Paradise Found in the Seychelles

Take time to kick back Creole-style on the spectacular island of Mahé

- Michelle Harbi

Mornings are my favorite time on Mahé. Rising early, I snuggle down on the daybed on our hilltop terrace with a cup of tea, watching as the ascending sun turns the sky ever bluer and the forest ever greener, the ocean below glistening under its rays.

The previous night had seen rain, and so a delicate rainbow threads through what remains of the clouds as the island’s birds conduct their exotic early morning conversation.

Finishing my cuppa, I pad down the hill to Petite Anse beach – a perfect horseshoe of white sand lapped by water the color of peppermint. Other than a hotel worker pulling the covers off the sunbeds, and a man farther out to sea in a fishing boat, I’m alone.

I wade into the water – warm even at this time – and swim slow strokes, working up a little appetite for the breakfast buffet ahead.

When writing about far-flung beach destinations, it’s all too easy to lapse into the well-worn phrases of travel prose – crystal-clear waters, powder-white sands, swaying palms – but then, few places embody the paradise island idyll quite as effortlessly as Seychelles.

Or, rather, paradise islands, the country being comprised of 115 of them, clustered about a thousand miles east of mainland Africa in the vast Indian Ocean.

The largest, home to the international airport and most of the former French and British colony’s population, is Mahé.

While island-hopping is easy, we’re not here for long, so are content to stay put and enjoy the less than laborious task of exploring a land mass only 17 miles by 5 miles in size.