Saturday, August 05, 2006

Travel: Serious pampering, for birds and humans

The thought that I might never encounter the giant tenebrionid beetle on its native Seychelles heath was a melancholy one. Well, fairly melancholy. If sun-downing champagne in a private Jacuzzi by a palm-fringed shore had to be the alternative, then hey, I could be philosophical about it.

Nevertheless, my afternoon's expedition through the lush interior of Fregate Island had provided one of the most unforgettable interludes of my February week in the Seychelles. How often do you get an armchair view of some of the rarest birds and plants on the planet from behind the wheel of a golf buggy?

I had gone to the Seychelles to check out a revival in its tourist business. The blissed-out, five-star image of escape to these beaches and the assumption that this is where reality outshines the most unconvincing of brochure illustrations have taken something of a knock in recent years.

The opening of Lemuria on Praslin by an upmarket Mauritian company, Banyan Tree's recent arrival on Mahe and the imminent arrival on Sainte Anne of Beachcomber, however, are good news for sybarites with deep pockets. So are the facelifts given to luxury private island lodges such as Denis and Fregate. Meanwhile, a range of small guest houses and new self-catering accommodation, such as Les Villas d'Or on Praslin, are putting gorgeous beaches within wider reach.

Life may be a beach for most visitors to the Seychelles, but the new developments I saw had all, to a greater or lesser degree, built a new awareness of the environment into the experience they offer their visitors. The previously uninhabited granitic North Island, off Mahe, which opens early next year with 11 villas, is to be run by Wilderness Safaris, partly as a sanctuary for regenerating endemic species.

Eco-tourism's fashionable label is slapped on to anything from Fregate's all-out projects to save endangered species to Lemuria's triple-level extravaganza of a swimming pool, which makes theatrical use of the granite rocks heaped au naturel around its perimeter.


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