Trou aux Cerfs Volcano (Mauritius)

Lying on the outskirts of Curepipe, Trou aux Cerfs is the strangest and most unusual site you can visit when touring the island of Mauritius. A small crater, it exists as a kind of anomaly here, an aquatic beauty spot that suddenly opens up right in the middle of the dense vegetation all around it. Because there is indeed beauty in this basalt formation, this fingerprint left by the dormant volcano, and it was this aspect that impressed me more even than the Chamarel Seven Coloured Earths and which, when viewed from south of Port Louis, offers a quite exceptional sight.

With Curepipe having developed more or less right up to the crater, and even though there hasn't been any significant seismic activity for centuries, Trou aux cerfs can be expected to erupt at some point, and that would very quickly cause extensive destruction in the area around it. That said, and being aware of how resourceful the Mauritians are, they would undoubtedly take advantage of the changes in the landscape this would bring by establishing their own local version of Pompeii.