James the giant tortoise and his 105,000 companions are sitting on a fortune as they roam the lush interior of the Seychelles in search of their daily diet of breadfruit and pumpkins.
For somewhere beneath the serene surface of this tropical hideaway in the Indian Ocean lies a fortune in pirate gold and precious stones. In 1721, an infamous French pirate called Olivier La Bouche captured Nossa Senhora do Cabo, a Portuguese East Indiaman laden with treasure belonging to the archbishop of Goa.
His haul included a giant gold cross studded with rubies, as well as chests full of gold coins. In the finest skull-and-cross-bones tradition, he is said to have buried it on Fregate, which was then known as Skeleton Island.
Nine years later, La Bouche fell foul of a hangman's rope at St Paul de la Réunion so he never got around to cashing in his pension. Maps on faded parchment and strange markings on stones discovered over the years all put meat on the story, but the mystery remains.
Modern visitors to Fregate, reached by a 20-minute flight by light aircraft or a two-hour boat trip from the main island of Mahé, tend not to have parrots on their shoulders and are of a more loving disposition. Some 30% are honeymooners, including Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills.
The 9 by 9km island is privately owned by a reclusive German-Swiss. It has seven secluded beaches including the gorgeous Anse Victorin, reached by 122 uneven steps, as well as a swimming pool cut into a natural rock basin. Given that accommodation is confined to 16 villas, this gives honeymooners a very good chance of getting a beach to themselves.
What they find is a perfect tropical hideaway 56km off the tourist track. Apart from the enormous tortoises that are otherwise only found in the Galapagos Islands, the Seychelles are home to Mahé's 4,000 green turtles and 1,000 hawksbill turtles. Fregate is a twitcher's paradise of 70,000 birds. Species include the endangered Seychelles white eye, which is encouraged to breed here, the Madagascan fodi, as well as 70 out of the world's total of 100 magpie robins.
In fact, the island is named after a bird. Lazare Picault, a more benign 18th-century seafarer, called it Fregate in honour of the distinctive native frigates that he found nesting in the rocks. These black-and-green feathered birds have downward-curving beaks, forked tails, and look almost prehistoric.
There are no predators, no poisonous snakes, and, thanks to a vast rat extermination scheme in the 1990s, the island is free of rodents.
The vegetation is just as impressive, with a rich menu of vanilla, coffee, lemongrass, chillies, cinnamon, papaya, tomato, corn, sweet potato, as well as a staggering 17 species of banana all growing on the island.
The famous coco de mer palm grows only on these islands. It comes in a male and female variety, with only the female producing the erotically shaped nuts that can weigh as much as 20kg.
A high proportion of visitors to Fregate combine their holiday with a few days at the Banyan Tree hotel on Mahé, the largest of the 115 luxuriant granite islands that make up the Seychelles - and site of the only international airport.
The Banyan Tree opened last December, on land that was formerly owned by Peter Sellers. It is now part of the growing Asian hotel group that has similar properties in Phuket, Bintan in Indonesia, and the Maldives. The hotels are best known for their state-of-the-art spas, tasty Thai cuisine, and for their exquisite villas, each with its own pocket-handkerchief-sized swimming pool and Roman-style marble bath.
The Banyan Tree is enthusiastic about its green policy, with all waste material collected, sorted and treated through an in-house incinerator. Waste water is recycled to irrigate the landscape, and all detergents used in the hotel are biodegradable. The 36 hillside and beachfront villas have been built of natural indigenous materials supplied - wherever possible - by local traders.
A short 5km hop east and 15 minutes by free shuttle boat from Mahé lies the 500-acre island of Sainte Anne. During the second world war, it was used as a supply base for warships and tankers, and in the 1980s it became a youth training camp. Beachcomber Hotels, which is currently developing the island, has faced the task of reclaiming the natural environment by demolishing the old fuel tanks and buildings in order to return Sainte Anne to its former natural glory.
The resort has 87 villas designed to blend into the tropical scenery, along with three sandy beaches and two restaurants. The main one, L'Abondance, serves Creole cuisine with an emphasis on fish and seafood. Le Mont Fleuri specialises in Mediterranean cuisine and is set dramatically into a giant granite rock face with three thatched dining areas suspended on stilts over the sea.
Sainte Anne is at the heart of the Sainte Anne Marine Park, which opened in 1973 as one of the first national marine parks in the Indian Ocean. Today, it is home to 150 species of fish and some of the best diving and snorkelling in the area.
Visiting North Island, 32km north of Mahé, is an adventure in itself. The normal 60-minute catamaran trip often takes twice as long when seas are rough, and for the final part of the journey you have to decant into a four-person rubber dinghy. The island is named after the 19th-century British botanical artist, Marianne North, who spent her life travelling the world to paint plants and flowers - including those in the Seychelles. Her close friends included Edward Lear and Charles Darwin.
North Island is less than 4 by 4km and, until it was abandoned 30 years ago, was used as a coconut plantation and vegetable garden for Mahé. It will reopen next March as a "barefoot luxury" resort, while a project called Noah's Ark aims to restore the original plants and wildlife to the island. A marine reserve will help to safeguard the existing coral and provide damaged coral with a protected area in which to regenerate. All the island's rubbish will be collected, compacted, and taken back to Mahé.
The focal point of the new resort is a vast takamaka tree which is indigenous to the island. Close by are 12 villas set along a silver beach; all have uninterrupted ocean views and a swimming pool, and each has been hand crafted from local wood and thatch. The husband-and-wife team of architects, Silvio Rech and Lizzie Carstens, designed Jao Camp in the Kruger Nat-ional Park and Ngorongoro Crater Lodge in Tanzania.
On North Island, they have created a raw and unspoilt ambience by applying sophisticated design rules to rough materials. Here you find gnarled wooden banisters, bleached decking made from recycled gate posts, irregular rock walls, chunky oversized furniture, driftwood mirrors and baths made from ground seashells. All the building surfaces are sprayed with mosquito repellent made from natural plant products.
All this paradise comes with over 20 years of relative political stability since the farcical attempted coup in 1981, when "Mad Mike" Hoare and his group of mercenaries were caught at Customs while trying to pose as South African tourists. They got away by hijacking an Air India flight to South Africa.
With their array of five-star hotels, Mauritius and the Maldives currently claim the lion's share of tourism in these tropical latitudes. But with a far more beautiful landscape, a charming and friendly people, and now with the hotels to match, the Seychelles is ready to take them on.
Way to go
Getting there: ITC Classics (01244 355527) has a week's room-only at the Banyan Tree from £2,384pp, full-board in Fregate from £7,157pp, B&B in Sainte Anne from £1,975pp, or full-board at North Island from £5,184pp, all including transfers and return flights.
Further information: The Seychelles Tourist Office (020-8741 6262).
Country code: 00 248.
Flight time London-Mahé: 10hrs.
Time difference: +4hrs.
£1 = 8.72 rupees.
