Indian Ocean · Mauritius
Mauritius Road Trips by Car: Chamarel, Gorges, Grand Bassin
Four real day loops across Mauritius, honest drive times, and what to know before your first roundabout.
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Jump to the resultsAutomatics built for the climb
Almost the entire fleet is automatic, which suits the mountain roads to Chamarel well.
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Jump to the resultsOne loop, five stops: the south west by car
This is the drive most visitors mean when they picture a day out on Mauritius. It starts and ends at a hotel on the west or south coast, runs to about four to six hours with stops, and covers three sights that only really work as one connected route rather than three separate trips.
Leaving the coast for the mountain road
The road climbs almost as soon as it turns inland, and the temperature drops a few degrees before you notice the view has changed.
Chamarel: the Seven Coloured Earths and the waterfall
Both sights sit within a few minutes of each other and are worth a full morning rather than a drive-through stop.
Black River Gorges viewpoint and Alexandra Falls
A short continuation along the same road, with a viewpoint over the forest canopy that most coach tours skip in favour of Chamarel alone.
Grand Bassin, the crater lake
The island's most important Hindu pilgrimage site, with tall statues of Shiva and Durga at the entrance. It is an active temple, and visitors dress and behave accordingly.
Back down to the coast
Le Morne or Baie du Cap both sit at the bottom of the descent, so the loop closes without doubling back on itself.
The loops people talk about after they land back home
“We did the south west loop in one day: Chamarel by mid morning, the gorges by noon, and standing at Grand Bassin before the tour coaches arrived. Nobody warned us it would be the best day of the whole trip.”
“The Gris Gris cliffs at the end of the south coast road looked nothing like the calm beaches everywhere else on the island. Worth doing the whole loop just to reach them.”
“Trou aux Cerfs surprised us completely. We had not planned the climb up to Curepipe, and it was noticeably cooler up there than the coast we had left that morning.”
What changes once you leave the coast road
A loop like the south west route spends most of its time away from the resort strip, on roads that behave a little differently to the ones between your hotel and the beach. None of it is difficult, but it is worth knowing before you are already halfway up the mountain.
Roundabouts turn clockwise
You give way to traffic already on the roundabout, coming from your right, exactly the mirror of a continental Europe habit.
One motorway, two names
The M1 and M2 link the airport, Port Louis and the north. Everywhere else you are on a single carriageway, however wide it looks on the map.
40 km/h in villages is real
It is camera enforced, and a village can arrive with little warning between two stretches of open road. Watch for the sign rather than the buildings.
Buses, scooters and dogs share your lane
Buses stop where their passengers are, scooters filter between queued cars, and stray dogs are common at dusk on the quieter roads.
Summer rain arrives hard and passes
From November to April a downpour can turn a clear afternoon opaque for ten minutes. Slow down rather than stop, and it clears as fast as it came.
Fill up before the plateau or the south coast
Stations are frequent on the main coast roads and noticeably thinner once you climb inland or head along the wilder south.
The island in drive time, not kilometres
65 km
from the northern tip to the southern coast
90 min
the longest one way drive anywhere on the island
3 to 6 hrs
what a full loop with stops usually runs to
40 km/h
the real, camera enforced village limit
Two roads worth slowing down for
The mountain climb inland, and the coast the loops keep returning to.
The four loops at a glance
The wild south coast is the drive people remember most: the B9 coast road runs from Baie du Cap past the Maconde viewpoint, a hairpin set on a rock above the sea, through Souillac, with Rochester Falls close by and the Gris Gris cliffs marking the point where the reef stops and the open ocean hits the rock directly. It sees the least tourist traffic of any drive on the island.
The north loop runs from Port Louis up through the Pamplemousses botanical garden, home to giant water lilies, to Cap Malheureux and its red roofed chapel, then back along the northern villages. The plateau route climbs to Curepipe and the Trou aux Cerfs crater before dropping to the Bois Cheri tea estate and down through Saint Aubin to the south coast, and it runs noticeably cooler and wetter than the beach you left that morning, which surprises most first time visitors. A fifth run, out to the east coast and Ile aux Cerfs, is worth doing too, and it gets its own page: see the Trou d'Eau Douce guide.
| Loop | Starts near | Drive time | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| The south west loop | West or south coast hotels | 4 to 6 hours with stops | Chamarel, Black River Gorges, Grand Bassin |
| The wild south coast | Baie du Cap or Souillac | 2 to 3 hours | Maconde, Rochester Falls, the Gris Gris cliffs |
| The north loop | Grand Baie or Trou aux Biches | 3 to 4 hours | Port Louis, Pamplemousses gardens, Cap Malheureux |
| The plateau and tea route | Any coast, climbing inland | 3 to 5 hours | Curepipe, Trou aux Cerfs, the Bois Cheri estate |
Curated results
Mauritius on the podium
One car takes the whole stage. Two get a card. The rest get a line.
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Book nowQuestions before your first day trip
You can reach Chamarel and the gorges viewpoint in half a day if you skip Grand Bassin, but the three sights together are built for a full day: figure four to six hours once you add photo stops and the drive back down. Starting early, before the coach groups, is what makes the shorter version feel unhurried rather than rushed.
Traffic already on the roundabout has priority, and it flows clockwise, so you look right before entering rather than left. It takes most visitors one or two roundabouts to stop hesitating, and Port Louis has several close together on the way out of town, which is a fair place to get the habit fixed early.
No. The climb is a steady, well surfaced road with switchbacks rather than a track, and the compact automatics that make up almost the whole local fleet handle it without any drama. Go slowly on the bends for the view as much as for the road, and let faster local traffic pass rather than rushing to keep up.
Between November and April a downpour can arrive with very little warning and cut visibility hard for ten or fifteen minutes. The right response is to slow down and put your lights on, not to stop on the road. It almost always passes as quickly as it started, and the rest of the loop is usually fine.
It is legal and common, but roads away from the coast towns have little or no street lighting, and that is exactly why these loops are written as daytime drives. Plan to be back on a lit coast road, or parked at your hotel, before the sun goes down rather than finishing a mountain drive in the dark.