Seven Coloured Earths
Terres des Sept Couleurs
Interesting facts
- Chamarel takes its name from Charles Antoine de Chazal de Chamarel, who owned the area around 1800 and hosted the explorer Matthew Flinders, detained on Mauritius during the Napoleonic Wars.
- The striped ridges are known locally as Les Côtes de Melon, the melon slices, after their rounded, regularly furrowed shape.
- The coloured dunes form the centrepiece of what is presented as Mauritius' first geopark.
- The volcanic rocks that weathered into these coloured soils are estimated to be several million years old.
- Aldabra giant tortoises, originally from the Seychelles, roam the grounds near the dunes; they are one of the last Indian Ocean giant tortoise species still living in the wild.
- Seven Coloured Earths is a descriptive name rather than an official one, and the site goes by several variants, including Terres des Sept Couleurs in French.
- Chamarel is one of the least populated villages in Mauritius, with fewer than 800 inhabitants recorded in the 2011 census.
Why it is worth it
On a bare, gullied hillside in the forested uplands of south-western Mauritius, the ground turns into a painter's palette. Rain has carved the slope into soft ridges and furrows, and across them run bands of earth in shades that range from rust red and chocolate brown to violet, blue-grey, green and ochre yellow – seven colours, by the usual count, that lie side by side in a striped pattern looking almost too regular to be natural. The little patch of dunes is known in French as the Terres des Sept Couleurs and sits on the Chamarel plain in the Rivière Noire district.
The colours come from the island's volcanic past. In the hot, humid climate the local basalt broke down completely into clay, and water leached away silica and most of the soluble minerals. What remained is a ferrallitic soil rich in iron and aluminium oxides: iron gives the red and dark anthracite tones, aluminium the bluish and purple ones. The intriguing part is that the different coloured grains tend to sort themselves into separate layers rather than blend, so even disturbed earth slowly regains its stripes – a behaviour that has not been fully explained. Visitors view the dunes from a fenced walkway and lookout points rather than walking on them, which has helped preserve the delicate surface.
A short distance away are the Chamarel Falls, where the Rivière du Cap drops roughly 95 metres over a basalt cliff into a wooded gorge. The village of Chamarel itself stands on a cool, wooded plateau above the west coast, surrounded by sugarcane, pineapple and coffee plantations, with the Black River Gorges National Park and the Ebony Forest conservation area close by. Its small Chapel of St Anne draws a pilgrimage every year on 15 August.
Getting there
The Seven Coloured Earths lie about 4 km south-west of Chamarel village. The nearest town is Vacoas, about 19 km away in a straight line, and the nearest airport is Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport (MRU), about 32 km away near the island's south-east coast. Chamarel is reached by mountain roads climbing up from the coast.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Le Morne Brabant 6.6 km · mountain
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Seven Coloured Earths are a geological formation and prominent tourist attraction found in the Chamarel plain of the Rivière Noire District in south-western Mauritius. It is a relatively small area of sand dunes comprising sand of seven distinct colours. The main feature of the place is that since these differently coloured sands spontaneously settle in different layers, dunes acquire a surrealistic, striped colouring. Since the earth was first exposed, rains have carved beautiful patterns into the hillside, creating an effect of earthen meringue.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
-20.44031, 57.37345per Wikidata