He sells Seychelles

(This is Travel , Feb 2006)

“I just got back from Mauritius,” Kevin, the Sales Manager for the Sainte Anne Resort in the Seychelles is telling me. “I was so glad to leave. The pace of life there is just too much.”

Now, for a UK visitor, unless you come from some progress-starved rural backwater where nothing much has changed since the turn of the twentieth century, you’re not too likely to be picturing Mauritius as a frenetic urban hotpot where people rush hither and thither like stressed city executives.

But I was soon to learn that such is the extent of the laid back nature of the Seychelles, and that the country even makes other carefree island paradises look uptight and hectic.

Sainte Anne’s Resort and Spa is just a short 15 minute speedboat hop from the main island, Mahe, where I’d arrived the previous day, Sainte Anne Island being just one of the 115 coral and granite islands that make up the Seychelles. It’s by no means one of the most remote, but its location is just far enough removed from the main island to count as a hideaway. In any case, Mahe itself is hardly a sprawling industrial metropolis, as I was later to discover.

Sainte Anne Island is a 500-acre lush blob of vegetation, neighboured by a couple of smaller rocky outcrops, one of which I learned, is a holiday home to the famous airport novelist Wilbur Smith. It is covered top to toe in exotic foliage, such as bougainvillea, hibiscus and frangipani. You can barely spot the resort on your approach, so well has it been built into the rampant greenery.

Since Sainte Anne’s Resort is the only place to stay on the island, there’s a nice feeling of privacy and exclusivity, the 87 villas all having private gardens and luxurious amounts of space. The biggest strain was having to walk twenty metres to a secluded strip of beach, complete with baby reef sharks nosing up to slightly scare you by looking at your toes too long. In any case, acclimatising to the pace of Seychelles life proved none too taxing.

One way of ensuring that you don’t just melt into an amorphous, sunbathing heap of immobility is to get out and explore the marine park, which handily surrounds the island and to which there is a free expedition a couple of times a day. The snorkelling in the park is among the best in the world, and since it’s right there on your doorstep, it would be rude not to take a peek.

Even for the unadventurous coward such as myself, the underwater views were spectacular. With some 950 species of fish, it’s like some kind of sub-aquatic gala cabaret, and the sheer diversity of wildlife is astounding. The fishy role call includes Goats, Parrots and Butterflies, Trumpets, Pipes and Razors, as well as Surgeons, Clowns and Cardinals. Quite a cast, flitting in and out of the coral, anemones and huge molluscs.

Much to my delight, some of them were kind enough to make a further appearance at the Fisherman’s Buffet that night in the restaurant, L’Abondance. They were slightly less playful, granted, but were much more given to accompanying some nice creole-influenced side dishes and a chilled glass of white wine.

On the third day, I decided it was time to explore, and took the free shuttle over to the capital of the Seychelles, Victoria. All capital cities should be like this. Two streets, a museum, a covered market and a nightclub called Love Nut. If only London was that simple.

When I’d first arrived, I hadn’t realised that the Seychelles was a socialist republic, and weirdly, it was illegal to spend the local currency (Seychelles Rupee) at my hotel on St Anne Island, so visiting Victoria was a perfect chance to stock up on gifts and unnecessary souvenirs.

The busiest market by far is the Sir Selwyn-Clarke Market just off the imaginatively-named Revolution Avenue. Here, the stalls are stacked with tropical fruits, spices and freshly caught fish. You’re not likely to want to carry around recently caught barracuda for the good of your health, but there’s a good amount pf local handicrafts, ornamental variations on the Coco de Mer and some nice vanilla teas and banana jams.

Attractions in the capital Victoria include a silver clocktower modelled on that of Vauxhall Bridge in London. It is also one of the only places in the world to find the famed 'Double Coconut' of the Coco de Mer – well known for being the world's most suggestive fruit – and this saucy local produce is shown off at every opportunity in market stalls, museums, and even in some of the architecture.

You can complete a quite thorough inspection of Victoria in just a couple of hours, and I escaped the intrusive hubbub and winged it back to Sainte Anne’s, where I recovered from the exertion by laying by, dipping into and snacking around the pool for about 48 hours.

It proved the perfect preparation for the final activities I needed to compete before leaving, though as activities go, they were hardly the tasks of Hercules. Against all reason, the Spa offers a nevertheless wonderful de-stressing massage – perhaps for people who absent-mindedly got too energetic at Love Nut. I ambitiously followed this up with the chef’s taster menu at the gourmet restaurant Le Mont Fleuri, which is perched in wooden stilts on the seafront.

I think it was by about the third or fourth course that I truly began to assimilate into the Seychelles way of life, my internal body clock finally unwinding to the level of the locals. Sadly, by the next morning, it was time to leave, though given the amount of stress that had been coaxed out of me, I felt more than well-equipped to return to the strains and annoyances of wintery London.

(back to Arrivals)