With a total population of less than 100,000, there is plenty of elbow-room in the Seychelles. Most of the current descendants of French and British settlers, Chinese merchants and African and Indian plantation workers live on Mahe. Next in size and population is Praslin, famously home to coco de mer palms, found only in the Seychelles. Smaller and a little further east is La Digue, recognisable to those with long memories as the backdrop for Christie Brinkley Sports Illustrated shoots in the 1970s and Bacardi rum adverts in the 1990s. Even today there is an air of chocolate-box perfection to these islands, although there have certainly been some troublesome moments in paradise. A former British crown colony – albeit a neglected and stubbornly French one – the Seychelles gained independence in 1976 with a coalition government formed by the pro-British James Mancham and the vehemently socialist France-Albert Rene.
The following year Rene staged a coup, forcing Mancham into exile Then in 1981, a group of mercenaries led by ‘Mad’ Mike Hoare, a British-Irish veteran of shady Congo shenanigans, were exposed at the airport. During a shoot-out, the men aborted their attempted coup and hijacked an Air India aircraft to take them home Rene, who From top right: the restaurant on Frigate Island Private; signs on the island. Opposite, a detail in the library at Villa North Island. Previous pages, from left: the bathroom at Villa North Island; Anse Victorin on Frigate would survive a second coup in 1986, continued to govern the Seychelles until 2004. He stood down that year in favour of his long-serving vice-president, James Michel, who recently handed the reins to his deputy, ensuring the same party has ruled this island nation for 40 years.
The otherworldly beauty of the Seychelles has long attracted curious travellers and fanned its reputation for both exoticism and elitism. Thanks to the islands’ remoteness – 1,600km off the east coast of Africa – they have never been cheap to visit, or, for that matter, on any cruise-ship itineraries. Unassuming guesthouses and small, locally owned hotels remained the order of the day until the 1990s, when the government adopted a more pragmatic approach to foreign investment. Which is when international hotel brands started to open on the main islands.
At that time, there were just a couple of simple lodges on small private islands owned by prominent Seychellois families – the Savys on Bird Island and the Masons on neighbouring Denis – but soon the way was clear for something altogether grander, if not in scale, then most certainly in ambition. I first visited the Seychelles 16 years ago, before there were any big-name hotels on Mahe and the earliest of the new batch of private-island lodges had just opened. Handsome Fregate Island, owned by the German industrialist Otto Happel since the 1970s, was first off the block in 1998, closely followed by tiny Cousine, owned by the South African granite billionaire Malcolm Keely.
Both men declared that the restoration and conservation of the fragile eco-systems were paramount, and would be financed by profits from the lodges, a position they maintain to this day. Three years after that trip, I flew out to report on the opening of what has become the Seychelles’ most famous private island, North, a serious player in the conservation firmament, and peerless celebrity hangout (the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge chose it for their honeymoon). There have been a handful of hotel arrivals in the intervening years. The Four Seasons Seychelles on Mahe, which opened in 2009, is still at the top of its game, with 67 villas secreted among 69 hectares of wonderfully landscaped grounds.
But, at least up until now, there has been no single private island to match either North or Fregate, joint favourites for exclusivity and rivals for the world’s happiest honeymooners and princes, the wealthiest eco-warriors and oligarchs. In October, the new six senses ziL pasyon was unveiled on Felicite, a dramatic 264-hectare island off La Digue It’s been a long time coming. Nine years ago, way before the Bangkok-based Six Senses hotel and spa group signed on, it was announced that Zil Pasyon (creole for ‘island of passion’) would open in 2008… and then 2010. It was a couple more years before a new owner was brought on board with deep enough pockets to bring this mammoth development to fruition. During this period of uncertainty, Steve Hill, the environmental consultant responsible for the restoration of Fregate back in the 1990s, was quietly at work on the island, identifying and removing invasive species, and replacing them with indigenous and native plants from his vast supply of seedlings and saplings.
By the time I arrived on Felicite earlier this year, just a few weeks before the official opening, Hill had disposed of vast tracts of cocoplum trees, introduced during what he describes as ‘man’s occupation of the island’ (Felicite had once been a coconut plantation, and then briefly a small private retreat). So far his team has planted 40,000 replacement trees and shrubs to help recreate habitats for rare birds such as the Seychelles white eye and Seychelles paradise flycatcher. Felicite is a real beauty, dominated by massive, grey-black granite outcrops weathered into deep pleats by centuries of rainfall and pounding surf. Mast of it remains completely inaccessible, at least until walking trails can be hacked out of the jungle. Yet with so much still to do, Hill is fantastically optimistic. ‘Given time,’ he says, ‘what we did on Fregate will be totally eclipsed by our work on Felicite, which is on a much bigger scale.
