44 Travel
W British Airways’ direct flights were can-
celled due to Covid, so it’s a fairly lengthy
seven-hour schlepp to Dubai or Doha, and
then another four hours to the capital, Vic-
toria, on Mahé, the main island. Still, those
first sweet lungfuls of tropical air, that first
paddle in the warm Indian Ocean, made
all the stress and form-filling and sleepless
travel worthwhile.
I had flown ahead with my two daugh-
ters, aged 9 and 12, to spend a few days on
Mahé’s west coast at Fishermans Cove,
which claims to be the oldest hotel in the
Seychelles but doesn’t look it. Actually, old
here doesn’t mean that much — it dates
back to 1943, and the rooms have been kept
up to date: large, airy bungalows dotted in
tropical gardens. No beach as such, but the
setting, on a headland overlooking Beau
Vallon beach, was suitably jaw-dropping
and the public beach (all beaches are
public in the Seychelles, refreshingly) was
just at the end of the gardens, a climb down
a little ladder. We acclimatised, which
meant wandering around in a daze in the
heat trying not to get sunburnt, and mar-
velling at the trumpet-sized flowers, the
lime-green lizards, the slap-me-is-this-
real views.
We also marvelled at the exotic fruit at
breakfast (papaya did not pass the kids’
test) and drank from fresh coconuts on the
beach. The girls spent hours in the warm-
as-a-bath sea and leapt around in the pool
built into the rocks, and I did something I’d
not done in two years: read a stack of books
and took sun-dappled naps.
We strolled around the little town of
Beau Vallon and dropped in for dinner at
Fishermans Cove’s sister hotel, Story, just
down the beach, for grilled fish and rum
cocktails (me) and lemongrass lemonade
and ribs (the girls). It was calm. It was easy.
And then the others arrived.
I’m being unfair. It didn’t stop being
calm, or easy. It just became... busier.
Noisier. There was more negotiating, less
reading on the beach, fewer naps. We’d
moved hotels by this point, to the five-star
Constance Ephelia, down the coast from
Fishermans Cove. It’s huge, a village really,
with 300 rooms split between the north
and south coasts of a rich-green peninsula,
surrounded by Jurassic Park hills and low-
slung mangroves.
A cosy boutique hotel this isn’t, but then
you don’t want a cosy boutique hotel for a
boisterous three-generational family. You
want suites and villas and a choice of res-
taurants and a cracking spa and loads of
activities. You want various lovely pools
and two beaches, which, by the way, were
so perfect they looked like heavily filtered
screensavers — warm, bright turquoise
water, soft sugary sand, swaying palms.
We settled into a daily rhythm, punctu-
ated with lots of discussion and plan-
changing, quite a bit of herding, and the
odd vote. We’d not spent this much time
together in years, but arguments were
avoided, probably thanks to the fact that
we all had our own space in which to hide
away when needed.
My husband, the girls and I were in
a villa with its own pool, which automati-
cally made it the Best Place Ever in the
kids’ eyes. We grown-ups preferred the
outdoor living room, perfect for post-
beach lounging and the odd bit of work
and, come evening, where the others
would come for pre-dinner drinks.
Mornings usually started on the north
beach for a snorkel over the marine park’s
protected coral reef — much of it bleached
from various climate-change-induced
events, but slowly recovering and still full
of tropical fish. Then perhaps a pootle
about on our bikes — the resort is criss-
crossed with paths that wind through the
gardens and mangroves — then lunch in
one of the restaurants. Seselwa, with its
grilled local fish and curries, and Helios,
serving Mediterranean salads and dishes,
were our favourites.
And then afternoons might be spent in
the vast spa, the largest in the Indian
Ocean, or drifting from hammock to sun-
lounger to pool (lots to choose from, all of
them peaceful and just a few steps from the
beach). The main buffet restaurant,
Corossol, was far from serene, but a hit
with the kids for its pasta bar, nightly
themes (cowboy grill, anyone?) and huge
choice of desserts.
Fun fact: due to Covid, the staff now
serve guests from the buffet, rather than
letting them help themselves, and that
measure alone has reduced food waste by
60 per cent.Up we climbed,
through the
steamy jungle,
to whizz
through
the canopy
I geeked out on sustainability facts,
hearing about the desalination plant,
which has eliminated half a million plastic
bottles from the resort, and the mangroves
— now a nature reserve (there was a coco-
nut plantation and government boarding
school here before Constance arrived).
Sustainability is a “journey”, the guide
told me, and given the little plastic bottles
of shampoo in the bathrooms and the
wagyu beef served at dinner, it did feel like
the resort had some way to go. Still, it fares
better than most, and is sustainably certi-
fied by Green Globe.
The kids’ club was firmly rejected by the
children, but zip-lining got a thumbs up
from everyone, because, as my mum put it,We had all our meals together and then
fell into a voting system to decide on
activities. Those who wanted to be active
could be active. That mostly meant my
brother and me, and we opted for two
mornings of scuba diving, buddying up like
we last did in our twenties and floating
over giant underwater granite rocks,
spotting blacktip reef sharks, parrotfish
and stingrays.
My husband joined me on a sustainabil-
ity walk, which I loved and he tolerated
only because it included time in the
mangroves and a chance to spot the
orange-red Madagascar fody and grey
herons (he’s a birder, which is exactly as
nerdy as it sounds).Constance Ephelia, MahéVilla at Constance Ephelia St Roch church, Beau Vallon