The Seychelles: A Dream for Everyone

La Digue: our accommodation was the Moonlight Beach Villa, a smart 3-star hotel with breakfast and 6 rooms. The rooms were always tidy and clean. You were more than happy to leave a tip for housekeeping. Breakfast was rather repetitive. There was one large fruit platter for everyone, followed by a set number of slices of toast per person, a dollop of butter and a dollop of jam. You could choose between scrambled, fried or boiled eggs, or an omelette. There was 1 glass of juice from a carton and 1½ cups of coffee. Bicycle hire was available at the hotel for 100 rupees per day.

La Digue is a small, manageable island. There is only one main road and several smaller side roads. At the tiny harbour, you can turn either right or left. And you either walk or cycle. Cars for tourists simply do not exist.

If you turn right, you pass a pretty little church and a school. The main road ends directly in front of the entrance to the national park. Admission costs 100 rupees. Among other things, the national park is home to the famous beaches and granite formations seen on so many postcards, and they are well worth visiting. You can get up close to giant tortoises – Aldabra tortoises – and even feed them.

If you turn left from the tiny harbour, you pass our ‘hotel’ mentioned above. More dream beaches await tourists here, although with far fewer rocks. In return, you once again have views of the neighbouring islands, including Félicité, the luxury island for the richest of the rich from every walk of life. Apparently, David Beckham is currently building his own ‘little holiday home’ there.

At the end of the main road – literally the END – there is an open-air restaurant and bar. The location alone is wonderful, right beside the sea. Then there is the food: an absolute delight. The portions are perfectly adequate, with more than enough to eat.

The octopus salad with rice for 200 rupees comes highly recommended. It tastes incredible. Have it with a freshly squeezed fruit cocktail, available from 70 rupees. The fish curry with rice for 230 rupees is also highly recommended, although it is spicy.

If excellent food is not such a priority for you on La Digue, I would recommend the takeaway stall at the harbour. The food costs only a fraction of the price of a restaurant meal and is also very tasty. With a drink, it costs around 100 rupees, with the food itself costing 60 rupees. You get a generous serving of rice with your choice of fish, meat or chicken, plus salad.

On La Digue, we joined a guided hike with Robert Agnes. It costs either €35 or 500 rupees. It lasts from 08:30 to 14:30 and includes a tasty lunchtime snack, although not a proper meal. His tour begins in the national park and ends there again. Participants cannot be timid and need to be relatively fit and agile. Your knees must be in good working order, as they take quite a strain in places. He climbs absolutely everywhere: through crevices, into crevices, over rocks and around rocks. Into the water, out of the water. Every step is carefully placed, and you absolutely must follow his instructions and assistance precisely. Every time, we were rewarded with dreamlike views. The beaches, coves and vistas were places no ordinary tourist would otherwise reach. Essentials for tours like this are non-slip footwear – I wore trainers – and light clothing, including swimwear. Camera equipment should be kept separately in a plastic bag, as you often have to go through water and hold your rucksack above your head. Alternatively, a sudden heavy downpour can appear from nowhere and soak your rucksack.

If you have the stamina, you can hike up the highest mountain on La Digue. It is just under 400 m high. That sounds almost laughable, were it not for the high humidity, hot daytime temperatures and steep ascent. We chose the shorter route. Under the same conditions, we walked up to the ‘Belle View’ panoramic restaurant. This included a fantastic sunset followed by dinner. It was very, very beautiful. The cost was 500 rupees, including a car ride back down to the village. Walking down would have been very difficult. It really is pitch-black, with none of the street lighting you find in Germany.

Everything is different on Mahé. It is a large tourist island where visitors mingle with the local population. There are small hotels as well as large 5-star hotels such as the ‘Savoy’, ‘Kempinski’ and ‘Hilden’. The atmosphere of a dream island gets rather lost.

You need to be keen to explore during a week’s holiday here. You have to drive to eat out and drive to go shopping. We hired a small runaround. Traffic drives on the left, which is a bit of a challenge for the brain if you are not used to it. The traffic is heavy, so you simply have to keep moving with the flow. Do not expect to stop and look around. To get from A to B, as we did, we always had to drive through Victoria. Mahé has plenty of nature, with vegetation that often looks like a jungle. There are many winding roads, and when we reached the bottom, more beautiful beaches awaited us, although some were also very windy. Despite the wet weather, with rain every day and sometimes absolutely pouring down, we drove to almost all the beaches and spent some time at several of them. Among others, we visited a beach where sea turtles come ashore to bury their eggs. Signs provide information about this.

We visited Victoria. First, we went to the weekly market, followed by the Hindu temple. If you ask politely, you are allowed to take photographs inside. In between, it started raining again. After sightseeing in Victoria, we continued to the botanical gardens. Admission was 100 rupees. There were some very beautiful plants, including the Coco de Mer. One side effect was the mosquitoes: small and vicious. Afterwards, we could not stop scratching. The cool water helped during our next visit to the beach.

We ate pizza twice in Beau Vallon, right beside the large beach. The restaurant does not open until after sunset, at 18:30. Pizzas cost from 140 rupees upwards. They are nothing special, but they taste fine and fill you up. There is also homemade takeaway food along the seafront. Unfortunately, we had a bit of an upset stomach afterwards, although we do not know whether it was actually caused by this homemade food. For the next 3 days, it was ‘5-Minute Terrine’ instant meals and white bread for us.

Our accommodation in Beau Vallon was the ‘Ocean View Guesthouse’. It was modern, with 3 stars and spacious rooms. My room could accommodate 2 adults, 1 child and 1 baby, and had a fridge, bathroom and safe in the wardrobe. Breakfast was similar to La Digue, although the portions per person were larger.