Blue Bay is the official public beach closest to Mahebourg. This attractive beach can get quite busy on weekends. Good private beaches stretch back to Mahebourg, past Pointe des Deux Cocos to Pointe D' Esny.
The East Coast district of Flacq is quieter than Trou aux Biche or areas on the West Coast. Beaches are the major attraction and as usual, big hotels have picked prime stretches but there is still enough sand and sea left to go around Ile aux Cerfs. The only trouble is the lack of budget accommodation. Sea breezes are more common on the East Coast, bringing bracing air to the beaches from Roches Noires to Poste Lafayette. The Belle Mare area is renowned for the white sweep of sands at Palmar, while the beach at Trou'd Eau Deuce narrows as it extends to Mahebourg.
About 7km north of Mahebourg, Vieux Grand Port has great historical significance for Mauritius. The Dutch made Vieux Grand Port their base and called it Fort Fredrick Henric. About 4km from Mahebourg, on the bank of a river, is a monument commemorating the first landing by Dutch sailors, which took place on 9 September 1598 under the command of Wyband Van Warwick. The Monument was erected in 1948 by the Mauritius Historical Society.
The Mauritius Radio Telescope (MRT) is a synthesis radio telescope that is used to make images of the sky at a frequency of 151.5 MHz. The MRT was primarily designed to make a survey with a point source sensitivity of 150 mJy. Its resolution is about 4 arc min. The MRT is a T-shaped array consisting of 1019 fixed helical antennas in the East-West arm (2 km) arranged in 32 groups and 64 helical antennas, four per trolley, on 16 movable trolleys in the North-South (880 m). There is a single trolley in the North arm. The North South arm is built along the old Port Louis to Flacq railway line.
The reef, which nearly surrounds Mauritius, has a major break in it on the south-east coast. Instead of beach and calm lagoon, the sea rushes up against lava rocks and cliffs, carving out a variety of stacks and other coastline sculptures, the best known of which is Le Souffleur. If you walk for about 20 minutes along the cliffs east from Le Souffleur, you will come to a spectacular natural bridge formed when the roof of a sea cave collapsed. To get there take the Plaine Mahebourg to Souillac.
