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A week in the Seychelles on Denis Island

After our departure from Botswana we headed back through South Africa where we caught an Air Seychelles redeye flight from Johannesburg to Victoria, on the island of Mahe, within the Seychelles.  Because I realize that few probably know where exactly the Seychelles are, here’s the quick map:

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We choose the Seychelles pairing with Africa because it offered an opportunity to get to a beach that would be quiet and hopefully relaxing – and, with no 5AM wakeup calls either!  The only trick was figuring out exactly where to go in the Seychelles.  After wasting months narrowing down choices, we ended up deciding at pretty much the last minute (no really, about 3 days prior) – and went with Denis Island.  We had wanted a ‘private island’ type experience similar in concept to our visit to the Maldives last year, but we certainly weren’t going to pay $5,000 a night for a room at some of the other options in the area (Frigate Island and North Island).  The Girl initially found Denis Island as great alternative – being a fair bit cheaper.  After chatting with the folks there they gave us a media rate which saved us some money, though, in retrospect it wasn’t any different than a normal discount rate for the island.  But they did help open up some booking at the last minute, so for that I am grateful.

They’re interested in my feedback on the island, which I also hope will be of service to those considering Denis in the future.  Beware though, while pictures may speak louder than words, I’d be sure not to skip over the words.  In particular – since I know this post will be found when some folks are looking for information on Denis Island, if nothing else – read what the very end of the post.

And for everyone else…enjoy the photos…I think they’re pretty (well…cause I took them). 🙂

Arrival on the Island

Because it’s a private island over 100KM away from the main island, the primary method of transport is air.  The island has a small grass strip, which accommodates a single daily flight – as well as custom chartered helicopters.  We joined a diverse group of folks – albeit many Europeans – on our short 30 minute flight aboard a bright and colorful prop plane.

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From there, we departed the main airport and cross over a myriad of smaller islands on the way to Denis.  About 25 minutes later, we had the island in sight.

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Following an uncharacteristically steep (but fun) approach, we bumped our way down the grass strip and rolled up to the welcome hut.

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From there, the bags were loaded and we and the Europeans played our best game of duck duck goose and piled aboard golf carts for the short drive to the main arrival hall.

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Upon arriving we were given a little appetizer of sorts, and then to take in the scenery for about 30 minutes.

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Our Little Vila

After a bit of prodding we were taken to our room – a cottage set back a bit from the beach, but still with a view.  From the outside you can see the small covered gazebo where we could lounge the day away if we didn’t want to be near the beach.

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Inside the room was decorated in a contemporary fashion, that also mixed in having the bathroom outdoors in a walled in garden.

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With the design of the villas being fairly ‘open’ we shared our cottage with a small flotilla of geckos and lizards.  They were harmless enough though – and provided us with endless entertainment.

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Because the minibar and wine cooler were empty, we requested they be filled…with Diet Coke.  What do you expect from two endurance athletes?

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As we looked outwards toward the water, we had what was in essence our own backyard straight to the water.  Well, at least when staff members weren’t using it as a shortcut between villas.  But otherwise it was all ours!

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(No matter how many hundreds of photos I took of these chairs…they never got old!)

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Once at the beach, we had a view nearly a mile away down the white sands of Denis Island – really quite amazing:

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(The Girl was always out looking for seashells…in the Seychelles…try and say that 10 times fast…)

And looking the other direction was no less incredible:

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In fact – the island itself was full of gorgeous views no matter where we turned on the beaches:

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During our stay we ran or swam daily.  The island is roughly a mile long, and about half a mile wide.  With quite a few ‘trails’ and ‘roads’, we had a pretty good assortment of running options.

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The challenge though was that the hand drawn island road map they had on hand at the office simply wasn’t useful or accurate.  And while you’d think it would be easy to circumnavigate a small island – once you add in dense jungle and poor road/path upkeep, combined with not a single directional sign on the island – the task becomes somewhat frustrating.  Even some staff privately agreed with us.

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(While taking a moment to get unlost, we found this huge spider hanging out above us)

Nonetheless, after a few days we had figured out a running route or two and probably went places no other guests go.  Which is too bad.  The native island itself is gorgeous, and  $50 arts and crafts project at the woodworking shop would really open it up to all guests (as well as ourselves).

We did some swimming across the bay too, and I used both the Garmin Forerunner 410 and the 310XT in my swim cap to record it.

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Google doesn’t cover the region at all, so my little satellite picture is useless.  And Bing Maps, while at least showing the outline of the island, doesn’t show enough to make the image worthwhile. Sorry!

And finally, on the athletic front, we did take a two person kayak out one day.

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Though, our lack of apparent kayaking teamwork eventually resulted in one of us getting kicked overboard…regrettably…that was me.

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But we still had fun on them…even if we might have come close to cancelling our wedding plans (who would have thought paddling in sync was so tough?).

The Turtles!

As a happy caretaker of two little turtles, I was excited to see the island was home to a bunch of much larger turtles.

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The turtles are the ‘pets’ of the owner of the island, who simply enjoys turtles.  The first day we arrived we heard the turtles making a sort of ‘eeee-oooor’ type sound (like saying ‘e’, followed by ‘or’) and couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.  But a few days later, we figured it out.

It was the romance dance!

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Nonetheless, we enjoyed having the turtles around.

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Though, like the islands trails – there was no information about them.  Not a single sign around their pen or anyone to explain about them.  I’d love to have known anything about them.

Self-supporting Farm:

The island also has a farm and pretty significant greenhouse system.  The goal being to reduce it’s dependence on the main island, and thus also also improve its environment footprint.  Though undoubtedly it also reduces its costs.

Based on my browsing, the farm contained ducks, chickens, goose, rabbits, cows, pigs and goats.  They mentioned that all the milk comes from the cows daily.  And given the massive numbers of chickens, I’d suspect that any chicken or chicken byproduct is the same.

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The greenhouses were fairly impressive – three in total that I could find.  Additionally, they harvested a small portion of the islands heavy coconut tree population to make an assortment of products, some of which were exported off the island.

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I would have loved for there to have been more information about the farm area, or for the area to be more ‘inviting’ to guests.  While many of my photos make it appear ‘inviting’, the area was anything but.  The general area had derelict items thrown about, with buildings that were half finished or in need of repair.

Conservation:

Denis Island’s owner partner with the Green Island Foundation (a local non-profit) to allow researchers to conduct projects and research on the island.  We met briefly with one of the researchers (Jenny) during our stay, where she was working on a project to rid the island of a non-native and invasive bird – the Myna bird (not the bird below).

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The bird hails from Mauritius (another island chain in the region) and over time had started to push some of native species in the Seychelles (primarily avian in nature) to the brink of extinction.  At one point, only 50 birds of one species had been left, and only on Denis Island.  They assisted this species by providing it a ‘safe haven’ in certain areas of the island with known food sources – and since then have greatly improved their numbers.

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The project essentially involved removing the local population of Myna birds from nearly 1,000 to zero.  Green Island Foundation’s (GIF) project started in May and since then they’ve managed to trap all but 50 of the birds. Although the chase is getting trickier with less birds left to catch, they are still making progress by using the traps. So of course we went with Jenny to check for ourselves.

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Though earlier that morning they had managed to catch a few of the ‘bad birds’, this time the traps caught one of the good guys.  No worries though, they don’t use poison and she merely took the bird out and let it fly away.

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They check the traps twice a day to reduce the stress on any inadvertent captures. The traps work by placing one of the Myna birds in the center of the trap – which then attracts more of his friends.  This is because the Mynas are very territorial and actually comes into the trap trying to move the decoy (very much alive) bird out, though the birds are separated to reduce any skirmishes.

You can find out more about GIF via their site here, and a ton more about the Myna project here.  I know they’re very appreciative of what Denis Island does and I know the owners are behind conservation, but from a guests point of view (one who also favors many conservation efforts), I felt like they could do quite a bit more highlighting of GIF’s work to guests (such as a weekly ‘here’s what we do’ type of evening pow-wow).  By employing many of the same techniques that the Maldives Whale Shark Research Team uses in the Maldives, they could both engage guests in their work (which also includes many of the sea turtles that we saw while on the island), as well as probably get a fair bit of monetary support.

Departure:

In an effort to get back to the main island and explore a bit, we decided to leave the island a bit early.  This ended up complicating things a bit, so we had to charter a helicopter to leave (yes, I paid for that…no discount there).  We had actually planned to do a helicopter sightseeing trip anyway, so it wasn’t too much more expensive to simply fly back that way.

Plus…it was The Girl’s first time aboard one – so that was fun!

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The takeoff was pretty cool, right over the edge of the island and the coral reefs.

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And closer to the main island, we got our sightseeing in!

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The Little Things Matter

As one who travels hundreds of thousands of miles per year, and has averaged over 100 night per year in hotels over the last 10 years (in some cases, nearly 250 nights per year) – I like to think I have a pretty good grasp on hotel service and expectations.  I’m also down to earth enough to stay at just about anywhere that has a bed.  Despite what I often show in stories here, I stay at just as many nights in $54/night rooms in the places like Martinsburg, WV (including the awesome waffle machine in the lobby).  Thus, I like to think that I’m pretty tolerant of hotel missteps.

But I’m also cognizant of expectations.  And in the case of Denis Island, where my per night room cost exceeds that of a round trip ticket to Europe, you also have look at whether or not you’re getting your money’s worth.  After all – the location bills itself as a ‘Luxury Private Island’.

In the case of ‘Did I find a beautiful and relaxing island’ – there’s no question that we did.  The landscape and remoteness of it is hard to beat.  But after staying there five days, we became increasingly frustrated with the little things (though some would say big things).  For a hotel, these can be the hardest to fix. None of my list below can be ‘fixed’ overnight, as can be done with a broken toilet or missing light bulbs (which we had).  These require investment and attention to the problem.  So let me begin:

1) Food: I understand and love the buffet as much as the next guy (really, I do!), but when I’m paying as much as I am – I can’t see having the only food option be a fairly sparse buffet.  The number of days that we chose to eat just pure white rice over the other options would surprise you.  In our 15 buffet’s worth of meals, we had only 1 meal where they offered a menu.  And it didn’t help that the food wasn’t well prepared.

2) Staff: You know how when you pull up to a hotel and the staff warmly greets you?  You know how when you ask for something the hotel staff usually smile and help out?  You know how when you watch staff in a hotel they act a certain way – as if they had been trained to work in a hotel?  Well…none of that generally occurs on Denis.  You might note the photo I took on landing at the very top with two of the lead staff members standing their arms on their hips watching us land.  In every other ‘remote hotel’ I’ve been at in the world, staff would be waving hello (just like your own family would).  The ‘arms on hips’ was generally the attitude we saw.  The staff simply didn’t act like they were trained as hotel staff.  To be fair, there certainly were exceptions.  Our housekeeping women was great and very caring, and one or two of the staff members seemed to actually be interested in making us happy.

3) Lack of upkeep: Perhaps most disappointing of all, was just the general lack of upkeep around the resort.  The villas the themselves were fine.  But so many other things around the non-beach portion of the property just seemed like they had been ignored.  Paths with fallen trees on them, cottage areas with dead bushes/trees/shrubs, piles of longstanding garbage here and there – even some on the beach in some areas.  As with anything – one thing here or there isn’t a big deal – but we constantly saw just a general lack of thought going into keeping the property on par with a Holiday Inn – let alone a ‘Luxury Private Island’.

I won’t continue to beat to death all of the disappointments that we had, as after all, you probably don’t want to hear them.  And, it could be that our expectations were too high, though I think they were in line with any normal hotel, let alone a private island.

In summary, while we absolutely enjoyed the relaxation aspects of Denis Island, however neither I nor The Girl can recommend it to others.  While I certainly recognize that others have likely had great experience there, in general, we did not.  Given how much we paid, we felt like our money would have been spent better elsewhere.  I do really hope that the owners of Denis can find ways to improve the hotel aspects of the island, as I think the island itself is of astounding beauty, and it would be a shame for it to not live up to its full potential.

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20 Comments

  1. The pictures are beautiful. I guess you had to be right there to see the flaws in upkeep of the island.
    I can’t imagine ever going to a place like that. What an experience!

  2. Looks awesome but disappointing about the flaws; contemplancency or apathy it’s always a shame when that happens…we’ve experienced a bit of it in SE Asia

  3. A very gorgeous island but you are right you deserve the best service when paying a lot.

  4. Based on the cost, it sounds like it should have been much better. The beach, however, looks, awesome and the privacy looks great. I’m not sure I would like liked sharing with geckos though.

  5. Tim Pillipow

    Honest and Fair – love it as always

  6. Was looking for a palce for our next holidays.. by any chance what was the price you payed

  7. Guillermo

    For the honeymoon, I think an actual trip to the moon will necessary with all the traveling to awesome places you already do! How could you ever top any of this?! Great pics.

  8. Say aren’t you two love turtles supposed to wait for your honeymoon until AFTER you’ve gotten married?

  9. I’ve been to the Seychelles (different island) and can confirm the blog entry. Amazing natural beauty, but anything introduced by man, is falling apart and lacking “upscale” (be it service, quality, etc). It seemed to me that sometime in the 1970s/1980s the tourist money really dried up and everything was living on borrowed time. It does appear the hotel on Denis Island is in good shape (much better than when I was there in 2005…not in Denis Island, other Seychelles island). So, perhaps some things have improved.

  10. Anonymous

    So, I have to ask this. First, a disclaimer, I am in NO way suggesting you spend your money in a certain manner. It is your money so you can spend it as you decide. (Can you figure out where this is going?)

    You mention that the “per night room cost exceeds that of a round trip ticket to Europe.” I couldn’t imagine spending that amount of money per night regardless of what was included. Perhaps that is because I’ll never be able to spend that amount of money without first selling everything I own so maybe I am simply jealous.

    Okay, now the question. Even if I could spend that amount of money per night, I think I would feel incredibly guilty knowing that I could do more “good” by giving to the endless organizations needing funding. So, I ask this only since you seem like a straight shooter and I sincerely am not passing judgement, but what is it like to spend that amount of money for lodging?

    (And another question, do you find any irony in the timing for random item #3 thanking readers for supporting the blog by buying through amazon after discussing the per night costs for your winter holiday?)

  11. I enjoy travelling – and enjoy seeing the world. Seychelles is simply one of the places that I’ve been wanting to see for years. The reality of visiting a place like the Seychelles (or the Maldives, or other similiar locations) is indeed the higher price of entry.

    Would I spend that much again there? Nope – just not worth it. I only mentioned the price specifically because it’s hard to set expectations without mentioning price – those two go hand in hand together. In the case of what is essentially a review, one must include those types of details.

    Do people spend there money different ways? Sure. Triathlon is a beutiful example of that. The Ironman fee is over $550+ now. A pair of race wheels can easily run $1,200-2,000. And there’s plenty of bikes in transition area at most races that cost $3-5K…without wheels. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong – but it is what it is.

    Everyone looks to spend money on different things, I enjoy travelling and spending some there in the same way I enjoy triathlon.

    Thanks for reading!

  12. We had a similar experience in the late 90’s staying at a private island in the Bahamas. Very expensive but falling apart with an ancient but active trash pit 100ft from our place and very visible. The water and beach were very similar to Denis and that’s what redeemed it for us.

  13. Jack

    Great Site, Good Review on the Forerunner’s, keep up the good work.

  14. Love the pictures. Enter me in the contest.
    My link:
    link to dawnsyogaflow.blogspot.com

  15. thanks for all your reviews.

  16. Hi Rainmaker,
    First I would like to say great website.

    I am just getting into running.

    Do you have any write up’s on the benefits in training using a heart rate monitor.

  17. It is a bummer that the service/quality of lodging did not match the amazing beach. Thanks for the great photos and the travel log.

  18. Paul Dixon

    Good review, and from the pictures I’d have to agree – I still think the Maldives is the best “paradise island” getaway you can get. However let me speak up for the Seychelles. As well as these smaller islands, there’s Mahe, the biggest island. We loved Mahe. Bigger enough to stop you going stir crazy, but still small enough (smaller than Maui) to not be overloading. Some of the large hotel groups have developed some amazing hotels on the SW side. If you like Hawaii, this place will blow you away.

  19. Bob Willis

    Hi Ray,

    Been holding off I guess, but I am making my second post to you in the same night as the first!

    I have been to the Seychelles, on a (Navy) ship, representing Australia, in 1976 for their independence ceremonies from UK. It was a great occasion and along with folks from many other nations, we enjoyed a great week. We even won the Rugby competition, in which I played, beating the National team in the final, perhaps because there was no New Zealand ship there 🙂

    Anyway, the turtle pics you show aren’t turtles, they are tortoises. We took two of them back from Victoria to Perth Zoo in Australia, an interesting Navy sideline. They were estimated to be some decades old at that time and their life expectancy was many more decades. Last time I checked, about 2008, they were still alive and kicking in Perth Zoo. Animals similar to these were fundamental to Darwin’s theory of Evolution and they are of great interest still to scientists.

    Great to read of your adventures and sorry the place was not all to your liking, but the photos show that the scenery is still worth the trip.

    Best regards,
    Bob from Adelaide, Australia

  20. Gazz

    Incredible review and pictures, thank you so much for that!
    What chalet number did you stay in? We are staying in number 10 this November 🙂 and hope this is a good location and hope to get similar amazing photos that you did!
    Happy travels and hope to hear from you soon!
    Gazz