Ever since I read the book Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons by conservationist Gerald Durrell, I have wanted to visit Mauritius.
It was like looking through a mirror to a time before humans, a glimmer of what Mauritius must have looked like- André Raine
The book describes Durrell’s visits to try to save some of the island’s most endangered wildlife – including the aforementioned ‘pink pigeons’, cunningly named because they are indeed pigeons whichare pink.
The plane dipped out of the sky and began its descent to the chain of islands known as the Republic of Mauritius, which was wrestled from the French by the British during the Napoleonic Wars.
It eventually became independent in 1968.
With a population of 1.3 million, Mauritius is heavily reliant on agriculture and tourism. It’s not hard to see why the island is a tourist mecca, with an endless parade of expensive hotels crowding the coast as tourists lounge about on beaches and take to the warm waters.
Yet few who come to Mauritius leave their hotels to explore the island’s wild treasures, and they are missing out.
Having re-read Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons on the plane, it was therefore something of an epiphany to find myself the day after we arrived with a golden bat (actually known as the Mauritian fruit bat) dangling off the end of mybinoculars.
With a wing span of close to one metre, it was quite a lot of bat – clinging with the long claws on the end of its wings and making its way steadily up my back whereupon it attempted to eat my ear. Its long pink tongue flickered out of its furry, remarkably fox-like face and large eyes peered around with interest.
After extricating myself fromthe bat, we continued touring around the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation’s captive breeding facility which housed several other very rare animals.
These included the echo parakeet, one of which immediatelyflew down to land on my shoulders with a screech, and the iconicMauritius kestrel.
Seeing these animals in a captive-breeding centre was certainly pretty special, but we wanted to have a look at them in the wild. So the next day we set off for Black River Gorges National Park, protecting the last of the island’s native forests.
The park sits in a sea of sugar cane fields which stretch as far as theeye can see. People were busy hacking away at the sugar cane withformidable looking machetes, turning to watch the bus as we made our way past.
Soon we left the sugar cane behind and climbed up into the hills where the park sits like a verdant jewel. It’s a park under siege, with conservationists having to dealwith encroaching thickets ofintroduced guava trees and rampaging hordes of introduced monkeys and mongooses – both of which are keen on eating the last remaining native birds.
We spent the day roaming the park, taking in the stunning vistas and exploring the sun-dappled forests. However, as we hiked further and further, the trail system began to break down and signposts all but disappeared. It was not long before we were lost.
In exasperation I muttered a long stream of invectives, colourfully describing to the forest in general that I had no idea where we were.
We were therefore rather surprised to hear a little voice from the undergrowth saying ‘You are on the Pilgrim’s Trail’.
Peering into the bushes to our right we saw a lady with binoculars and, after overcoming our initial surprise at finding another human crouching in the bush, struck upa conversation.
It turned out that this was a member of Carl Jones’s team. Carl isa colourful Welshman who,along with the Gerald Durrell’sJersey Wildlife Trust, has beenworking hard to save Mauritius’s beleaguered wildlife.
The lady was sitting on the edge of a bluff overlooking a valley and we soon realised that within the trees below was a gigantic roost of Mauritius fruit bats. They were dangling about in the branches below like large furry mangoes.
Occasionally one would take to the air and glide about, its leathery wings spread wide. Then it would crash back into the trees with a loud chittering noise, while its compatriots squabbled briefly over ideal roost sites.
Thanks to this chance meeting, the next day we were given a personal tour of the Black River Gorge with Carl himself.
At the centre of the reserve, in an area off-limits to the public, was the main reintroduction site for echo parakeets and pink pigeons.
It was an unusual experienceto be able to watch both speciesflying about in the wild and coming down to feeding stations to snack and socialise.
Both birds were at one point down to only about 10 individuals and number among the world’s rarest birds. Thanks to the efforts of people like Gerald Durrell and Carl Jones, they were now back in numbers, although still far from out of the woods (so to speak).
Having ticked off both golden bats and pink pigeons, wespent next few days doing more touristy things from our little hotel in Mahebourg.
We swam at the picturesque beaches of nearby Blue Bay and snorkelled or dived with schools of brilliantly coloured tropical fish.
At night we found little local restaurants and ate spicy Creole dishes washed down with local rum (made from the fields of sugar cane). All pretty idyllic, to be sure.
From the porch of our hotel room, we could look out across the bay to the Ile aux Aigrettes – an island completely protected as a nature reserve and the last stronghold of several extremely rare species. So on our last day we took a trip out to the island, motoring across choppy blue seas in a small boat.
First stop on the island was the information centre and museum, where there were large bronze statues of the extinct birds of Mauritius. Mauritius has a disturbing legacy of extinction, with a swan, owl, heron, rail and several parrots all now a sad part of history.
The most famous of all of these ghost birds is the dodo, a largeflightless pigeon standing about a metre tall and weighing 20 kg. It was swiftly eaten into extinction by early Portuguese settlers who took advantage of its ponderous and trusting nature. Now the quintessential emblem of extinction, the dodo is sadly lost to the mists of time along with all the rest.
From the museum we wandered about the island, which was heaving with wildlife. A small flock of Mauritius fodies flitted by – little finch-like birds, the males with bright red heads and little black-eye masks.
Underneath the flocks, the huge lumbering forms of aldabran giant tortoises ruminated on life in general – replacements for the now extinct Mauritian tortoises.
Two pink pigeons cooed softly overhead, ruffling their soft pink feathers. It was like looking through a mirror to a time before humans, a glimmer of what Mauritius must have looked like.
For now at least, the inhabitants of Ile aux Aigrettes continued their perilous hold on existence, safe from the depredations of humanity.