“You cannot discern that ever any people had been there before us,” wrote John Jourdain in his diary.

It was 19th January, 1609. Jourdain was part of the crew aboard ‘Ascension,’ a British East India Company ship that had blown off course on its way to India. He and his shipmates were marooned on what we now know as North Island, one of Seychelles’ 115 islands.

Things have not changed much over the past 400 years. Walk along any of the islands’ white sands lapped by an ocean that’s a cross between emerald green and turquoise blue, or under lush rainforests, and you may well feel you had chanced upon a remote unchartered paradise.

Welcome to part 2 of my series on island-hopping in the Indian Ocean, and to Seychelles—Africa’s smallest and least populated country with the highest GDP per capita of its 54 nations. Continue reading →