A Day at Anse Lazio

You come in over a hill, which is the first thing that makes it feel earned. The road climbs away from the north coast, tips over, and then the bay opens underneath you: a long curve of pale sand with a headland closing each end and water going through four colours between the shallows and the deep.

The trees are the underrated part. A stand of takamaka runs along the top of the beach, low and broad and casting proper shade, so there is somewhere to be at midday that is not a rented umbrella. People spend whole days moving between that line of shade and the water, ten metres apart, and consider it a day well used.

The swimming is why this beach beats the ones that photograph better. No reef sits across the mouth of the bay, so there is nothing to shuffle over and nothing that scrapes, just sand going down at a sensible angle into water warm enough to stay in for an hour. At the ends, where the granite comes down, there is enough structure for a mask if you want one, but that is a bonus. This is a swimming beach and it should be used as one.

Get there early. By late morning the day boats and the tour vans have arrived and the middle of the beach fills, and by mid-afternoon they have gone again and it is yours. The last hour is the good one: the granite goes warm-coloured, the water flattens, and the bay faces the right way for it, which most of Praslin does not.

Pair it with the Vallée de Mai in the morning and you have a Praslin day that shows you both halves of the island. Or do nothing else at all, which is a defensible plan and possibly the better one.

Good to know

• Public transport does not reach the beach itself. Most people take a taxi in and arrange the return in advance rather than hoping.
• What is open to eat and drink at the beach varies. Carry water; treat lunch as a bonus.
• There is not always anyone watching the water. Read the sea, watch what locals are doing, and ask on the day.
• Shade exists under the trees at the top of the beach, which is worth arriving early enough to claim.
• Sandflies come out toward dusk on Seychelles beaches. Repellent in the bag, applied before you need it.
• Take everything away with you. There is no service here, which is exactly why it is worth the hill.