Mauritius Country Info - Africa

Description and Basic Information

Mauritius with its capital Port Louis is located in Africa (Southern Africa, island in the Indian Ocean). It covers some 2,041 square kilometres (almost 11 times the size of Washington, DC) with 1,260,000 citizens. English and French are the the official languages used in Mauritius.

Mauritius is a small, multicultural island in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar and southeast of the Seychelles. Grand Bay was the first area of the island to fully experience the tourist boom. A shopping and leisure paradise, Grand Bay is also where Mauritians go when they want a fun-filled night out (restaurants, bars and discos). A few metres away from Baie aux Tortues, which 17th century sailors named after the many tortoises in the area, can be found the ruins of the old Balaclava estate. If you want to see some plants originating from Mauritius, then this is the place for you. The SSR botanical garden is the oldest botanical garden in the Southern Hemisphere.

Pictures from Capital (Port Louis)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Mauritius

The landscape features small coastal plain rising to discontinuous mountains encircling central plateau. The average density of population is about 617 per km². The climate in Mauritius can be described as tropical, modified by southeast trade winds with warm, dry winter (May to November), hot, wet, humid summer (November to May). Potential threats by nature are cyclones (November to April) or almost completely surrounded by reefs that may pose maritime hazards.

To reach someone in Mauritius dial +230 prior to a number. There are 379,100 installed telephones. And there are 1,087,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".mu". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 230V - 50Hz. The following list are the 12 regions/states in Mauritius we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Mauritian population grew at a rate of 0.75% (or by 9,719 citizens). With 8,580 deaths and 18,337 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at 0.75%. -39 persons more in total emmigrated from the country than immigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Mauritius: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.