Vallée de Mai

You go in from a car park that gives no warning, and within a few dozen paces the sound changes. The canopy closes. It is darker, and hotter, and there is no breeze at all: a palm forest holds the air still in a way that ordinary woodland does not.

What is above you is the reason for the fuss. The coco de mer palm grows naturally on Praslin and on neighbouring Curieuse and nowhere else on earth, and it produces the largest seed in the plant kingdom: a double-lobed nut the size of a well-fed toddler, hanging in plain sight over the path. The male tree carries a long catkin. The pairing has kept people amused for three hundred years, and a nineteenth-century general who came here decided he had found the Garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit along with it. Standing under one, you can follow the reasoning.

The rest of the forest is not filler. Every palm species endemic to Seychelles grows in this valley, along with pandanus, screwpine and the sort of undergrowth that has never been tidied. Nothing here was planted. It is a remnant of what these islands looked like before anyone arrived, and the effort that goes into keeping it that way is the reason for the gate and the fee.

Listen more than you look. The Seychelles black parrot lives in this valley, and you will hear its whistle long before you see anything move. Geckos go up the trunks. A nut comes down occasionally, and the sound of it landing is a good argument for staying on the path.

Give it a morning, early, before the day’s heat and the day’s coaches. Then take the rest of the day for a beach. Anse Lazio is the other half of a Praslin day, and the contrast between the two is the reason to do them together.

If you are staying on Praslin, a scheduled half day does exactly that: a guided walk through the valley, looking for the coco de mer, the palms found only in Seychelles and the black parrot, then the rest of the morning on the sand at Anse Lazio. It starts mid-morning, so if you want the forest at its quietest, a driver of your own will get you there earlier.

Good to know

• Entry is charged at the gate by the foundation that manages the reserve. We confirm the current fee in writing when we quote.
• Opening hours and guided-walk times are set by the reserve and change. We check them close to your dates rather than promising a time.
• It is humid inside and there is no wind. Water, and shoes with grip: the roots are polished by everyone who came before you.
• Mosquitoes are a feature of any wet forest. Repellent on before you go through the gate, not after.
• Coco de mer nuts offered as souvenirs need official export paperwork. Buy only where the paperwork comes with it.
• Praslin’s forest and its beaches are a single day if you start early, and a rushed one if you do not.