The most expensive come with a butler. Most others have a daily maid service with a chef on call.

It’s tempting to just relax on the beach, but it is definitely worth hiring a car to see more of the island. It’s a melting pot of nationalities and cultures. And if you want to buy a place in the sun, it’s a good way to see if this is the place for you.

Coast to coast
Driving is easy but Port Louis is scary – with blaring horns, traffic jams and a mass of one-way streets adding to the confusion of not knowing where you are going.

Once out of the capital, the roads are narrow but pretty good, although the same cannot be said of the road signs. The consolation is that you can’t go far wrong on an island that’s just 42 miles long and 29 miles across at its widest point.

The terrain, as you drive, constantly changes. The best beaches are in the flat north-west, around Grand Baie, where there is a handy Super U hypermarket if you are self-catering, while the west coast has beaches with a mountainous backdrop. The south is rugged and the interior green, cool and hilly.

I started from Grand Baie, a tourist mecca with shops, restaurants, windsurfing, water skiing and sailing, and headed east. You quickly leave the crowds behind and enter the world of Paul et Virginie, a romantic tale penned by Frenchman Bernardin de St Pierre and inspired by the sinking of the St Géran off the coast in 1744.

In the book, Paul awaits his lover Virginie, who is on board the St Géran when it hits a reef. He swims out to rescue her, but modesty stops her taking her clothes off and she drowns, leaving Paul to die of a broken heart.

Cap Malheureux – the Unhappy Cape, said to be so named because it was where the body of Virginie was washed ashore – is where the British landed. The area has charming fishing villages and beaches.

At Vieux Grand Port you can climb up la Montagne du Lion for great views. Further south, the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport – thankfully known as SSR – is situated on former sugar plantations.

The name – Sir Seewoosagur was the country’s first prime minister, and later Governor General – crops up again in Port Louis where a road and a botanical garden are named after him.

Allow a day to explore the south of the island – in my opinion the best part of the island even though it is cooler and wetter than elsewhere. The terrain is rugged and dramatic, drifting from cane fields to mountainous scenery as you move further inland. And there are great walks – along the rocky coast or inland to the spectacular Rochester Falls.