The Seychelles

We've been in honeymoon traps, including on our actual honeymoon, when Puerto Vallarta's slogan, "hey, honeymooners" made us feel perpetually foolish, a little defensive, and totally unwilling to purchase anything other than repeat tickets to the town's best veggie buffet (still unmatched in our vacation experience).

We admit that we expected that the Seychelles to be similar...beautiful, touristy, and lots of sappy marketing and over-sized, umbrella-laden drinks. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that," to quote Seinfeld.) We were wrong.

Not that there's anything wrong with being wrong.

We stayed on the main island, Mahe. Mahe is the most densely populated island; it's where the airport is, and where most locals live. And even Mahe is a sizeable chunk park: dense, lush, leafy, and jungly, with a few gorgeous hikes moseying around in it. Nick found one that meanders across cliffs and through forests to a secluded beach.

At least, it was secluded for us. We shared the beach with a few microscopic crabs (babies, perhaps?) and some bigger friends; in the water, we saw fan corals, brain corals, and hosts of neon-colored fish. As we meandered peacefully back, we discovered that the hike is best for early risers; we ran into dozens of people, including one local who heads out there to fish.

Further up, we found a trail wending through a mossy, almost Washingtonian forest, ending in this view. The Seychelles split off from India eons ago, and so it has mostly unique plant life, along with a few insects, birds, and reptiles that drifted or flew over from the mainland.



Unlike many jungly places, it is remarkably free of plants and animals that can kill you (and scientists are not sure why the Seychelles doesn't have malaria).  We spotted some snails, a wolf snake (harmless little brown guy), some huge spiders, and Nick claimed he got a bug bite....

....so we rewarded ourselves for our extreme bravery with roadside "takeaway," far and away the best beach food we've ever had: smoky fish mixed with shredded vegetables, tons of chillies, yellow dal, and rice.....

...for which it was necessary to scout out the best view.

But really, there were too many good views to prioritize properly. The island is completely ringed with gorgeous beaches.



Best of all (for two ghostly-pale people who miraculously avoid getting tan in Abu Dhabi, and who must therefore take care on vacation), the beaches are shady, an attribute we'd never even thought to look for on a beach. Sure, there are waifish palm trees, leaning out over impossibly clear water. But there is also good, serious shade.

We fell asleep on this beach, nestled into velvety sand, and woke up to a local urging us to choose a better spot: in addition to our shady trees, we were under a coconut palm, and in danger of being hit by falling coconuts. It's a tough life.

Apart from beaches and jungles, the island has towns, and the towns are messy and fun and full of interesting things. The Seychelles was uninhabited in the 17th century, when the English East India Company landed, and the island became a stopping point for ships trading in the Indian Ocean. Since then, the stake in the island rotated a little, but it wound up a British colony until 1976. This legacy is pretty visible: the island has several overgrown tea plantations (because where would the British legacy be without tea farming?).

Most locals are descendants of Indians, Africans (some from slave ships the English intercepted in the Indian Ocean), and Europeans. Many locals are gorgeous mixes of all three. The culture is, too. In Victoria, the tiny capital, we saw a mosque, three cathedrals, a Baha'i center, and a Hindu temple.

On the streets, there are croissants and baguettes for sale, alongside dals and dried fish and soft white snail-shaped breads that seem to be Seychelles originals. There are fresh fish laid out on wooden tables, ready to be chopped up with machetes and carried home. There are eggs, sold from the back of a truck; we carried ours home (as the locals were doing) loose in a plastic bag.

We grabbed a smoothie and a snail roll in Victoria, where the Natural History Museum is worth a visit (coral crabs!) and the art galleries are a delight. But mostly we enjoyed exploring the coast, stopping to go running and to explore each new wonder: beaches with velvet sand, plants with impossibly huge leaves, coral reefs, surprisingly patterned fish, and mountain vistas.

And we left from an airport that probably has the most gorgeous beach in the world. If only we could've waited for our flight out in the ocean.... 

Ramadan Kareem!

Most restaurants -- but not all -- shut during the day for Ramadan.  The ones that look the least welcoming are actually the most likely to be open!  Here is one example in Masdar City, a futuristic eco-friendly zone near the airport.

Inside, it was bustling....at least by Masdar City standards.