, samosas, and boulettes, fish or meat balls with chouchou served in a clear broth. Alouda, a sweet cold milk drink, is the standard answer to the heat.

Seafood is the town's restaurant speciality, brought in by the boats that work the lagoon and the drop-off beyond the reef: grilled fish, octopus salad or vindaye, cooked with vinegar, mustard seed and turmeric, and prawns in garlic. Creole kitchens serve rougaille of fish or sausage, cari with brèdes — the leafy greens that come with almost every meal — and the Chinese-Mauritian staples of fried noodles and bol renversé are found on the same menus.

Fruit is sold from stalls and handcarts: pineapple cut and dusted with chilli salt, mango, lychee in season, and coconuts opened to order. To drink there is island-grown tea, Phoenix beer and local rum, served in the bars along the bay.