Mauritius' generally round profile is pinned by two geographical features at
its northern and southern extremes.  In the south, it's the massive Morne
Brabant, a Cambrian volcanic door stop joined to the rest of the island by a
flat, fertile plain like earthen meltwater spilling from the sides of an ice
cube.  Its imposing, 250m high shape commands the eye from the horizon, and its
profile is the iconic view of Mauritius, with tropical seas breaking around it
on foamy reefs.

At the north end, we visited Cap Malheureux, the "Cape of Disgrace", witness to
an untold number of shipwrecks during the age of Napoleon [1].  The bay was
jammed with pleasure boats, mostly for nearshore fishing, none of which seemed
overly unlucky to me, and in the channel before the immense offshore islet
called Coin de Mire ("the Gunner's Quoin [sight]")a red-sailed dhow zipped
across the wind, a sudden reminder we were traveling in the Indian Ocean.

We experience islands differently in an age where we arrive in a jumbo jet at
the international airport, and drive a rented car, landside, to the points that
caused sailors such distress in centuries past.  These days Cap Malheureux'
most important landmark isn't a series of treacherous reefs and
tricky-to-navigate currents, but rather a lovely little red-roofed church,
hosting a wedding the afternoon we were there: a young Mauritian woman in a
white dress waited with family to enter the church; through the open windows
wafted fresh summer air – a lucky start to married life indeed!

We spent a few nights in Péreybère, a sleepy little settlement betting on
tourism.  Mornings the catamarans and trimarans coasted up to the shore to take
on passengers; we opted for a shorter cruise by motor over the reef, where we
could see the fish through the boat's glass bottom, and admire the coral
formations from which they darted.  That same reef two centuries ago would have
been a hazard; now it was a destination, and a fun one at that.  No bad luck at
all.

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1. I had to wonder about all the shipwrecks at Cap Malheureux.  I was thrilled
to find a modern nautical chart and was hard pressed to find the difficulty in
navigating that channel.  Perhaps the name came about from the British navy
landing there during the Napoleonic wars, leading to eventual French loss of
the island in 1810.