Paradise island in the Seychelles

Recently I shared my story about how to get to La Digue so what is now better than telling about life at the island? Previously I have visited Mahe, the main Island and Praslin the sister island to La Digue so now it was time to check out another island of beautiful Seychelles. Many people choose to stay at Praslin and go to La Digue for a day trip. That works but you won´t be able to capture everything. I stayed for three days and it was enough to cover everything without stressing. But if you want to re-do favorites or have reservation for bad weather you should plan some backup days.

Accomondation

La Digue is a small island. It is almost car free except for delivery trucks and vans taking guests to their accommodation. Here you either walk or bike around. There are no huge resorts from major hotel chains. A few larger hotels are to be found but the majority of places are self catering villas or apartments. I love to stay at these local places. Hotels I know how they look like and what to expect and is convenient from time to time if I want a great pool or good gym. I booked a guesthouse at a hill located 10 minutes walk from Grand Anse Beach. The owner of the place was in my age and very accommodating. I am a sucker for great views so the place was at a hill. Was a bit sweaty to walk up there but the garden was stunning. Every morning they served breakfast at the poche including a huge plate of fresh fruit that had grown in the garden. Can it be better?

Grand Anse and Petit Anse beach

The first day I was checking out the closest beach. Grand Anse and Petit Anse beach. Both were extremely beautiful. Not many people around at all and the water had more than 50 shades of blue. I spent a lot of hours in the water and in between reading a book. I traveled by myself this time and always when doing solo adventures random people come by and are curious who you are and why you are there by yourself. I met a guy from Seychelles but currently lived abroad, he was now back for three weeks and we had a long chitchat about pre and post C19 at the island and I also got recommendations what not to miss out. I started to get hungry since I had more or less not been eating in the whole day but unfortunately the beach restaurant had closed and now it was almost sunset. Here I realized that it is not a New York with 24/7 availability of food. Most places close at 6 pm when the sun goes down but the super friendly owner at Mimi’s café let me get some food although they had officially closed. I saw later on it was top rated at Tripadvisor and the place is well worth a stop if you head to La Digue.

Grand Anse and Petit Anse are two must see beaches. To get to Petit Anser you need to walk over some rocks. I tried and it works with flip flops but its not the best. If you keep on walking 15 more minutes you will reach Cocoa beach. I aimed to head there also but didn’t made it the whole way since I had no more water with me and wasn’t the best way to walk with flip flops only. Had enough of beautiful beaches with the two above mentioned ones and you better save something unexplored if you get back in the future.

Biking and running

If you come to La Digue you must rent a bike. Most accommodations rent out bikes but there are also plenty of places around the island where you can rent your bike for app. 8 EUR a day (FEB, -23). The biking paths are very well paved and it is fantastic to bike around and then just stop for a swim or a juice at one of the many juice bars along the shoreline. You cannot bike around the whole island it is one kilometer that is not covered by biking track. It is mountain and jungle so you cannot carry your bike either. The complete biking distance from one side to the other is around 10K.

Apart from biking around the whole track a couple of times I also headed out for a morning run one day. Due to the beautiful views I ended up doing a 16K run. It is 30 degrees almost all year around and pretty humid, I don’t mind running in the that condition but if you are not used to it I would at least recommend bringing some water which I did not.

It is so charming every where. Small shops and bike-in restaurants and beach bars. On Friday evening I noted that a lot of locals gathered around the small shops having their afterwork beer celebrating the upcoming weekend. I really, really hope this island would be captured like this forever. Car free and with close to 100% local touch.

There is plenty of space for all visitors and if you want to have your own private beach, be my guest. You just need to park your bike and grab a piece.

Anse Source D’Argent

This beach my friends is supposed to be the worlds most beautiful beach. It is located inside a nature reserve so you will need to pay an entrance fee of around 12EUR (FEB, -23) but it is totally worth it. If you are smart you go there either before the day trippers arrive or when they leave. The entrance closes at 18:00 but you can stay as long as you wish. I arrived at 2pm and it was pretty crowded. My plan was to stay until sunset but the later it got the less people it also became. The beach or I would more call it beach park since there are a multiple number of bays was amazing.

There were many fishes and when you went out in the water it was like going into an aquarium. Upon my visit it was though a lot of sea weed which made me consider this beach not the most beautiful one at the island. This is must see place for every beach lover and if I had one more day I would go here also during sunrise.

I loved the granite rock formations and also that you could hide in the shade without any effort. If I ever go back I would absolutely consider kayaking to see everything from the sea. Maybe kayaking around the whole island could be a future project?

Anse Patates beach

I did not saw any beach which didn’t met my quality standards but there was one that stood out. I found it when I first ran by and just had to get down the stair to it. It was 100% beautiful. Small, rocks, palm trees, sand without any seashells, crystal clear water, nice view it had everything to be a picture perfect beach.

Seychelles has been on my top travel list since the first time I went there and after this trip it still is. This is one of the places in the world I could go back to any day. Compared to Maldives (which I will give a second chance) and Mauritius this island is in my opinion way better in all aspects. For now I will leave beach holidays behind for a little bit. Got my share of beach although I always can go but since I have not been able to ski as much as I liked the last couple of years the coming weeks will have winter and snow theme.

/ Pernilla that love beach vacations