Chasing The Sun: Seychelles Part 4 – The Four Seasons

Welcome to The Four Seasons Seychelles

Words by Lauren Hill. Images by Ming Nomchong. Art by Felicity Palmateer.

Petite Anse, Wise Oceans + a little luxe for the road

The holy grail of surf travel is an empty tropical line-up that we + our closest (few) friends get to paddle into. No other surfers in sight.

It’s the dream many of the estimated 35 million of us are pursuing; that moment when The Endless Summer theme song spontaneously sparks in your mind because you’re seeing your very own Cape St. Francis ripping down the reef in front of you, totally unadulterated.

Even better, if I may, is when your accommodation overlooks said wave – but still no other surfers around. We were surprised to learn that this still happens! And happen, it did, at Four Seasons Seychelles, tucked into the stunning cove of Petite Anse on the island of Mahe.

Well, a version of this happened – in a very similar way that Bruce Brown stretched the facts about the consistency of the point at Cape St. Francis. Our Seychellois wave was only about a foot and a half. And it only broke a handful of times an hour on exactly the right tide, but we were totally enchanted with the mini-mysto wave that was ours for the day.

Even if there hadn’t been a ridable wave in sight, Petite Anse is one of the most beautiful coves we encountered in the Seychelles — with azure waters, wildish palms, quintessential granite boulders, a teeming house reef and cold coconuts on service. We especially loved the efforts that the Four Seasons is making to integrate marine conservation and education into it’s repertoire by bringing in the team from Wise Oceans, an international marine education network, to get guests engaged with the magic and beauty of the recovering coral habitats of the Seychelles. The Wise Ocean team keeps tabs on the house reef’s health and helps to rehabilitate struggling sections of the reef affected by the sea temperature warming of El Nino (and climate change); proof once again that marine conservation is both the right thing to do, and often the most sustainably profitable action in the long term.

And then there’s the Four Seasons itself – it’s the kind of dreamy Epicurean paradise that many reserve for honeymoons or retirement. But after 10 days of lugging boardbags and generally just being salt-crusted surf rats, a little bit of luxe felt pretty fantastic. Especially in the culinary realm. There’s just no comparison to the lavish champagne buffet breakfast of the Four Seasons. They go all out: fresh juices, an omelet bar, fresh pastry and chocolatines, comfort foods and salads, breads and exotic fruits, like mangosteen. As vegetarians we were finally in a place that catered to our needs for fresh sprouts and avocado and mixed olive plates.

It was like a vacation from vacation, exactly what we needed to recover from now chronic sunburn and the bloat of too many banana chips. We swam in our private infinity pool with a wide ocean vista, indulged in the daily complementary snack service and reminisced in the comfort of great big comfy canopy beds billowing with diaphanous fabric. And we bid farewell to these majestic islands, a place with so much beauty and history to offer that we’re certain we’ll need to return. Hopefully very soon.

You can find more information about Wise Oceans on their website – www.wiseoceans.com

As you can imagine, we were pretty chuffed to be here

Seychellois Princesses

Totally living it up. We decided that this is the only way to travel from now on.

Oh, just having a bubble bath in our bath with a view to die for

Infinity plus

Lauren’s gone coco for the Four Seasons

I think the term here is called ” Swanning”

The view from the very top of the hill overlooking the resort.

Our best tourist impression

We got up early every to gorge ourselves on the breakfast buffet followed by soaking up the sun on the prettiest of Mahe beaches

Felicity, poolside

What a couple of fruitloops

Thanks to the guys at Tropic Surf, we got the low down on all the right spots for surf around the resort

Off to surf our little corner of bliss on Petite Anse

Turquoise paddleouts

Another #SeycHellYea moment

Aqua Blissouts

There is actually nothing better than floating around in the crystal clear waters of Petite Anse

Surfing the corner of the resorts bay, Petite Anse

Petite Anse, from sea level

Flicky taking on the log

Pastel peelers – Petite Anse

Flick – working it

Bob

Why would you want to anywhere else but here

Taking time out from their very busy schedule of surfing, swimming and swanning to soak up some Seychellois sun

One of our favourite palm trees on Mahe

This hammock was screaming to be slung up here. (He was being so loud in the car on the way there)

Twinkle toes

Palm Tree Monkey Ming Hangs

What is it about a high horizontal round pole (with a high risk of falling off) and a scratchy trunk (that probably gave us a rash), makes us want to hang out there?