Sibylle's Blog @mohn-images.com: Playing golf on Ile aux Cerfs

Golf is a serious game, a game for lawyers or accountants: rules and rules, do's and dont's and penalties in order to manoeuver a tiny white ball into an equally tiny hole half a kilometer away - my biggest problem with the game, though, is that whenever I am on a long green lush fairway, possibly with a little stream crossing ahead, I wish for my horse and a nice canter along the course in sunshine and fresh air. I know, my horse would love it, too .... but this must not be uttered openly, as it will result in disbelieving and disapproving stares of other golfers or even some furious reaction as if I was suggesting to bring a horde of wild boar on the immaculate greens ...

Nevertheless, some years ago, I learnt the rules and learnt how to play to be able to accompany my husband. And most golf courses altogether really are another matter: many are very, very beautiful pieces of landscape gardening . The most beautiful seems to be the Bernhard Langer-designed course on Ile aux Cerfs on the east coast of Mauritius. It is a playful course with an intelligent design, with lots of water, sand bunkers and difficult sloping greens, incorporating Mauritian nature at its best, with lots of opportunity to lose balls and never find them again ...

Not that I have been able to play it: when we went there last week, I lost three balls on the first hole, where we had to drive the ball 120 m straight over a hellishly threatening wilderness of boggy mangroves.