Mauritius isn’t only where the beautiful people go to holiday: it’s where beautiful people actually live. Centuries of intermarriage between the original African, European, Indian and Chinese settlers has produced a population who are both strikingly attractive and appealingly friendly. Add to the mixture a volcanically mountainous island clothed in a rustling green blanket of sugar cane slashed by jungly ravines and edged by golden beaches lapped by a turquoise lagoon; plus a fusion cuisine that combines the best of French, Indian and Chinese cooking, and you’ll be wondering why you haven’t been there yet. And also, where it is?

It’s a dot to the south-east of Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean: a position right on the trade routes since the sixteenth century, which is when people first started to arrive, and the dodo began to disappear. Once numerous, they soon succumbed to the introduction of pests that wrecked their habitat, and now can only be seen as a sad collection of bones and pictures in the creaky little museum in the capital, Port Louis. The town itself is a lively place of brightly-painted buildings and narrow streets crammed with market stalls and people; although on the harbour side there is a classy development of shops and restaurants where young people pose and parade.

Once out in the country, however, life is much less sophisticated, and a drive along the coastal plains will reveal teams of women in boots and gloves harvesting sugar cane with machetes, while others tuck up their skirts and scrub their washing in the river. At the Tamarin Salt Works, clad in sacking cloaks, more women carry heavy baskets of salt on their heads as they tread the low walls between the evaporation pans. There’s a lot of hard work going on — but Mauritians know how to have fun too, and large groups of picknickers at the beach will dance to their own music, chat and laugh all day long, happy to invite strangers to join in.

So many cultures means there are a variety of religions too, each with its own distinctive church or temple, and its own calendar of festivals, cheerfully enjoyed by the whole population. At Grand Bassin a towering statue of Shiva draws people to the biggest Hindu festival outside India; at Tookay a brightly painted Tamil temple rises up in a steep pile of interlocked figures and animals; in Mahébourg you can admire the stained glass in Notre Dame des Anges while listening to the imam chanting at the mosque across the road.

You can visit an intricate model ship workshop in Goodlands; a fabulous botanic garden at Pamplemousses; or a highly-perfumed ylang ylang distillery tucked under frangipani trees up a bumpy dirt track that sends its oil to Chanel in France. A sugar factory tells the depressing story of slavery but cheers its visitors up at the end with a rum tasting: rhum arrangé is the national drink, every family making its own signature infusion with ginger, vanilla, lemon or spices, and it bookends long sociable meals, as both a digestif and an aperitif.

But this is a holiday, and you should do some serious relaxing at a luxury resort, like one of the Lux Island Resorts where someone will come to your door in the evening to shave perfumed soap for your bath, or leave your bedcover sprinkled with bright petals, or ease away your knots and tensions with a massage in a peaceful garden where water trickles and palm leaves rustle overhead. After all, tonight will bring the fresh agony of the menu choice…