The boy in blue: Dominic West visits Mauritius

The One&Only Le Saint Géran in Mauritius was not my first experience of a luxury resort. Twenty years ago I was backpacking around the barren Bahias de Huatulco in Mexico with a school friend when we came upon an enormous Club Med shimmering across a deserted bay. We swam over, scaled a wall and dropped down into a samba party where a man in an Arnie mask handed us rum cocktails and directed us to the free food. For two days we feasted unchecked, judged a dirty joke competition, joined in the Club Med conga and learned how to windsurf. Greed in the gift shop was our undoing. We were handcuffed and spent a tense hour in the local jail, but my taste for the resort de luxe was born.

There followed illicit spells in the Four Seasons, Singapore; the Sheraton in Sarawak; and later, while crewing a primitive tall ship around the South Pacific, a heavenly sleep under a 3.5 tog goose-down duvet in the Hilton, Bora Bora. Luxury, like sex, is all very well, but when it's illicit and you're getting it for free, the pleasure is all the greater.

Years pass. Children arrive. Sandals beckons. The thrill of stolen six-star luxury was something, like a ten-pint night, irretrievably consigned to my youth. Then the One&Only Le Saint Géran offered us a week in Mauritius. We have three children under three, which rules out all civilised living but especially travel. With this plan, however, all we had to do was survive a ten-hour flight, children on knee, and civilisation could again be ours. At Le Saint Géran there is a kids' club, which would mean we could sit on a beach oblivious, while our little angels rampaged hundreds of yards away, supervised behind a soundproof wall. Oh, happy day! My luxury travel habit had really come of age.

We flew to Port Louis and a breezy airport of low-tech charm. As we queued by the baggage carousel, one son stripping, the other trying to get his fingers into the conveyor belt, a man came over and gave me the secret handshake by which all people off the telly know each other. It was Bear Grylls: ex-SAS, Chief Scout, Born Survivor. I was in awe. He, too, was on a family holiday.

There are seven One&Onlys in the world. It's a misleading name. But there's only one in Mauritius and a purring, black Merc shuttled us there. I snoozed as we wound along the coast road through lush fields of sugar cane and passed fishing villages with elaborate Hindu temples. Mauritius is the only African nation with a majority Hindu population and most of the people are of Indian origin. The rest are Creole, of African or French descent. Apart from the language, there is as little trace of the British, who ruled the island from 1810 to 1968, as there is of Mauritius' most famous inhabitant, the dodo.

Sugar and clothing manufacture were the staples of the economy here, but as those industries have declined, tourism has maintained Mauritius' development. The Merc swept us up the hotel drive to the arched entrance. Koy carp idled beneath fountains and the smiling, relaxed staff offered warm greetings and lightning reactions as my son dived for the carp. We were welcomed by Juliette, the guest manager, the second most beautiful woman I've ever seen, with news of the romantic dinner she'd arranged on the beach the next night. I stifled the urge to ask if by any chance she'd be there, too.

She led us through gardens of hibiscus and jacaranda to the tall, rustling coconut palms that fringe the white beach and the Indian Ocean. Le Saint Géran occupies its own peninsula on a lagoon, sheltered by a reef from the distant roar of the ocean. It's paradise. As we walked to our room, the frangipani-scented air was filled with birdsong. Great bowls of rice are left out for the birds each morning.

We had interconnecting bedrooms. I ensured the locks and soundproofing between ours and the children's were all in good working order, then we rushed on to the beach to rejoice in our good fortune. We checked out the vast pool that meandered around a bar accessed by a little bridge. I discovered I could float by the bar, cocktail du jour in hand, pretending to be the bridge troll and frightening the kids as they circuited the pool. Hours of fun. At four o'clock a man sets up a crêperie between the pool and the beach, so having failed to interest the children in the pyramids of paw paws and pineapples, we'd gorge them on Nutella pancakes. A final, frenzied sugar burst would then sweep them back to the room and into unconsciousness just as the babysitter arrived.

The hotel has three restaurants, two under the guidance of Michelin-starred chefs Vineet Bhatia and Alain Ducasse. On our first night, we ate Indian tapas and dim sum in Bhatia's restaurant Rasoi, a Balinese-style structure of teak and thatch on stilts over the water.

The wait from 7am, when the children's cries became unignorable, to 10am when the kids' club opened was mitigated by breakfast: everything you could wish to smear in your hair, hurl from your high chair or rub into your eyes. Elegant French families looked on in dismay. More troll work, then the glorious moment when locals ushered the children away for paddling, painting and pizzas.