Gemma Tiptonpacks away her cynicism and succumbs to the luxury-on-tap at Club Med's new resort on the Indian island of Mauritius
There's something about the words "tropical island paradise" that conjure up such images of bliss that you can't help feeling disappointment to be inevitable. There may well be white sands and turquoise seas, but there's probably an ugly factory, just out of the frame of the brochure photograph. Or else you get there and, as Alain de Botton discovers in his book The Art of Travel, you still find yourself having stupid arguments with your partner.
Put yourself in the right frame of mind, however, and choose the right destination, and "tropical island paradise" can be just that - sheer unadulterated heaven. Mark Twain thought so about Mauritius: "Mauritius was made first," he wrote, more than 100 years ago, "and then heaven; and heaven was copied after Mauritius."
I think he might be right. Mauritius, a tiny dot in the Indian Ocean, is incredibly lovely. There are coral reefs to snorkel over, warm seas, white sands, miniature islands of volcanic larva to anchor boats to, palm trees, fish, fresh fruit, and it was once home to the dodo. Mauritius is one of those islands that was, like Malta in the Mediterranean, a pawn in colonial politics. The Portuguese had it, so did the Dutch, the French and the British. It is now a republic. It's a 12-hour flight away, so you wonder - in the days before the invention of telephones and aeroplanes - how long it took each of these countries to discover they had lost their distant possession. Now it's a "luxury holiday destination", which means creative people have spent ages working out the ideal placement for the infinity pool, discovering the comfiest of basket chairs to hang from the trees, experimenting with recipes for gently-spiced dishes and, in the case of Club Med, exploring new ways to make their guests happy.
Club Med originated in the 1950s, and evolved from a sort of a hippie beginning into a pretty sophisticated all-inclusive set of resorts, where GOs (Gentils Organisateurs, who are basically a very upmarket take on the Butlin's redcoat) dedicate themselves to the task of making their visitors happy. This, to start with, is harder than it seems.
I arrived with a group of journalists and travel agents at Club Med's latest resort, La Plantation d'Albion, with cynical antennae tuned to full. I've never been a "package holiday" type, and the sight of a group of tanned young people waiting to receive us at reception made something in my soul shiver. But as there's no point in travelling half way round the world and then not giving in to whatever experience is on offer, I substituted cynicism for a general try-anything-once state of mind, and I let them force-feed me cocktails, champagne and lobster. I tried different sports, and allowed one of them to gently massage my head as I lay in a bath full of lotus flowers. Later I let them take me out on a boat to swim to shore through the clear, warm waters. And, of course, it was all amazingly great.
At night I bonded with the travel agents, and discovered some of the hazards of the profession, such as being phoned by the groom the night before a wedding you had booked in Jamaica, and asked to call the bride to tell her it was off . . .
I danced with the GOs (to the strains of someone belting out Neil Diamond classics), even though sometimes they outnumbered us. And I also agreed to a "happiness consultation". This was a special treat for the opening of the resort, and turned out to be a fortune-teller from Singapore, flown in to give us individual advice on how to be happier. Despite the fact that the obvious advice would be "move to Club Med Mauritius" (and they are building villas so that you can), I went along, cynicism by now a distant memory. He shuffled his tarot cards and laid them out. "Even though you are not so pretty," he announced, looking up and smiling at me, "men still like you." "Thanks-a-f***ing-million," I couldn't help replying. "No," his smile now more nervous perhaps, "you don't understand. You are not so very pretty, you are not the prettiest girl, but for some reason, men like you." He nodded encouragingly. And in the general spirit of things, I thanked him, and went off for another glass of champagne and a short spell of sunburning my nose.
Another day, we took a trip into the capital, Port Louis. Away from the orchestrated pleasures of the resort, Port Louis is a teeming bustling town, the high-rise homes of financial institutions suddenly shocking after all the adobe and thatch of Club Med. There is a wonderful fruit and vegetable market, where upstairs spices of all kinds are to be found. The population of Mauritius is mainly Hindu, with Catholics and Muslims making up the majority of the rest. The roadsides are dotted with brightly coloured Hindu shrines, and with the mixture of French, English and Creole languages spoken, the overall feel is of genuinely vibrant multiculturalism. A few miles up the road, the Botanic Gardens has lotus pools and spice trees, so the warm air is delicately scented with clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. They also have the rather wonderfully named "sausage tree", the heavy fruit of which, our guide informed us, "falls only on bastards". Wondering how it might treat girls who are "not so pretty", I stayed away.
Mauritius is volcanic, so dramatic mountains rise jaggedly up from fertile plains where the sugar fields lie. You can imagine those sailor/settlers believing they had found paradise on earth when they landed here to take in fresh water. It was, of course, harder for the dodo, which they hunted to extinction, and the slaves (and later indentured workers) who harvested the sugar. Looked at that way, La Plantation d'Albion is a tricky name to grapple with, but then again, I have never understood quite how for Americans, the "colonial style" is something to aspire to in home furnishings, while here it obviously has entirely different connotations.
In the end, however, I shoved these thoughts to the same spot in my mind where I had stored the fortune teller's comments: something to think about another day, and went back to my holiday. Mauritius is paradise on earth, and the new Club Med completely gorgeous. And the fortune teller? Blissed out from my trip, I have decided to believe his message was lost, somewhere, in translation. Perhaps it had something to do with the eye of the beholder, or even that balance between perfection and reality that we all have to compromise over, even on holiday. I may think about it some more, but only once my suntan has finally faded. u
We flew to Mauritius with Air Mauritius, which offers a daily service from Heathrow. www.airmauritius.com. Club Med offers seven nights at La Plantation d'Albion from €2,362 per person, with accommodation in a Club room, and return flights from London. Accommodation is on a full-board basis and includes all meals and drinks. The resort also offers complimentary tuition in tennis, golf and archery, plus watersports, including snorkelling and sailing. Price based on travel during May 2008. www.clubmed.com