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Outside Magazine December 2004

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Destinations: Seychelles
Splendid Isolation
It's a 21st-century refinement of the Robinson Crusoe fantasy: Your own private island—but with none of the inconvenience and discomfort of being a castaway. From the coral reefs, talcum sand, and swaying palms of the Seychelles to nine other crowd-free island retreats, we've got the ultimate unplugged paradise for you.

By Michael Behar


	1,000 Miles from Anywhere: The Seychelles (PhotoDisc)

THE TWIN-PROP DE HAVILLAND TOUCHES DOWN on what looks like the ninth fairway at Pebble Beach—a runway of perfectly manicured grass. Greeting us on this emerald carpet are whirling throngs of seabirds: fairy terns, tok-toks, lesser noddies, and a few magpie robins—the seventh-rarest bird in the world. An attendant from Frégate Island Private, the sole property on this 740-acre speck of land in the Indian Ocean, meets us at the airstrip with fresh coconut milk and ice-cold terry-cloth face towels, then loads our bags onto a golf cart and takes me and my fiancée, Ashley, to our villa.

As we weave among almond trees and coco de mer palms, our driver tells us that some guests never leave their cottages. When we arrive at our 2,000-square-foot ocean-view compound, bordered on three sides by a ten-foot hedge of ferns and orchids, it's easy to see why.

In the center of a terraced garden, next to our private Jacuzzi, there's a plush daybed beneath a palm-frond gazebo. Inside the villa, the walls are covered in opulent mahogany, with vaulted ceilings of bamboo and merbau wood. There's an Italian-marble floor, two swank

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bathrooms, a built-in cocktail bar, a living room with a surround-sound DVD system, a wraparound deck, and a king-size four-poster bed. This is the most spectacular accommodation I've ever seen—and I've seen plenty. Four years ago I took a 15-month journey through 32 countries on four continents. The beach house I splurged on during a two-week stay on Thailand's Koh Phangan island now seems like the Unabomber shack.

In our compound on Frégate, unless a passing ship with a good set of binoculars happens to cruise by, we're utterly alone. Realizing this, we strip off our clothes and dance through the yard. I pop open a bottle of French chardonnay and we chug a couple of glasses. Let the pleasuremongering begin!

Scattered across the western Indian Ocean about 1,000 miles east of Africa and almost twice that distance from India, the Seychelles encompass an estimated 115 coralline and granitic islands with fishing rights to more than 500,000 square miles of ocean. Nearly half the islands remain uninhabited, and only 83 have been officially named. They're so isolated that 17th-century pirates used them as a place to stash stolen loot. More recently, Castaway was filmed on Praslin Island—not the 2000 film starring Tom Hanks, but a racy 1986 Nicholas Roeg production about a man who placed an ad for a bombshell to spend a year on an island with him. And the Seychelles have long been one of Sports Illustrated's favorite backdrops for its annual swimsuit issue. But as my Lonely Planet makes clear, this is not a place "for travelers with shallower pockets."

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MICHAEL BEHAR, a former editor at Wired and National Geographic, wrote about the Seychelles Islands in December.

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