FOOD
Eight of the best sandwiches
from around the world
From a five-cheese Texan special to
Filipino-style corned beefNEW ORLEANS
Where to get the best gumbo
Gumbo is a rare find on UK menus,
but take a trip to the Big Easy and
you’ll be spoiled for choiceMOROCCO
The inside guide to Tangier,
Morocco’s buzzy port city
Discover a vibrant medina, lavish
palaces and a rich cafe cultureMEET THE PROTECTORS
OF SILHOUETTE ISLAND
This is no ordinary Seychelles resort island. From beach clean-ups to
turtle patrols, every guest has a role to play in protecting Silhouette’s
embattled, Edenic ecosystem. Words: Amelia Duggan
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STORIES
Here’s what you’ve
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website this month
Rising like a rough-hewn emerald amid a
binary world of open sea and unbroken sky,
Silhouette’s golden fringes — sugary beaches
spilling out into pearlescent, shallow reefs
— reveal themselves only as our ferry draws
closer. There’s a necklace of elegant villas
decorating one bay, too. From afar, all is forest:
luscious blankets of foliage cascade down
its granitic crags, clinging to sheer slopes
beneath a jagged pinnacle: Mount Dauban.
Curious seabirds attend our crossing from the
mainland, now swooping high on thermals
as we dock. From the water, Silhouette seems
ancient and untouchable but, on land, strident
measures are being taken to protect an
ecosystem in the balance.
Some 93% of this central Seychelles isle is
designated as a national park and it’s encircled,
too, by a protected marine reserve — beneath
the glassy surface of the Indian Ocean swim
sharks and stingrays. I quickly discover there’s
also a fitting humility to the island’s sole
resort, Hilton Seychelles Labriz: while pirates,
plantation workers and, now, pampered guests
have, at different times over the centuries,
called Silhouette home, nature has always
been the headline act.
Now over a decade old, the hotel embraces
this hierarchy, weaving its luxuries around
the island’s own. On my first morning, I’m
stirred awake by the chirps of bulbuls and
must endeavour to dodge scuttling serratedmangrove crabs when cycling through the
village of villas to breakfast. At dusk, as
signature cocktails are served and gourmet
dinners dished up, fruit bats with 3 ft wingspans
swoop overhead; and come nightfall, the resort
wraps itself in a tropical, inky blackness,
allowing the firmament to unveil countless
constellations — and the faint twinkle of
settlements on distant Mahé, the country’s
main island. For many travellers, the resort
and its sliver of eastern shoreline will offer
enough diversion for a week or even two, but
I’ve come to get my hands dirty, to muck in with
Silhouette’s resident team of conservationists
— and to see what else the island holds.
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