A Tour of Mahé

A potted history of the Seychelles

Wallets out and contents invested in a road trip Maria organised with Clint from Uncharted Paradise. Clint was born here, knows his stuff, and clearly articulates the island’s history and its fauna and flora – much of it unique to the Seychelles.

After squeezing into the car with the Allorians, we headed up the winding hillside roads to our first stop, Mission Lodge. Along the way, he shared a brief history lesson, which went something like this:

In January 1609, an English East India Company ship, the Ascension, landed here. The crew found the islands empty of people but full of fresh water, fish, coconuts, and giant tortoises. Although it was a great provisioning stop (and that includes the tortoises), the British saw no reason to stay, and for the next century the islands became a quiet refuge for Indian Ocean pirates.

The French finally gave the islands more serious attention. In 1742, explorer Lazare Picault charted the archipelago and named it “L’Île d’Abondance.” The same fella returned in 1744 and renamed the island Mahé, after the governor who’d sent him. By 1756, France formally claimed the archipelago, naming it “Séchelles” [sic] after the country’s Minister of Finance. There was a lot of arse-licking going on in those times.

The true settlement story, though, begins on 27 August 1770, when the ship Thélemaque landed the first permanent colonists on Mahé. The landing party consisted of 15 white settlers, 8 Africans, and 5 Indians, a few of them enslaved or indentured. From that mixture of people grew the Seychellois Creole language and culture.

Venn’s Town

10 July

📍 Mission Lodge Lookout · 004°39.307′S, 055°26.671′E · Sans Souci Road, Mahé

Sans Souci Tea Factory

📍 Sans Souci Tea Factory · 004°39.790′S, 055°26.300′E · Morne Blanc, Port Glaud, Mahé

Down the road from Mission Lodge, Sans Souci Tea Factory has turned out tea leaves since 1962 on its terraces on the slopes of Morne Blanc, where the mountain air provides ideal growing conditions. The factory produces about 45 tonnes of organic tea a year, although we never saw anyone actually make it. It was packing day, so we decided not to pay the admission fee to watch boxes of tea packed into bigger boxes of tea.

The view from Morne Blanc was open, though, and so was the café, staffed by someone with the perpetual look of someone who’s lost a fiver and found a penny. That ice-cold server brought us iced tea while we enjoyed the view.

📍 Sauzier Waterfall · 004°39.516′S, 055°24.845′E · Port Glaud, Mahé

Sauzier Waterfall

A short journey towards sea level took us to Sauzier Waterfall, but along the way we stopped to see this spider in someone’s garden. It’s a golden orb-weaver spider – apparently harmless and a handy insect muncher to help keep garden pests (and arachnophobics) at bay.

The waterfall itself was a place of calm and tranquillity. So much so that someone had tried to open a yoga studio here. The platform still exists, but the studio doesn’t. It’s a pity really; there is a definite sense of Zen about the place.

Takamaka Rum Distillery

📍 La Plaine St André · 004°43.172′S, 055°31.379′E · Au Cap, Mahé

By afternoon we’d crossed to the other side of the island to the Takamaka rum distillery built on an estate stretching back to 1792. The house previously functioned as an eco-museum, then became a copra kiln and a cinnamon and patchouli distillery, and since 2002 it has been leased to the Takamaka Rum people, who are restoring the site bit by bit while making and selling various flavours of this very popular booze.

Hordes of tourists descended on the place, so we did the sensible thing and went straight for the tasting.

Le Jardin du Roi

📍 Le Jardin du Roi · 004°44.765′S, 055°30.214′E · Baie Lazare / Anse Royale, Mahé

Le Jardin du Roi sits in the hills above Anse Royale. The Georges family replanted the area on the site of one of the spice gardens the French established in the 1770s to challenge the Dutch monopoly on nutmeg and cloves. Walking trails wind past cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla, and a small forest of fruit and medicinal trees. The Georges family has owned the site since 1860, but Micheline Georges has cared for it alone since her husband died in 1999. She speaks enthusiastically about the plants and trees she cares for.

Perhaps the most famous of these trees, endemic to the Seychelles, is the Coco de Mer. Found nowhere else on earth, the seed is both heavy – up to 30 kilos – and highly valued. Because of its value and rarity, the Seychelles government tightly controls what happens to every seed that falls. And, because it’s an internationally protected species and classified as endangered, the law treats each nut less like a coconut and more like a regulated asset. State bodies, chiefly the Seychelles Islands Foundation and the Seychelles Parks and Gardens Authority, strictly manage these falling seeds and pick them up from the site for processing.

And after that, Clint drove us back to the dinghy dock.

We all thought that Clint was brilliant – highly recommended. He can be found via his website at Uncharted Paradise