Seychelles

After a day in Seychelles, I found myself googling “Why do people visit Seychelles?”. Well, here are some of the most common answers given:

sun, sea and sand, interesting flora and fauna, “‘grammable”, good food, safe and relaxing.

All this is true, but there’s another reason that came up surprisingly often – it’s near. For anyone who lives a shortish, direct flight away from Seychelles, it’s certainly a great destination, but when there are so many beautiful tropical island paradises around the world, I’m just not sure why you’d come to Seychelles unless it’s your nearest beautiful topical island paradise.

There is a good national museum, plenty of fresh fish and good creole curries and you can do rum tasting at the Takamaka distillery. And the Valleé de mai was quite interesting – it’s a nature reserve on Praslin island. Because the Seychelles islands broke away from India around 65 million years ago, and have remained uninhabited for most of recorded history except in the last 250 years or so, there are quite a few endemic flora and fauna in the archipelago.

The most famous of these is the Lodoicea maldivica, the sea coconut or coco de mer, which you can see at Valleé de mai – the reserve is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I took a 15 minute flight by Twin Otter from Mahé to Praslin, mostly because I don’t like ferries and I do like an aircraft where the safety briefing involves learning how to use a fire extinguisher.

You might think that you’ve never heard of the coco de mer – it’s a palm tree, but it’s the fruit which is famous, containing the largest seed in the plant kingdom weighing up to 18 kg, and which looks like a bottom – yes you recognise it now don’t you!?

The palm forest here has remained largely unchanged since prehistoric times and there are 5 other endemic species of palms to see. You’ll also hear and may even see the Black Parrot which is the national bird of the Seychelles. It was certainly a morning well-spent, and definitely worth seeing, but perhaps not worth going to see.

I go to a lot of places only because I want to tick them off the list, but sometimes I’m really surprised by how much more I enjoyed visiting than I thought I would. On this occasion, I had fairly low expectations of Seychelles, and they were firmly met.

I just couldn’t help thinking that if you want to stroll down a beautiful beach, eat fresh fish & chips, visit a local history museum, go to a nature reserve and do a tasting at the local distillery, why not go to Filey in North Yorkshire instead.

Seychelles. Almost as good as Filey.