Life & Style | Travel
Miles away at Denis Island
On my first afternoon at Denis Island, Seychelles, sleeping off the jet lag, I was awoken by a snuffling sound behind my "cottage"
- By Andrew Gilligan, Evening Standard
- Published: 00:04 August 2, 2008
On my first afternoon at Denis Island, Seychelles, sleeping off the jet lag, I was awoken by a snuffling sound behind my “cottage''.
Still not quite mentally free of London, my first thought was of a break-in.
Then I remembered that I was in a place that didn't even need a lock on the door and went around the back to find a tortoise the size of a small car, lapping up drips from the air-conditioning pipe.
On Denis, these creatures, while exotic, are not exactly wild (they are kept as semi-pets by the hotel, in a stockade from which they keep escaping), and are, of course, marvellously slow.
The giant tortoises are thus entirely symbolic of this fine resort.
Solitude by the seaside
If you want water-flumes, children's play captains and 11 different restaurants, go somewhere else.
If you want your own private beach, shared only with a loved one, a suitcase of books and occasional functionaries bearing refreshments, this is the place — an isolated dot in the ocean, half an hour's flight north of that other collection of isolated dots which is the main group of Seychelles.
Rather, as Renaissance painters worked towards a perfect Venus, the private tropical island has become our holiday fantasy ideal.
Given the amount of money it is likely to cost, we seek perfection every bit as fiercely as the artists did.
Yet, though most private tropical islands are expensive, not all are equal.
The key to a satisfying rest is to do a certain amount of work before you go.
You need to research three things — the season; what you might call the quality of the finish; and, above all, the space.
May, the month I travelled, is usually rainy in the Maldives and Mauritius, so Seychelles it was.
I want my holiday to be like the tortoise, exotic but essentially tamed (gourmet food and a luxurious bed, please).
And, most importantly, I want a fairly big island with not very many people on it.
Denis ticks all those boxes. It is about a mile and a half long and 150 hectares, but has only 25 rooms (on a previous foray into private-island luxury in the Maldives, the resort island I stayed at had 50 rooms on 15 hectares; a medium-class resort island, meanwhile, might squeeze in as many as 200 in that same space).
Denis's rooms are all in one area of the island, fanning out in two directions along the beach from the central restaurant and reception building.
But each is large and detached, separated, and, in many cases, concealed from its neighbours by bushes and trees.
Each opens on to a stretch of lawn and your own personal section of the beach, also concealed from neighbours by the same artful planting.
Because of this, and because of the genuinely low density of guests, it is usually possible to form that precious illusion that you really do have the place to yourself.
There was something deeply restful about being able to develop on Denis what I never manage at home — a routine.
Each day was precisely the same. I would lie on the beach with a book from that suitcase.
I would eat fine meals at the same times. I would go for a walk along the shore at dusk, watching the sun set and the seabirds sweep in, read some more on the veranda and then go to bed.
The hardest work I did was the three-minute stroll to the restaurant but, bizarrely, my idleness made no difference whatsoever to my waistline.
If you want to be slightly more active, you can be taken out fishing or snorkelling on the nearby reef.
And the resort staff did manage to inveigle me on to a nature drive round the island, which still has some attractive old copra-plantation buildings but is now uninhabited apart from the guests and those who serve them.
You will see brilliant orange birds, blue-and-white birds and the inevitable giant tortoises, several of which regularly have to be removed from the field that serves as the airport runway.
Eventually, tortoises permitting, the little aeroplane will swoop you back to Mahé, the main island, for a few days' gentle re-education in the world of cars, shops and roads.
We're still not talking Camden Town here, by the way. The entire country only has one set of traffic lights.
I stayed at the world's smallest Hilton, which has 40 rooms, built on stilts over giant, egg-shaped rocks, a dramatic hotel in a real Bond-film location.
Fleming's bond
It turns out that Ian Fleming did stay there, even writing one of the stories in For Your Eyes Only about it.
Everything — the restaurants, the enormous and classy wood-lined rooms — juts out over a vista there.
There's not much real beach but there are some fine places to lie on a sun-lounger, looking out over the great sweep of Beauvallon Bay, with the mountains rising behind it.
There's an even better restaurant than Denis's and there's the full complement of in-room toys, including all the 007 films on demand.
However, Seychelles is about to get modestly more crowded — ten new upmarket resorts, and 3,000 extra beds, are coming in three years.
The country will have to be careful not to spoil its low-key appeal.
For now, though, of all the tropical paradises I've seen, Seychelles wins the tropical paradise beauty contest.
Go there ... Seychelles
From the UAE ... From Dubai
Return Economy class flight on Emirates Airlines on a twin-sharing basis.
Fare from: Dh10,010
Package includes meet and greet private car transfer; 4 nights stay in a Hillside Pool Villa at Banyan Tree; breakfast
Special offer: Pay for 3 nights and get 1 night free
Info courtesy: Dnata Holidays. Ph: 04 4298576
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