Golfing and Stargazing in Bel Ombre | The Hideaways Club
It's down on the south coast in an area called Bel Ombre, where the coastline, though risky to swim, is more than compensated for by being long enough for a good stretch of the legs and a wistful gaze out in the direction of Antartica.
Membership of the Hideaways Club Classic Collection portfolio gives one access to properties all over the world. It's perfect for someone who doesn't want to be restricted to one location or have the hassle of maintenance. As tennis player Tim Henman says, "With the Hideaways Club I have a wide variety of beautiful properties in stunning locations that I can use year round, plus the potential growth of my investment."
It's more about golf than tennis however. As a gated community it has a distinctly American vibe, with buggies as transport, a golf course and manicured landscapes. Everything is either a long walk or a circuitous buggy drive away. The route is higgledy-piggledy with underground passes beneath the main road from the villa to the beach and general amenities.
Head inland, and where better than the Black River Gorges National Park. It's stunningly rich in vegetation and from a high viewpoint I looked far beneath to see the gorge amid miles of dense, green forest. It allowed my imagination to drift and explode.
Nearby the waterfall at Chamaral, though only visible from a distance, is nonetheless the largest one I have ever seen. It drops a hundred metres and there is something compelling and mesmeric about the perennial pounding of bouts of water. It left me imagining just how much more gushing it would become once a rainstorm was introduced to this dramatic process.
Nearby again is the Seven Coloured Earth, considered both a magical sight and a geological curiosity. The striking landscape is tucked within Chamarel's forest and has been formed by volcanic rocks that cooled at different temperatures, creating this spectacular array of patterns and colours. Now turned to sand, the hills' shades of red, brown, grey, and purple were rather special it has to be said.
Back however to more familiar mud and a rainstorm of four days, considered an 'anticyclone', was restrictive as the activities all centre very much around the weather permitting golf and the alternatives are somewhat limited. There is however a special and beautiful chateau worth seeing, a 19th century colonial house that's a perfect dinner spot. With interiors set in thick rich wood, and an upstairs verandah from which to oversee the golf course it's the former home of the Irish botanist Charles Telfair. It's all currently in a state of transition and it was here and how I met with the elderly Eric who had been busy displaying his collection since 1960 of 20,000 sea shells. How wonderful to get a glimpse of a man devoted to his lifetime passion.
This villa Stargazer is perfect for a golfer. It has a barbecue and an outdoor bar and it's all safe and functional. It has all you need. The furnishing is modern and simple with a few metal objects as artefacts. The design suggests ease and comfort and the access with sliding doors lends itself well to an indoors-outdoors feel.
The master bedroom is the only upstairs room (lording it over the other three more perfunctory bedrooms) and being the only distinguishing feature from the other Mauritian Hideaways property called Hibiscus. From the deep bath of its en suite bathroom, I saw the whole length of the southern coast with the waves crashing in from a distance. Stargazer was built in 2011 as part of Heritage Villas it gave me free access to the Golf Course, Hotels Awani and Telfair and to the C Beach Club (C for Coast and the "Place to C, the place to B" being the chant)!
All very spoiling!
Written by Adam Jacot de Boinod
Adam Jacot de Boinod worked on the first series of QI the BBC programme and is the author of The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from around the World, published by Penguin Books.
