Salt of Palmar hotel: the first eco-hotel in Mauritius

I was in a room made of salt. I take medication for high blood pressure so usually try to avoid salt, but I was sitting alone in a room where the walls are made from bricks of the stuff. The translucent, Himalayan salt bricks were changing colour from red, to orange, to yellow, thanks to light beamed from behind, while ambient music played.

It felt like I was inside a Turner Prize installation, or perhaps the world’s most chilled out nightclub. In fact, I was in a salt therapy room — one of the unique features of the Salt of Palmar hotel on the east coast of Mauritius.

The hotel — which has 59 rooms and is designed like a Moorish riad by artist Camille Walala and local architecture studio, JFA — is the first eco-hotel in Mauritius, which means recycled beach baskets and a ban on single-use plastic. In my bedroom, the toothbrush is bamboo and the bathrobe is crafted using coffee bean waste. There’s no TV, but then again, nothing on the small screen could have bested the spectacular views from the window.

Having arrived from cold London, I would have been more than happy to spend the entire five days enjoying the hotel, sitting by the 25-metre pool, walking along the gorgeous, white sand beach that fringes the resort. But alongside environmentalism, the Salt is passionate about encouraging guests to experience the real Mauritius, offering a range of excursions to tempt you off the sun-lounger.

I found that the best strategy was to spend the morning exploring and the afternoon relaxing. One day I went on a street food tour where we sampled typical Mauritian delicacies such as spicy rotis, banana pastries and pickled mangoes. A few hours spent in the botanical garden, the oldest in the southern hemisphere, educated me on the island’s natural history — and the ubiquitous dodo souvenirs reminded me that this was where the now-extinct bird once roamed.

There was also a visit to a local market, which I reached by riding one of the electric bicycles supplied by the hotel. Despite the assisted bike, cycling was sweaty work in the hot sun, but the hour-long ride was fascinating: sailing past fields of aubergines and pineapples, before reaching a local market where men were skinning coconuts before extracting their water to sell.

The food in the hotel restaurant is largely sourced locally — the eggs come from chickens owned by a lady called Mirella, who also hosts evening meals at her home for hotel guests. One night, after a delicious chicken curry, one of Mirella’s sons brought out a traditional hand drum that he played while singing an old Mauritian folk song. Mirella got up and soon the entire family and I were out in the yard, under a starry night, singing and dancing. Food, music, great company — all the ingredients for a wonderful time and a reminder that, to get the most out of Mauritius, all you need is to add a dash of salt.

Sarfraz was a guest of Salt of Palmar (rooms from £150; saltresorts.com). BA flies direct from Gatwick, returns from £550 (ba.com)