Mauritius is a superb blend of beautiful beaches, lovely hikes, varied cuisines, various kiddo activities and warm people. Its a good destination for honeymoon, family holiday or just a relaxed getaway. We spent one week in Mauritius and felt we could spend much longer time exploring this small island country. However, there were few activities we did that were not worth spending so much time/ money on.

Mauritius Aquarium

Mauritius Aquarium is situated in the north, some 5kms before Trou-aux-Biches beach if you are travelling from Port Louis towards north beaches. We had a not-so-great SCUBA diving session with Dive Dream Diving in Trou-Aux-Biches and thought we would go to Aquarium to see the fishes. Entrance fee was 300 MUR (~600 INR) for adults and 150 MUR for kids. However, this was the smallest aquarium we have been to. It had hardly dozen or so fish tanks and few fishes inside them. We were out of the place in 15 min after watching the entire exhibit.

Overall, I felt it was not worth going there. Unless you have enough time to kill, skip this activity.

Gros Cailloux Leisure Park

We went to Mauritius on our kiddo’s 5th birthday and I wanted to make sure he has good time on his special day. So I researched a lot for kids activities and found Gros Cailloux Park, which opened in May 2015 and had many kids activities like kiddo ziplines, kiddo quad biking, water activities etc. The place did not have many reviews on tripadvisor (which should have given me a hint); but I attributed that to few months of operation and decided to do this activity on kiddo’s birthday.

We had decided to do Dolphin watching a day earlier. However, the activity was already full for that day and we had to move that to kiddo’s birthday and decided to go to Gros Cailloux and Port Louis earlier.

We drove to the place using Google Maps. Entrance fee was 60 MUR for adults and 80 MUR for kids. Most of the activities were either not available or out of order. They have a small area for young kids where there is a bridge made of beams, animals like goats, goose, rabbits and tortoise that can be petted, a small zipline (there is a family one too but was not functional), some birds, a big lake for boating and other water activities, and a huge ground for quad biking.

We had to be content with kiddo zipline and the small petting area because quad biking and water activities were not happening. It was hardly 30min activity and am so glad we didn’t do this on kiddo’s birthday. Going to Benetier island and watching dolphins was so much more fun for all of us.