Île aux Cerfs is an islet of 87 hectares off the east coast of Mauritius, in the Flacq district, inside a lagoon over reef flats shallow enough to wade far out, with casuarina groves, white beaches, a golf course reached only by boat and no residents, and it is crossed to from the village of Trou d'Eau Douce by speedboat for a day on the sand, with a waterfall stop on the way. The island takes its name from the Java deer that the Dutch shipped into Mauritius in 1639 as a living larder for passing ships, long gone from the islet, and it belongs to a hotel group, which runs the restaurants and the eighteen holes laid out between volcanic outcrops and nine lakes, the players crossing the lagoon by shuttle with their clubs; the boats leave the mainland village all morning, and almost every run stops first at the Grand River South East waterfall, where the river that drains the island's wet high centre drops over black rock into the lagoon, at full roar after the summer rains of February and March and a thread by the dry winter. The lagoon is shallow enough to snorkel straight off the sand, and the interest is where dark basalt breaks through the white floor and the fish gather.
The landing beaches near the restaurants fill by midday with the day boats and the parasailing, but beyond the last restaurant the crowds thin fast and the shoreline turns wild, bare sand, casuarina forest and no one on it, walked round to the island's empty end in an hour. From June to September the southeast trade wind chops the windward lagoon and stirs sand through the water, and once it eases around October the lagoon goes glass-flat and the shallows clear. The east coast behind the island holds the sugar fields and the fishing villages, with the mountains of the interior on the skyline. Île aux Cerfs is an islet in a lagoon, and the far end of its beach is the reason to walk.