Black River Gorges National Park

ForestsBlack River,Mauritius

The last of Mauritius's native forest, folded into ravines that held the world's rarest bird when four kestrels were left alive.

September·Peaking now

Jul–Oct

The park at its most itself: cool, dry plateau air, the clearest rim views at first light, and all sixty kilometres of trail firm underfoot. October is the driest month; from late September the echo parakeets grow loud as breeding takes over the canopy.

Year-round The gorges, native forest and nine endemic birds hold these slopes every month. What shifts with the season is the falls' flow, the guava, the parakeets' clamour and the rim views' clarity.

Black River Gorges National Park is the last of the native forest of Mauritius, 68 square kilometres of ravines and plateau in the southwest of the island, folded into gorges too steep and wet to farm, and it held the rarest bird in the world when four Mauritius kestrels were left alive in 1974, the species that a captive-breeding trick brought back to hundreds, along with the pink pigeon and the echo parakeet. Barely two percent of the island's native forest survives, and it survived here, low wind-clipped trees that grow nowhere else on Earth, walked on the upland trails from the Pétrin entrance on the plateau, where a few minutes' walk reaches the first lookouts over the gorge dropping to the sea, best at dawn, since by early afternoon grey cloud rolls in and closes the view; trails leave the plateau and drop into humid forest until the trees open on a wall of stripped basalt with water coming over the lip, and a short steep path climbs to Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire, the highest point on the island at 828 metres. The kestrels were saved by taking their first clutch of eggs to hatch in captivity, so that the pairs laid again, doubling the birds each year. The echo parakeets, the island's own parrots, reduced to fewer than twenty birds in the 1980s, lay in late September and are loudest through the austral spring, and the pink pigeons sit in the trees at the Pétrin gate. The forest's enemy is a fruit: Chinese guava grows into thickets so dense that no native seedling gets light beneath them, carried inland by the park's own animals, and the rangers cut it out of the forest while Mauritian families drive up with buckets from April to June to strip the red fruit across Plaine Champagne, the island's harvest. In the summer rains the falls that hang as threads through the dry winter drop in full white curtains. Black River Gorges is the forest Mauritius kept, and the birds it nearly lost are back in it.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Listen before you look — the echo parakeet gives itself away with a harsh, ripping screech, while the kestrel hunts low and fast along the canopy rather than circling high.
Guava pickers arrive with the fruit in April — Plaine Champagne fills with families and parked cars at weekends, so come on a weekday, and expect wasps around the ripest bushes.
Two entrances give two different days — Pétrin, up on the plateau, puts you at the viewpoints within minutes, while the Black River centre starts near sea level and climbs from the first step.
Bare basalt turns greasy when wet — the descents into the gorges are steep and tangled with roots, and the rock stays slick for a day or two after rain.

Things to do

1
Catch the rim viewpoints at first light from Pétrin
From the Pétrin entrance up on the plateau, a few minutes' walk puts you at the first lookouts, so start at dawn: by early afternoon grey cloud rolls in and closes the drop off completely. Stand at the rim while the air is still clear and the forested ravines run unbroken toward the coast. From the western lookouts the whole southwest coast lies below — the turquoise lagoon, the reef line drawn in white, and the flat-topped basalt block of Le Morne closing the view.
2
Hike below the rim to a waterfall on bare basalt
Trails leave the plateau and drop into humid forest until the trees open on a wall of stripped basalt with water coming over the lip. In the dry winter months it falls as a fine thread that the wind pulls sideways; after summer rain the same cliff runs loud and white.
3
Walk the last native forest left on Mauritius
The upland trails wind through low, wind-clipped trees that grow nowhere else on Earth — the fragment of Mauritian forest that escaped the axe. It is damp, quiet and often inside cloud, and the birds usually reach you as sound first: the screech of an echo parakeet, or the deep call of a pink pigeon.
4
Climb Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire
A short, steep path leaves the plateau and pushes up through scrub to the highest point in Mauritius at 828 metres. The summit is a modest lump of rock with an immodest view. The gorges lie on one side, the sugar plains and the reef on the other, and the whole island is small enough to take in at once.
5
Fill a bucket with goyaves de Chine in April
When the Chinese guava ripens the island comes to the park. Families park along Plaine Champagne, walk into the scrub with buckets and pails, and strip the red fruit straight into them. It is the one weed here you are encouraged to take away, and it tastes somewhere between a strawberry and a guava.

Watch

Nearby

10 km