Now that’s what you call a desert island!
Desroches is a tiny speck in the Seychelles – and at one beach Harriet Sime has only her husband and George the tortoise for company
POWDER pink hermit crabs scuttle across the creamy sands, lichen-covered green turtles come up for air so close we can hear them breathe, and giant tortoises munch their way through the palm trees behind us. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful, so exotic, so tropical. In fact, this might just be the best beach in the world. And we have the whole thing to ourselves.
I’m on Desroches, a tiny speck of junglecovered land in the Outer Islands of the Seychelles. It’s so remote it would take 15 hours to travel here by boat from the main island of Mahe, which itself is 900 miles off the nearest mainland (Kenya, to be precise). The one vessel that makes that journey comes just four times a year with essentials to stock up its residents.
The only way for tourists to get here is to board a tiny prop plane, which my husband and I happily do to escape the humidity and 30C sunshine.
The Four Seasons at Desroches Island is the only hotel on this tiny isle, which measures just 3.5 miles long and 0.5 miles wide. After the plane touches down on the palmlined runway, which crosses the whole width of the island from south to north, we’re transported on buggies to our room (our bags appear two minutes later). It’s the most luxurious and enjoyable of plane-to-hotel transfers.
Bikes with our initials are waiting outside our thatched cabana. A push through the gigantic wooden door takes us to a four-poster bed which looks on to our own pool and leads us to a small stretch of beach and the reef-speckled ocean.
We’re desperate to explore, so pack our maps in the wicker backpacks in our room and get going.
Towering palms whizz by in a tropical green blur, bending like man-made pieces of art, as our bikes flick sand in our wake.
Dusty lanes take us through dense forests, leading to ribbons of sand with water the texture of silk, each somehow more beautiful than the last, until we settle for the day on Aquarium Beach, in the north-east of the island. Despite being home to such a famous hotel brand, Desroches still has a desert island feel to it – broken trees linger over lapping turquoise water and unraked sand, locals commute bare foot or on bikes while giant leathery fruit bats hang within the jungle.
The island’s eldest resident is George, a 120-year-old free-roaming Aldabra tortoise, who we find relaxing under the shade of a guettarda tree on our first morning.
He’s huge, with dents in his thick shell caused by falling coconuts and white markings from where he’s been scratching on a tree. We snap off a branch and place it in front of him. He slowly raises his snake-like neck and blinks his wet, emotive eyes. We were told by a local conservationist that George loves gentle touch, so we stroke his neck, causing him to go up on all fours – a sure sign he’s happy.
After three days living the luxury castaway life on Desroches, we head back to Mahe, the largest and most populated island of the Seychelles, and our second hotel, Anantara Maia. We’re taken to our villa, high in the palm tree-clad mountains, which is more like a mini hotel. We have a pool, a huge bathtub sunk into the terrace, and a small kitchen where our butler, Gihan (each villa is assigned one who’s on hand 24/7), cooks and serves us breakfast, lunch and dinner most days. There’s a reason the hotel has drawn the rich and famous for decades.
One morning we rise early to drive 30 minutes to Victoria – the world’s smallest capital – home to around 25,000 people, to get a taste of local life. The counters are piled high with vibrant fruit and veg as fishermen descale red snapper and chop up shark fins, T-shirts folded across their chests to air their bellies. In one corner a stork perches behind a man scrubbing fish on a wooden board with a grater, hopping down when he walks away to nibble on the leftovers. Upstairs, women in impossibly tight shorts and crop tops sell turtle-emblazoned T-shirts and shot glasses.
Our final stop is a 15-minute flight from Mahe via prop plane to the tiny Felicite Island. It’s as if we’re island-hopping. Our base is the Six Senses Zil Pasyon. It’s a honeymooner’s paradise – 30 chic villas with twinkling infinity pools and playful swings in the glass-fronted bathrooms, which overlook palm forests falling into the ocean.
We quickly get into a rhythm – waking early for breakfast before jumping into the water to explore reefs bursting with coral in every shade of pink, purple and orange.
On our final afternoon we notice prints running from the sea up the sand bank on the beach. We follow them and spot a hawksbill turtle using her hind flippers to dig a vaseshaped hole. We watch in silence for a minute or two as she prepares to nest. ‘Let’s hope her babies live as long as our friend George on Desroches,’ Dan says, as we tip-toe away and leave her in peace.
● Turquoise Holidays offers three nights at Four Seasons Seychelles at Desroches Island, two nights at Four Seasons Resort Seychelles, three nights at Anantara Maia and three nights at Six Senses
Zil Pasyon from £8,399pp in September. Including breakfast, international flights with
Qatar Airways, transfers, and inter-island flight/boat transfers (turquoiseholidays.co.uk).