Lockdown London – or the Seychelles?
Michelle Jana Chan extended a 10-day family break in the Indian Ocean into a much more enriching experience
The tiny capital of Victoria is lowkey and languorous, easily navigable, and by late morning it feels like it’s already wilting. I was looking for the Immigration Office on Independence Avenue, which turns out to be a conglomeration of open-air government offices, with roundabout breezes circulating the stairwells. The woman at reception – outside, at a trestle table with a bound ledger upon it – took my temperature, asked for my phone number for track-and-trace, and dispatched me to the second floor.
I climbed the stairs, thinking what perfect architecture it was for our times, before being chivvied back down, instructed that Immigration was actually on the ground floor. My to-ing and fro-ing felt like a summation of my disorientation. I hadn’t expected to be here, four days after our family holiday should have ended, pleading to extend our visas.
Having found the right office, I joined the queue. On my left were an Israeli couple, on my right a German man; we smiled at each other in comradeship, all of us appealing for the same leniency. When my number was called, I fumbled for our five passports, asking the official politely for permission to stay in her country. I explained that the public health crisis in our home town, London, was worsening.
The woman leafed through our passport pages. “Don’t worry,” she said kindly, “we understand it is terrible in the UK. You have until March 11. Come back then and I’ll give you three more months.” With a stroke of a pen, our trip evolved from a 10-day Christmas holiday in the Seychelles to an openended relocation.
Travel has never felt so unpredictable or arcane. Before the holiday, we had to complete PCR tests within 48 hours of travel. Our five negative Covid test certificates arrived by email, en route to the airport; we uploaded them to our applications for “Seychelles travel authorisation”, awaiting approval as we stood at the check-in desk. It was tight, especially when it turned out that one of our certificates had a typo – with the wrong test date – adding another layer of stress.
But, of course, all the worry falls away as you board the plane, and even more so, arriving into the humidity of a tropical island. Aged 8, 6 and 3, the kids’ wide-eyed wonder – at the runway surrounded on three sides by the Indian Ocean; the sticky heat; the swaying coconut trees and bobbing hibiscus blossoms – felt like a reward and a relief. From the main airport on Mahé, we hopped on a Twin Otter to the smaller island of Praslin, journeying northwest to our hotel, Constance Lemuria, where we were destined to quarantine for six nights. We could not leave the hotel grounds, but three beaches on site made that an easy undertaking.
We spent quarantine snorkelling among the rocks, or paddleboarding and kayaking around the circuitous coastline. Back on land, the resident naturalist taught the children about the Aldabra giant tortoise, how its long neck could reach branches a metre from the ground; he pointed out the great frigatebirds, which cannot land on the sea or dive, so must attack other birds to steal their catches; and the graceful white-tailed tropicbirds, one of which we found nesting at the base of a tree, nervously staring back at my three curious children, who stood silenced in awe, a better reaction than to any Christmas present.
Above all, it is the profuse wildlife and abundant vegetation that makes the Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands, stand apart from other paradises. On another day, at Anse Georgette, one of the most glorious beaches on Praslin, we spotted reef sharks and stingrays in the shallows. In the verdant forest backing on to the beach, we gently plucked giant Praslin snails from shiny leaves, catching ghost crabs in our hands, with friendly geckoes jumping from branches on to our bare skin; above, fruit bats soared against the strong blue skies, with their distinctive scalloped wings.
Six days into our trip, we had our mandatory visit to the hospital to have another round of PCR tests, which turned out to be quick and efficient. Just 24 hours later, on receiving our negative results, it felt as if we had been set free.
To celebrate, we headed off on some day trips, first to the primeval forests of the Vallée de Mai, with its gigantic endemic palms such as the coco de mer, which grows up to 100ft tall and bears the world’s heaviest seed, at up to 55lb; it resembles a woman’s curves between her waist and her thighs, and was once so prized it was worth its weight in gold.
Another day we caught a ferry to the petite island of La Digue, renting bicycles to traverse the sandy lanes. At Veuve Nature Reserve, we spotted the critically endangered Seychelles paradise flycatcher, as well as mighty threedimensional cobwebs of red-legged golden orb-weaver spiders. But our target destination was Anse Source d’Argent, regularly voted as the world’s best beach. Its fine sand is strewn with gargantuan granite boulders, which create winding passages, natural arches and tunnels to what seems like a catalogue of private slips of sand, lapped by clear warm waters.
In pre-Covid times, the ferries to La Digue would have been full and this beach would have drawn 500 visitors a day, but the pandemic’s effects meant our ferry was quiet, the seats mostly taken by locals, and at the beach itself there were fewer than a dozen visitors. It was clear how much economies such as the Seychelles, so reliant on tourism, are hurting. Not only was this beach empty, but the taxi drivers I met lamented the lack of business, as did the owners of food outlets and guesthouses. The tourism sector makes up about a quarter of the country’s GDP, employing more than a quarter of the island’s workforce. “You’re a ray of hope,” one taxi driver said to me. “Tourists will come back soon.” I hoped he was right, but worried for him – and his livelihood – that it would not be imminent.
Our holiday rolled on and as the day approached of our flight home, we learned London was moving into Tier 4. The day before we were due to fly, we decided to cancel our return. I went online to search for a place to hole up, eventually finding a self-catering apartment on the main island of Mahé, a short walk from the beach, with a view of the island of Silhouette.
So, we moved and began our new unplanned life. Our landlords, Berty and Amandine, could not have been more welcoming. Berty, a fisherman by trade, regularly brought us slabs of fresh tuna; on my birthday, he prepared me a dish of marinated jobfish. He often turned up unannounced bearing a ripe papaya or slice of soursop or sticks of sugar cane. He and Amandine also had a pet fruit bat, Fifi, who clung upsidedown to their clothes as they went about their chores, as well as a German Shepherd, Bella, who gave birth to seven puppies a few days after we arrived. I felt like shaking the children to remind them how lucky they were.
We planned to stay for 10 days and return in time for school and the uptick in work, but when term was pushed back until the middle of January, then February half-term, we delayed our return twice more. Remote schooling and remote work became truly remote, marooned in the middle of the Indian Ocean, more than 600 miles from the East African coast. We were living day by day, planning to stay till the money ran out, or the airport announced it was closing, or for another compelling reason. When the Seychelles suddenly lost its prized air corridor status and slipped on to the UK’s dreaded red list of countries requiring travellers to quarantine in a hotel on return, we began to feel our days were numbered. We believed our trip would be worth a PCR test and 10 days of home-based quarantine, but the same duration in an airport hotel would be too high a price to pay – in every way.
The Seychelles had also been in lockdown: there was a night-time curfew; schools, restaurants and non-essential shops were closed, and foreigners were no longer allowed to take public transport – but the beaches had remained open, as had the corner shops where we bought food. Our days unfolded slowly, as we ambled to the beach, skidding back in time to join remote schooling and office hours (four hours ahead of the UK). I found myself doing fractions in the sand, oral spelling tests in the surf, as well as organising real-life lessons, including taking the kids late one night to watch Berty unload his fishing boat, identifying the catch, from red snapper to barracuda to skipjack.
The children might not have progressed as quickly with their handwriting or sums, but they now know how many eggs a hawksbill turtle lays, how a bat is the only truly flying mammal, how to break open coconuts that wash up on the beach, and the value of copra to these islands.
Thus, our holiday morphed into the life of digital nomads (and little digital students). We got to know the local community: the shopkeepers where I bought plantain chips, paratha and fresh coriander; the man up the hill, Guy, who used to manage the tuna canning factory, and offered the children platters of fresh pineapple; Francis, a friend of a friend, who lent me a charging cable for my laptop, after mine
broke; Kenneth and Robinson, the octopus hunters, who carried their bounty on long sticks, and occasionally gave the kids one of their smaller catch.
Life there, like it would have been back home, was underpinned by the headlines, by the statistics, juggling obligations (at a distance), dealing with tech issues, studying the changing travel restrictions, but it was probably simpler, almost certainly healthier. Staying on had been our effort to keep well and seize opportunity in the darkest of times; we are grateful to have been granted refuge there and will forever be thankful to the Seychelles for harbouring us.
Back in London, having arrived just before hotel quarantine was introduced, we speak much more about this trip than other holidays. Perhaps because the Seychelles became a home of sorts, even for a short time; we gave more, we left more of ourselves there. Our new friends are frequently in touch: Berty sends us videos of the puppies getting bigger, nipping each other, howling; Kenneth sent us a photograph of the sun setting over the Indian Ocean, with a caption that it had been a perfect day for swimming.
Quarantining back home – with the routine of WFH, homeschooling, online shopping, a quick burst of exercise – I can’t deny the pangs; we miss the rhythm of our life there and treasure the memories, our souvenirs. We brought a coconut back and cracked it on Shrove Tuesday, sharing the coconut water and grating copra on our pancakes. Kenneth gave us a glossy cowrie seashell he found beside an octopus nest, which we put to our ears and pretend we can hear the sea, which suddenly, dreamily, makes it all feel not quite so far away.