A visit to Ile Phare (or Ile aux Fouquets)

Hello everyone!

Welcome back to the blog! To kick-start your week, nothing better than a visit here, isn’t it? 😛

If you have not read the last post (Ile Aux Aigrettes) yet, this post is the second part dedicated to my trip to some of the islands in the south-east region of Mauritius.

Situated a few kilometres from Ile Aux Aigrettes, Ile Phare got its name from … the phare which is now in a ruined state. If you try to look for Ile Phare on a map, you might probably not able to spot it. This is because, the island is sometimes referenced as “Ile Aux Fouquets” on maps.

As you can see above, the trip from Ile Aux Aigrettes to Ile Phare is quite a lengthy one and the marine life between these 2 islands is a bit dull, at least, there was nothing extraordinary to watch through the bottom-glass sections of the boat.

At around 1pm, we finally reached the island, hungry!

We grabbed all the bags and walked a few metres in the water to reach the land. The first thing we did : Look for a spot to have our lunch. Under the burning sun, we went round the phare and there was practically no areas of shade where one could actually sit down!

As you can see in one of the above pictures, there’s only one tree. YES! Only one tree on the island, and a large family had already settle there.

However, they were kind enough to make some space for us. We quickly sat down to have our lunch before their offer expired lol.

Once Dhaneesha and myself filled up our stomach, we went for a walk to discover the island, or perhaps I should say islet. It was pretty painful for me since I went there bare-footed. I had preferred to leave my shoes in the boat itself.

Silly me! I spent my time finding way around the rocky environment (with spiky rocks)!

Seen from a different corner of the island :

The Phare and the ‘bay’ + the mini beach :

There’s also a mini beach, part of which was occupied by some tourists who were being served grilled chicken, lambs and sea food. We initially planned to have a barbecue here but the lunch+drinks option would have cost us an additional amount of apprx Rs500-600 per person.

Another group of people had set up a tent in between large rocks :

Cliffs :

Cliffs over which you can see Paille en queue birds flying around. I had spotted 4 of them on that day :

 

By now, you have most probably got an overdose of the Phare pictures, isnt it? What did you expect to see on an island which has a phare and only 1 tree? 😛

If you want to pursue the visit to the next island, “Ile de la Passe”, keep tuned to the blog.