By Charmaine Hibbert

After getting through customs and finding my case missing – strangely enough James’s golf clubs turned up ok – I log my details with the baggage handlers and I am finally in the car on our way to Sugar Beach Resort. The journey takes about an hour and twenty minutes which gives me some time to take in the Mauritian landscape.

An hour or so into our journey I get a glimpse of the sea and I can feel my heartbeat start to race with excitement and a smile splits my face – I think those childlike feelings hit us all when we see the ocean especially if like me you live in a city. As we make our way through the town along the coast road, those pictures of pure white sand beaches that have only been images on a screen are now real and I can’t wait for my feet to actually feel the sand between my toes.

We pull up to the barrier at Sugar Beach and a security guard comes out to speak to our driver and then lets us in. As we pull up outside the main entrance, you can see through the reception area to what looks like a long infinity pool.

Our bags are taken, well I should say the other journalist bags were taken – fortunately I still have my hand luggage packed with essentials for this type of emergency. We are then led to a desk where we can sit down while we are checked-in. Our rooms are not ready so we are told to help ourselves to breakfast and to come back up once we had eaten.

The breakfast area – which also doubles as the main restaurant – has a buffet style breakfast each morning with all the usual options of cooked food, fresh fruit, fresh juices, continental style breakfast with an assortment of cold meats and cheeses, fresh bread and pastries and of course the egg station where you can order eggs cooked to your style.

We then head back upstairs to reception and I am informed my room is ready. I am escorted by a German student who is studying here as part of her degree course. The apartments are designed in a colonial style with white wood slates and are two stories in design with the ground floor apartments having a garden and the first floor having balconies.

My room is on the first floor and after showing me around the student leaves me to it and as soon as the door is closed I face dive onto the king size bed that dominates the room. The linens are crisp and clean and the bed is firm with plenty of pillows. I then head to the bathroom which has a bath with shower attachment and then it’s off to the balcony which has two sun loungers a table and fantastic views of that white sand with the pure clear blue ocean lapping the beach.

I am also perfectly placed for the quiet zone swimming pool, which I think is a perfect option to have with plenty of sun loungers placed around the peripheries of the pool. I decide I will explore later but at this moment in time I want to get online – there is free WIFI throughout the hotel – and chase down my missing suitcase.

My afternoon is spent exploring what the hotel has to offer, which includes motorised and non-motorised water sports, pool-based activities on offer, many of which are complimentary, volley or water polo, fun boats, kayaking, snorkelling, diving, windsurfing, laser sails or water skiing.

If you want to use your holiday to maintain or get back into a fitness regime Sugar Beach offers a range of fitness activities with a fully equipped gym, group classes which include aerobics, step or aqua gym classes, jogging or focus on toning and flexibility with bodyblade and stretching classes, there is also badminton and mini football, tennis, table tennis or bocci ball.

This all works with the wellbeing centre, which has yoga and Tae Bo classes. For those looking for spa treatments there is the Cinq Mondes Spa in Mauritius that is set amongst tropical gardens offering body rituals, beauty services, herb-infused treatments, private steam room, heated and cold plunge pools and a hammam complex.

There are three restaurants including Buddha Bar Beach so you can enjoy lunch, snacks or dinner by the beach, but the main restaurant is Citronella’s Café where we had breakfast earlier. Now I don’t like writing negative reviews and normally I would just pull the feature, but with the rest of the resort being so good it would be remiss of me to do that, but the main restaurant gets very busy and being missed by our waiter for water once wouldn’t be a problem, but when this occurred every night even after we brought this to the attention of the manager it is a problem. My advice to you would be to take your own water to dinner with you, no big deal, but annoying when you realise that you have to do that three nights into your holiday.

I don’t want to leave this review on that negative so I will say this, apart from the restaurant waiting staff – not the cooks – the rest of the staff throughout the hotel are attentive to every detail and more than ready to help. The hotel is set in a beautiful location with a fantastic beach and facilities and the rooms are well designed and decorated and I would happily recommend the hotel to you.

Sugar Beach Resort
Coastal Rd
Flic en Flac
Mauritius

T: +230 403 3300
W: sugarbeachresort.com