As good as it gets

I could tell you, as anyone who really knows it will tell you, that there is so much more to Mauritius than beautiful hotels. I could tell you about the coral reefs that almost entirely surround this volcanic island off the southern tip of Africa. I could tell you about the southeast trade winds that gently warm the island through its winter to a pleasurable 23C and soothe it through its November-to-May summers when temperatures loll lazily between 26 and 29C. I could tell you about the turtles, dolphins and whales that make the island so popular with divers, or the wahoo, bonito and blue marlin that hook deep-sea fishermen. Though I wouldn't dwell for long on its indigenous wildlife (the odd mongoose, some deer), I could point out to you the Mauritian kestrel, the Madagascar red fody and the whiskered bulbul that the island is trying to prevent going the way of its once beloved dodo (sightings available only on I Love Mauritius T-shirts). I could walk you through its 177km of coastline with its embarr

I could tell you, as anyone who really knows it will tell you, that there is so much more to Mauritius than beautiful hotels. I could tell you about the coral reefs that almost entirely surround this volcanic island off the southern tip of Africa. I could tell you about the southeast trade winds that gently warm the island through its winter to a pleasurable 23C and soothe it through its November-to-May summers when temperatures loll lazily between 26 and 29C. I could tell you about the turtles, dolphins and whales that make the island so popular with divers, or the wahoo, bonito and blue marlin that hook deep-sea fishermen. Though I wouldn't dwell for long on its indigenous wildlife (the odd mongoose, some deer), I could point out to you the Mauritian kestrel, the Madagascar red fody and the whiskered bulbul that the island is trying to prevent going the way of its once beloved dodo (sightings available only on I Love Mauritius T-shirts). I could walk you through its 177km of coastline with its embarrassment of perfectly white sandy beaches. I could introduce you to its people: Hindus, Christians and Muslims speaking Hindi, English, French, Creole, Urdu, Hakka and Bhojpuri.

But I won't. That's not why I went to Mauritius. And I suspect it's not why you'll be going. I went for the beautiful hotels. And from what I saw at the beautiful hotels, you'll be going to Mauritius to have sex.

Not that the poolsides and beachfronts are a mass of writhing bodies. Despite the preponderance of British holidaymakers, you're about as far away from the bacchanalian bed and bawdiness of Ibiza or Agia Napa as it's possible to be. The distance (12 hours from London) and the cost are enough to deter the booze-and-bonk brigade. That said, Mauritius oozes sex. Beneath every palm tree there is a canoodling couple, at every table hands and gazes are held, the air hotly hums with sweet nothings and ... OK, let's not get carried away here. There are young people and old people, single people and parties of people, as tall and as short and as fat and as thin as any you'll find anywhere on planet holiday, but you'd have to travel the world over to find as many honeymooners per square foot of sand as you'll find here.

And it's no accident that they come. That sand, for one thing, is postcard-perfect. The beaches are brochures come to life, their share of the Indian Ocean as clear and as blue and as bright as any travel agent's photograph. Fly this far and spend this amount of money (it is possible to do Mauritius on the cheap, but it kind of misses the point), and you expect your luxury holiday of a lifetime to do exactly what it says on the tin. And if you're a loller and a sun-worshipper, an eater and a sleeper, then Mauritius is the place for you.

And you don't have to be a honeymooner to appreciate the kind of sun, sea and service that has made the island's reputation. Anyone who has spent more than one mealtime in Mauritius will tell you the same story: the service is second to none. It's what makes the difference between a great hotel, of which the island has many, and a great holiday.

Nowhere is this more true than One&Only Le Saint Géran, which has appeared so many times on lists of the best resort hotels that it could be forgiven for becoming a little blasé about its status. True, it looks a bit intimidating as you approach its imposing entrance and walk through its huge double doors into a wide, stone-flagged lobby, past a little bridge crossing a carp-filled, flamingo-crested stream. But while it's big – 148 junior suites, 14 ocean suites (the larger, even more expensive sort) and a private villa (forget it) – it manages not only to remember your name (God knows what horrible punishment they inflict on staff who fail to address you personally and correctly, because no one, from the manager to the barman, fails to look you in the eye and get it right) but also to remember that you're here to enjoy yourself. So yes, put a cigarette to your lips while lying on your sunlounger and a beach boy appears to rise up from the sand beneath your elbow with a lighted match; but no, your butler, only ever a knock away from your door, does not become a nuisance caller by day two.

Ah, yes, the butler. See how easily that rolled off the keyboard. I almost cringe with shame as I write it. But on an island where the hotels compete ever more vigorously to outdo one another in providing service with a smile, the butler is king. One&Only Le Saint Géran, which claims to have begun the worldwide trend in butler-per-room service, prides itself on butlers who will do anything from polishing your sunglasses to packing your cases (these are duties my own was not asked to perform, but I couldn't stop him strewing rose petals on my pillows every night). Incidentally, the butlers have all been trained by a 76-year-old Englishman called Ivor Spencer who is, it is said, a veteran of many a royal banquet at Buckingham Palace, but don't let that put you off.

One&Only Le Saint Géran is every inch the five-star hotel. It has beautiful, spacious rooms (space is an obsession among hoteliers here: One&Only Le Touessrok, the hotel that rivals One&Only Le Saint Géran in Mauritius for fame and reputation, was levelled and rebuilt in the close season purely to add vital square metres to each of its rooms). It serves fantastic food: the Alain Ducasse restaurant here was the first one to open outside France, which speaks volumes, but culinary standards remain high from breakfast time, through ham-and-cheese toasties on the beach at midday, to half-board dinner by the pool. And its facilities are dead swish (a gorgeous Givenchy spa and all the sporting activities you'd expect from a hotel that charges this much).

Ah, money. You expect to pay heavily for a hotel like this, but if, like me, you can't help converting your bar bill into sterling and keeping a running total in your head until you've drunk enough to forget about it, a headache is never far away. And I don't think I'm alone in this, judging by comments in the visitors' book I found in my room. Ecstatic to a man, woman and child about the heavenliness of One&Only Le Saint Géran, a number of guests had winced at the cost of its drinks and snacks. There are ways to ease the (entirely pleasurable) pain, however. Susie Freeman, who organised mine and many a wallet-conscious Brit's trip, suggests in her welcome pack that you get your taxi-driver to stop at a supermarket en route from the airport and buy water and soft drinks to mix with your duty-free alcohol, saving you a fortune. Now that's my kind of travel operator.

Fancy and chic it may be, but One& Only Le Saint Géran knows how to let its hair down, have a few drinks and a stagger round the poolside dance floor. It mixes a mean margarita, and I knew the house band was good even before I'd drunk my third and taken to the floor. But if, frankly, you've flown thousands of miles to avoid such a spectacle, then an altogether different Mauritian experience can be had at one of the island's relative newcomers to the luxury hotel scene.

Le Prince Maurice, named after the Dutch spice trader Prince Maurice Van Nassau, opened in 1998, but in a country where the biddable (and non-unionised) workforce can erect a fully functioning hotel in just eight weeks, it feels as though it has nestled in its idyllic corner on the north-east coast of the island for ever. It is staggeringly beautiful. Walk through its marbled entrance, neatly sidestepping its water-feature centrepiece (something not every guest has managed), and you are confronted by a stunning infinity pool and the white sands of a sheltered lagoon beyond. Your jaw will drop.

And it is seriously smart. I'd never been on a beach before where everybody seemed to converse in whispers. There is a hushed coolness about the place, from its Nehru-suited staff, gliding silently around the halls and pathways by day, to the sitar player, sitting cross-legged on an open-air stage sending soft-twanging vibes over the heads of diners by night.

Mauritius is where you come when you want to get away from it all, and Le Prince Maurice is where you go to get away from the people getting away from it all. Leave the cross-beamed, thatch-roofed and stone-floored main lobby and you follow the tropical garden paths to one of the 88 thatched huts they laughably call suites. I say laughably because each individual stilted suite is a mini hotel in itself, complete with a movie-star bedroom, a sitting area that could comfortably entertain a wedding party, lounger-bedecked terraces and a bathroom leading out to a walled garden complete with outdoor Jacuzzi. (I don't know about you, but after a childhood of holidays in campsites where outdoor giant chess was the benchmark of exotica, the outdoor Jacuzzi does it, and did it, for me.) That the hut (the hut!) stands on its stilted tiptoes in a natural fish reserve (you can elect for tropical garden or beach-front locations) only adds to the feeling that there's been some colossal clerical error and you've woken up in the dream holiday location of someone far more sophisticated, tasteful and richer than yourself.

Those rich, tasteful and sophisticated types who aren't being pampered at the Prince (the staff have a slightly spooky habit of talking about the hotel as if it was a person) you'll probably find at the nearby Belle Mare Plage resort. That said, they'll be hard to spot, as the richest of them will probably have hired one of the private villas. Enter one of these bigger-than-your-family-home-sized beachfront properties and you need never leave. The best come with a private pool which you can flop into if you can't quite summon up the energy to walk the few yards to the beach at the end of your private garden. And while there's a perfectly nice bar and restaurant round the corner, there is no need to rub shoulders with the neighbours when you can summon anything from a five-course dinner to a cream tea from your personal Villa Master.

See, it's happening again. First the butler, now the Villa Master. If, like me, you are intimidated by mere maître d's, then you may find the prospect of the close attentions of someone called a Villa Master somewhat traumatising. I did my best to keep him in gainful employment, but as my every desire didn't extend much beyond breakfast by the pool, my VM soon gave up on me. But, this being Mauritius, whenever some extravagant whim did wash over me, he would miraculously appear with, ooh, a pot of tea, or a drop of rum and Coke, or the instructions for the DVD player. By all accounts Claudia Schiffer had rather more exotic tastes (very tricky, since you ask).

I'd hate it to sound as if all I did in Mauritius was lounge by pools, stroll along beaches, eat, sleep and be merry. But I did. OK, I did venture into the world a few times, to visit the vibrant market in Port Louis (well worth the trip for the sari silks and spices) and the musty roadside shops in the ramshackle villages to stock up on mini-bar goods to smuggle back into the hotels. A more adventurous holidaymaker might have headed for the Chamarel Falls in the central plateau to look at waterfalls, gorges and tropical gardens. A sportier holidaymaker might have windsurfed and paraglided and scuba dived and golfed his way through the sunny days (One&Only Le Saint Géran has an excellent golf course, as does the Belle Mare Plage, which is open to residents of Le Prince Maurice). And a really smart holidaymaker would have booked the Excalibur Experience, hiring a 45ft luxury cruiser on the Black River for a day's eating, drinking and big-game fishing. The island has a well-deserved reputation as one of the world's best game fishing venues, and I met several people who'd come just for the fishing and diving. OK, so I met these rugged types over cocktails at the hotel bar, but they seemed to know what they were talking about and looked at me with some pity when I confessed I hadn't taken a boat trip up the Black River or out to sea.

As I said at the beginning, there is so much more to Mauritius than beautiful hotels. But with One&Only Le Saint Géran, Le Prince Maurice and Belle Mare Plage (not to mention the Beau Rivage and Les Pavilions, where the luxury is rather more affordable), Mauritius is Beautiful Hotel Central. And while I hate to come over all Tara Palmer-Tomkinson (asked by The Independent what she'd do if she won a million, she said she'd take over One&Only Le Saint Géran and treat all her friends), there's nowhere else I'd rather spend a couple of weeks of shameless luxury with nothing more to worry about than whether it's the red flag or the blue flag you stick into the sand to order another drink. Same again, sir? Yes please.

The Facts

Getting there

The author travelled as a guest of Magical Mauritius (01488 668821; www.magicalmauritius.com). Seven nights at One&Only Le St Géran start from £2,160 per person, based on two sharing, including return flights, half-board accommodation in a Junior Suite, private car transfers and taxes. Seven nights at Le Prince Maurice start from £1,685 per person, based on two sharing, with flights, transfers and taxes, staying in a Junior Suite on a b&b basis.

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