Pereybere is the best-loved public beach in the far north: small, charming and with shallow turquoise water, tucked between volcanic rocks just north of Grand Baie. It's a beach for everyone, where Mauritian families, backpackers and hotel guests mix in a relaxed, unpretentious atmosphere.
Besides the sand and the calm lagoon, its big draw is snorkelling: the coral is close to the shore, and this is one of the best areas in Mauritius for swimming with sea turtles (green and hawksbill), which come quite close to the coast. Behind the beach there's a small village with supermarkets, currency exchange, budget restaurants and bars, which makes it very handy for a day out.
It's a short hop from all the best of the north: 5-10 minutes from Grand Baie and its excursions, and very close to Cap Malheureux with its famous red-roofed church. It's more a beach to enjoy without spending much than a resort base. Perfect to combine with the rest of the north or for an afternoon of snorkelling and sunset.
Once a fishing cove in the north, Pereybere became the area's favourite public beach as tourism grew in Grand Baie. Its history, together with that of the island's settlement, is on the Pereybere history page.
Read the full history ↓The coast where the British landed in 1810, now the island's tourist capital, with its sheltered bays and white-sand beaches.
Read the history of The north (Grand Baie and the beaches) →They depart from Grand Baie, 2 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Today Pereybere looks like just a peaceful little beach with turquoise water, perfect for swimming with turtles. But a short step from its sand, in neighbouring Cap Malheureux, the fate of all Mauritius was decided. It was at this northern tip of the island that, in December 1810, British troops landed to seize the colony from France. The name says it all: Cap Malheureux means 'the Unlucky Cape'.
That mix of calm beauty and historical weight is very Mauritian. On this island, which had no human inhabitants until the 17th century, every corner of apparent paradise holds a story of ships, empires and people brought from far away. Understanding Pereybere means understanding how a fishing cove in the north ended up on the map of the Indian Ocean's colonial history.
Before any settlers arrived, Mauritius was completely uninhabited, with no indigenous people and no large land mammals. The Dutch were the first to settle, in 1638, and named it Mauritius in honour of Prince Maurice of Nassau. That brief period of rule left the island's saddest mark: the extinction of the dodo.
The dodo was a large, flightless bird with no fear of humans, which had evolved without predators. Sailors hunted it, and the pigs, rats and monkeys that came with them destroyed its nests; by the end of the 17th century there were none left. It became the universal emblem of human-caused extinction and, ironically, the national symbol of Mauritius. The Dutch abandoned the island in 1710, defeated by cyclones and pests.
In 1715 France took the island and renamed it Isle de France, turning it into a naval base and a sugar colony built on the labour of thousands of enslaved Africans and Malagasy people. French privateers operated from its ports, harassing British ships on the route to the Indies, and the north coast, with its anchorages and reefs, was an area for lookouts and fishing.
In the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, the British decided to end that threat. After the bloody naval Battle of Grand Port (the only naval victory France inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe), the British changed strategy and, on 29 November 1810, landed a large army in the north, near Cap Malheureux. The manoeuvre was decisive: within a few days the French colony capitulated. In 1814 the island became British and took back the name Mauritius. With political shrewdness, the British let the French keep their language, their religion and their civil code, which is why, two centuries later, French and Creole are still the languages of daily life in the north.
During the 19th century, the economy of the north revolved around sugar cane. The fields reached almost to the coast and the sugar mills set the rhythm of life. When the British Empire abolished slavery in 1835, plantation owners turned to a new system: indentured labour. Hundreds of thousands of workers from India landed in Port Louis and spread out across the cane fields of the whole island.
That mass migration gave rise to Mauritius's Hindu majority, joined by Indian Muslims, Chinese merchants and the descendants of enslaved people, the creators of Creole culture and sega. The small coastal villages of the north, like Pereybere, lived through that human transformation on their own scale: Creole fishermen, Indian cane cutters and families of every faith sharing the same lagoon. The red-roofed Catholic church of Cap Malheureux sits just a few kilometres from Hindu temples and mosques, a miniature portrait of the Mauritian mosaic.
Mauritius gained independence from the United Kingdom on 12 March 1968, led by Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, and became a Republic in 1992. The new nation diversified its economy and tourism became an engine of growth, above all in the north, where calm lagoons and white sand were a natural magnet.
Pereybere, until then a modest fishing cove, found its place on that tourist map. In the shadow of the boom in neighbouring Grand Baie, its small public beach became the favourite of Mauritians and budget travellers: easy to enjoy, with the village right next to the sand and coral close to the shore. The big resorts didn't come here; instead came guesthouses, inexpensive restaurants and a growing reputation as an excellent spot for snorkelling and meeting sea turtles.
Today Pereybere is synonymous with a democratic beach: public, free, lively and accessible, where Mauritian families out for the weekend mix with backpackers and hotel guests. Its shallow lagoon and nearby coral make it ideal for swimming with kids and for spotting green and hawksbill turtles, one of its biggest draws.
Like the whole north coast, it faces the challenge of growing without harming the fragile ecosystem it depends on: coral bleaching, pressure on marine life and urban development are real concerns. A few minutes away, the red chapel of Cap Malheureux still looks out over the sea where the British came ashore more than two centuries ago, a reminder that this quiet corner of the Indian Ocean was once the doorway through which the history of the whole island changed.
The turtles that draw snorkellers today are also a symbol full of meaning. It was the abundance of turtles that gave neighbouring Grand Baie its old name, 'Turtle Bay', and, hunted relentlessly for centuries by the Dutch, French and British to supply their ships, they came close to disappearing, just as the dodo had before them. Seeing green and hawksbill turtles approach the shore at Pereybere again is partly the result of decades of protection and a change in outlook: the same island that drove its most famous bird to extinction learned, over time, that its greatest wealth lies not in exploiting the sea but in caring for it. On this public, democratic beach, free for everyone, that lesson has its finest setting.
