Travel Diaries - Mahé Island

So here I am, one month after our honeymoon, writing the last part of the story. This time is about the third island where we stayed on for five days - Mahé Island. This is the biggest island of them all and here you can find their capital city - Victoria, which is the smallest capital city in the world. 

On this island we rented another car in order to be able to see a big part of it. And I say a big part of it because we didn't manage to see it all. We saw many beautiful beaches - some where easy to reach, others not so easy. Most of them were reachable by car, but one day we decided we wanted to see Anse Major, even though we were aware of the fact that we had to walk about 40 mins to get there. Well, those 40 mins were in fact more than 1 hour, and the "walking" part was in fact "hiking" and crossing a hill from one side to the other. Piece of cake at 30 degrees and 80% humidity! Well, it was definitely worth it because the view from up above was priceless.

My favorite beach was Petit Anse which belongs to the Four Seasons Resort. It has the whitest and finest grain of sand and the most turquoise water I've ever seen. The view of the villas which belong to the resort on the hill surrounding the beach is gorgeous as well. I wish I could have stayed there forever.   

What I'm sorry about not managing to see are the tea plantations and factory on this island. I'm sure it would have been great. Who knows, maybe next time. :)

I leave you now with the photos. Enjoy dears!

1. Anse Royale

2. Petit Anse

3. Anse Major (with the hiking part)

4. Capital city - Victoria

5. Beau Vallon Bay & Le Meridien Resort

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Travel Diaries: La Digue Island

The second island where we stayed for 4 days was La Digue, the smallest one among the three. In order to get there we took the ferry from Praslin and the ride takes about 15 minutes.
In order to see the island we rented bikes for two days, because the island is so small that they don't have any cars for rent. The locals told us that there are around 15 cars on the island and those are taxis and other facility cars. Funny thing, we experienced here the shortest taxi ride - I think it too like 3 minutes to get from the harbor to the hotel. Anyway, another transportation facility which you may use here are the ox-carts, but we thought bicycles are better. And faster.

The first day we went took a walk around the island up to the beach "Anse Source D'Argent" which is the most popular beach on La Digue (you can see in the first 10 photos below), and we also walked around those granite boulders, through the water, to find smaller hidden beaches and to climb in the end on a granite hill for a breathtaking view. Furthermore, the commercials for Bacardi and Bounty were filmed on this beach.
What I forgot to mention is that, before getting to that beach, we passed the "Union Plantation Reserve" where we could see some giant Tortoises, star fruit trees, an old manual mill, a creepy cemetery where the first owners of that domain are buried, and a vanilla plantation. 

During the second day we went, by bike, to explore the south-eastern part of the island and the two most beautiful beaches I've ever seen - Grand Anse and Petit Anse. Even though the water currents are very strong on this part of the island, the nature and the beaches are amazing and the fact that there were very few tourists (on Petit Anse there were 6 persons counting us) made it even better. Swimming is forbidden on Grand Anse, but the waters of Petit Anse were truly ours. :)

Grand Anse

Petit Anse

We spent the third day cycling from the north-western side of the island up to north-east for more beautiful views and untouched nature, we had lunch on a terrace situated on the shore, and we spent the evening watching the amazing sunset at a very nice beach bar.

This was by far my favourite island, with the most amazing landscapes.

..to be continued.

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