A boat ride from Mahé leads to a tiny island of family-run stays, quiet coves and reef-fringed shores inside Sainte Anne Marine National Park.
I went from the boat to the pool. While my bags were being shuttled to their room, my brain was shifted firmly into ‘relax’ mode. My slip slops discarded somewhere in the sand, to remain there for the foreseeable future. This is what I had come to the Seychelles for.
Despite being made up of over 100 islands, most people who visit this Indian Ocean archipelago stay on just one of three. Mahé, Praslin, and La Digue are the largest islands in the Seychelles and are home to the majority of the island nation’s population, resorts, and attractions. For a lucky few with exceptionally large budgets, exclusive island resorts located on their own private islands beckon.
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Located within Saint-Anne Marine National Park, just a short boat ride from the Seychelles main island of Mahé and the uber-expensive Eden Island, Cerf Island sits just offshore. Although it’s within view of the airport, the island feels remarkably removed from both.
Introducing Cerf Island
Measuring a little more than one and a half kilometres in length, Cerf Island is only reachable by boat. There are no roads, traffic, or crowds, and only a handful of locally-run hotels and self-catering chalets. Most people who visit Cerf Island do so on a scheduled snorkelling tour from Mahé, usually drifting peacefully just off the shoreline on the protected coral reef, perhaps stopping fleetingly on its shores for a BBQ lunch.
Cerf Island gives you the tranquillity of a small Seychelles island while remaining just minutes by boat from Mahé.
There are no roads, traffic, or crowds on Cerf Island, only a handful of locally run hotels and self-catering chalets.
Cerf Island sits inside Sainte Anne Marine National Park, just a short boat ride from Mahé.
But on a recent visit to the Seychelles, I chose instead to unpack my suitcase at one of only two hotels located here. L’Habitation Cerf Island seems like a relic of the Seychelles that once was.
The owners who once raised their kids here still run the place. The father shuttled us to the island in his boat, the son gave us tips on where to snorkel to see rays and turtles, and the mother was ever present at meals and the reception desk. Unlike many island hotels where you pay an exorbitant price to overlook the gardens, here you get the beach holiday you budgeted for.
The rooms all overlook the ocean, are steps from the beach and pool, and have large, spacious patios with comfortable couches for reading a book. There are kayaks that you can pick up and take out for free. There’s someone who comes round every afternoon with a menu of two choices for your evening meal, and breakfasts revolve around a simple selection of fruit, eggs, and oats. No buffets, no boathouses, no pool boys. Just this family-run corner of the Seychelles, much as I had imagined it before arriving.
Staying inside a marine reserve
As the entire island is located within the marine park, it offered me easy access to the one thing that I had come to the Seychelles to experience – the ocean. Just off the hotel’s jetty, a reef runs a ring around the island, providing a home to turtles and rays and offering snorkelling directly from the shore.
I swallowed a mouthful of seawater when, after casually raising my head to clean my goggles, I placed my face in the water to discover a huge ray just floating beneath me. Giant starfish were also a highlight and I can die happily having ticked snorkelling with sea turtles off my bucket list.
While part of the appeal of staying here is just losing your phone and migrating from couch to lounger and back with your book, I chose instead to spend my days kayaking to secluded coves where I didn’t encounter another person for hours. I built sandcastles on the beach with my kids without another soul in sight, and in one secluded cove the sand was so soft and untouched that we almost sank into it, to a family of rays tucked into the rocks, further evidence that visitors hadn’t been here in a while.
Exploring further around the island revealed huge banana trees, some giant tortoises and the only restaurant on the island, a type of pop-up shop serving fresh barracuda cooked over an open flame, spicy mango chilli, chicken dripping with sauce and coconuts hacked open while you wait.
Planning your visit
Cerf Island offers a peaceful setting considering its close proximity to the main island. You can enjoy the tranquillity of a small island while remaining just minutes by boat from Mahé’s wealth of restaurants and attractions. The hotel we chose to stay at was also the kind of place that’s just small and intimate enough that children quickly become firm friends with fellow travellers, and honeymooners were spotted lingering with other couples at the bar as the sun set.
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There was no sommelier brandishing an international wine list on an iPad. No buggy to take us to the other side of your resort. And no need to book one of the five fine-dining restaurants where you need to wear a collared shirt for dinner. Instead, we had the beach entirely to ourselves, lazily enjoyed home-cooked Creole dinners while fruit bats sang in the trees above, and ended the day saltier and sandier and all the happier for it.
For some reason you can’t find much information about Cerf Island online (aside from those scheduled tours). Chatting to fellow travellers we met, those who do discover it tend to book two or three nights, tagging a stay on to the beginning or end of the trip. But many who come tend to wish they’d lingered longer. I understood why.
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