By Brendan Seery
Victoria, Seychelles - It has taken me a while, but my breathing is now under control and I can move easily with a few kicks of the fins.
Movement, though, is often not necessary: suspended just below the surface above the rocks and coral, rocking gently to the ancient Indian Ocean rhythms and observing the life below, is enough.
This Seychelles day is partly cloudy, so the sunlight doesn’t penetrate more than a few metres. You have to look intently or you will miss something.
I don’t miss what looks like a flurry of sand on the seafloor below. Perhaps it’s some sort of flatfish, I think. I have watched National Geographic on TV. I am an armchair expert. But the disturbance suddenly resolves itself and a turtle, slightly smaller than our coffee table, goes gliding past.
I follow, using a fair bit of leg strength to keep up and marvel at the effortless way its flippers propel it through the water. Not for the first time on this snorkelling trip am I reminded I am an alien outsider here, a visitor. A privileged one, to be sure, but a foreigner nevertheless.
I get in close and look at its head, which is yellow and patterned with dark irregular hexagons and rectangles. Looks a bit like a giraffe I think as I move along parallel to it.
Then it turns its head slowly towards me. Its bulbous eyes hold my gaze for an unnervingly long time. Can a turtle be disdainful? I look at its sharp, downturned beak. I want to remember this.
The creature turns away and heads for the surface to take in another breath… I have had to take scores of them in the three or four minutes I have been following or alongside it. Then, with a final, dismissive look, it dives, quickly, and deep, and I lose sight of it in the gloom of the seabed.
Not long afterwards, I pull off the goggles and slowly waft back to the boat in reflective mood. That’s another one of life’s circles I have closed. I have seen Leatherback turtles laying their eggs on a dark evening in the sand near St Lucia in KwaZulu-Natal and watched tiny, vulnerable Loggerhead hatchlings making their precarious moon-lit way from nest to sea, north of Ponta Malongane in Mozambique, the odds almost impossibly stacked again them by predators and humans. Now I have swum with one of these gentle creatures.
I am privileged.
Even more so when I realise I am the only one to have seen the animal. Lionel Ferrari, general manager of Tsogo Sun’s Paradise Sun on Praslin Island, listens to my description and confirms I have been up close and personal with a hawksbill turtle.
It doesn’t happen all the time, but the turtles are seen occasionally by hotel guests on the snorkelling excursions only a few hundred metres from the beach.
Apart from a sense of having ticked off another on life’s “bucket list” experiences, the near-silent pas de deux with the turtle underlined that the Seychelles truly is a paradise.
Its beaches are regularly acclaimed as among the best in the world; large chunks of it are turned over to national parks (most are marine sanctuaries, which is a good thing for animals like the hawksbill which is on the Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) Red List for most-threatened fauna.
Try to smuggle a spear-fishing gun into the country and they will lock you up. You won’t hear any argument about that from me, having seen first hand the destruction done to sea life in Mozambique’s reef by South Africa “sports” fishermen.
Protection also extends to some unique, and endemic flora, like the Coco De Mer, the fruit of a palm tree which only grows on some of the 116 islands in the Seychelles group.
For centuries, people around the Indian Ocean were mystified by the bulbous nuts, which washed up on their shores.
According to Elberd Balde, a guide at the Fond Ferdinand reserve on Praslin Island, legends abounded about the nuts, which look like the abundant buttocks and thighs of a woman. Some Africans believed the nuts came from trees below the surface of the ocean and in which lived a creature like a bird, which preyed on hapless seafarers.
When French colonisers identified the fruit as being from a palm tree, it did not bring an end to the wild stories.
The Coco de Mer has a male and a female plant. The male has an appendage rather like… er, a male organ. So stories got back to France that on wild and stormy nights, the male and female trees would make love, uprooting themselves and searching each other out.
Today, if you want a Coco De Mer nut, you can have one – complete with certificate of authenticity – for a mere e400 (R7 140).
Seeing the prices is a reminder that the Seychelles will never be a cheap, tourist sausage machine destination. Lying 4 degrees south of the equator and thousands of kilometres from anywhere, the island’s 91 000 people must import nearly everything they need in their daily lives, from cars to food and fuel. And that will cost money.
The government has also largely resisted the temptation to increase numbers of tourists by going downmarket… although there are some more affordable alternatives to some of the beach resorts, including guest houses and self-catering properties. (Just don’t expect the standards to be anything like you’re used to in South African guests houses and self-catering establishments…)
At Paradise Sun, which has been in the Tsogo Sun group for more than 25 years, South Africans come third in the guest numbers stakes, after Italy and France. Though Tsogo is a South African group, it realises those of us earning rand are becoming more and more squeezed when it comes to foreign trips. So, says Ferrari, a decision has been made to keep mark-ups to a minimum at the Paradise Sun, keeping the costs of drinks and excursions, for example, still within reach of South Africans.
The excursions from Paradise Sun include the one to Fond Ferdinand, which is a less well-known (but bigger) reserve than the nearby Vallée de Mai, which has the same botanical attractions, including the Coco de Mer. Ferrari points out the big difference between the two reserves: it costs e20 (R356) per person in the Vallée de Mai, but only e8 per person in Fond Ferdinand (and, in the latter, that price also gets you a guide).
Other excursions include scuba diving, snorkelling at uninhabited islands close in to Praslin or further afield; as well as trips to world-famous beaches nearby, including Anse Lazio, which Trip Advisor users have consistently voted one of the top five in the world.
When you walk the powdery, white sands of Anse Lazio, with its craggy granite rocks rising up out of the sea, taking in the multiple shades of blue, turquoise and green of the sea, you know why the beach won the accolades… or do you? Other beaches we visit and see from a boat look equally as beautiful. Everywhere you look there is beauty in the Seychelles.
And, for me, that puts it a notch above Mauritius.
If you are only going to visit one island paradise in your life, then it has to be the Seychelles.
Travel agency knows all the archipelago has to offer
Jane James is, unashamedly, a one-trick pony. Her travel agency, Seyunique in Joburg, only sells the Seychelles. And she knows her product: In the last 21 years, she has visited the island country more than 80 times and checked out virtually everything it has to offer, on land, sea and air.
Ask her if she ever gets tired of it and she will look at you with a disbelieving gaze, which tells you that, if you are tired of the Seychelles, then you are tired of life itself.
“Every time I come back, I fall in love with the place all over again. Every time I see something new and beautiful. This is the most beautiful place in the world.”
Her encyclopaedic knowledge of the islands – and specifically the complex array of accommodation and packages available – means she can come up with exactly what you want.
“I like to sit with people and understand what they want, what their budgets are… and I come up with what will suit them best.”
But it’s not just her: “Everyone in the agency is told that you cannot sell the Seychelles unless you’ve been there.
“So any new employee, the first thing they do is get on a plane and go there…”
Over the years, Jane has had plenty of return business.
“What people discover is that once you have been, the bug bites – and also no two trips are ever the same.”
Seychelles, as a destination, is not an easy sell, mainly because of cost, James acknowledges.
“But, this is truly one of the world’s best – if not the best – island destination,” she says, dismissing Mauritius as a competitor, because it is “not as beautiful, the beaches are not as gorgeous and there are a lot more people”.
Seyunique sells a range of properties, including the 4-star Paradise Sun, which she says is an excellent, well-run establishment.
Saturday Star