One of the most brilliant things about hiking in the Seychelles- even above the stunning views and tropical birdsong- is the smell of cinnamon that can vaporise from nowhere, enveloping you in a cloud of warm spicy coziness. The Anse Major trail on Mahé Island has plenty of spicy cinnamon clouds to waft through, plus a remote white sand beach scattered with pastel coloured shells- which is often completely deserted. (Who doesn’t love a deserted beach, for goodness’ sake!?) It’s a sweaty walk through the forest and around boulder-strewn cliffs, but it leads to paradise.
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How to get to the Anse Major Trail
Our day began at the bus station in Victoria, the tiny Seychellois capital. We’d already spent a few months in the Seychelles, so we were well accustomed to the bustling bus station and the clammy air of its rattly vehicles. There are no electronic boards illuminating when the next buses are due so everyone sits patiently at their stop, knowing that here operations run strictly on Island Time. Which means not very strictly at all. They’ll turn up whenever they feel like it, thank you very much.
We boarded the number 28 to Bel Ombre, which travelled up through the central forested hills of the island and back down towards the beaches on the other side. Past giant trees and tumbling vines, tiny huts selling barbecued fish and rice in tin foil containers, and the smooth round boulders characteristic of the Seychelles, scattered along the beaches. As we neared each stop the locals clapped their hands loudly and the bus would hiss to a halt, because that’s how you do it in the Seychelles. Clapping on a bus means ‘stop.’ Eventually the bus driver announced it was the end of the line, and we hopped off at a dead end in the road. The old bus made a smooth looping u-turn and trundled off into the distance.
The Fruit Bat Fiasco
Most people head to the Seychelles for beach resorts and cocktails in coconuts, so when it comes to exploring the island, it’s necessary to have a very DIY attitude towards your adventures. And that is just the way I like it, pals. The start of the Anse Major trail isn’t particularly well-marked, although it didn’t take us too long to locate. Up a tarmac road past houses and tropical gardens, until we reached a Seychellois man sitting on his front porch who called out a ‘hello.’
We waved hello back and realised he was gesturing towards a large shape hanging from the porch. Upon closer inspection, the large shape turned out to be an enormous fruit bat, about the size of a small dog. (They truly are ginormous in the Seychelles. I’d seen them soaring overhead often, but never up close before.) The man was peeling some fruit while the bat gazed serenely at us from tiny upside-down black eyes. He looked incredibly proud.
I was fascinated, and began to ask him all the questions about how old the bat was and whether it was a boy or a girl and how the fruit bat came to be dangling off his front porch ceiling. It was all a very pleasant exchange until the man declared-
“Take a picture!!”
Something about the way that he demanded the photo made me really not want to take a picture at all. I shook my head and thanked him for showing us his fruit bat anyway. Which is when things took a turn for the worse.
“Just- take a picture of my fruit bat!”
The man was hugely offended at my refusal to hold a fruit bat photoshoot, although the bat didn’t seem bothered at all. He threw his fruit on the floor and stood up, shouting and shooing us onwards, shaking his head in rage.
We hurried away as he muttered to himself “disrespectful!!” and re-settled himself on his chair to wait for the next hikers to pass. I was a bit shaken if I’m honest, and the last thing I wanted to do was be disrespectful to anyone, let alone a local with his own pet fruit bat. What a confusing time.
Sights and smells of the Anse Major trail
As we continued along the tarmac road the houses thinned out, and on our right we could see right down the cliffs to the huge black boulders scattered along the shoreline. The 115 Seychelles islands are made up of leftover fragments of an ancient supercontinent, and they’re the only tropical location in the world where these huge granite cliffs and gargantuan boulders exist. As we left the road and began picking our way along the trail through the forest, I felt like I might be entering some kind of prehistoric time capsule.
The boulders jutted upwards amongst the trees, and every time there was a light breeze, giant leaves sounded more like sheets of card scraping against each other. For the most part though, there was zero breeze, just stifling heat and a whole lot of sweat. The scent of cinnamon hung in the air in pockets, and we examined every different tree and plant and shrub to try and figure out where it was coming from. I shoved my face into several bushes in an attempt to locate the source of the sweet spicy smell.
Which probably looked a bit odd, from a distance.
I’m happy to say that we did actually identify the right tree; it’s just that we didn’t know for certain until we googled it later. If you touch the leaves of a cinnamon tree, your hands won’t smell any different than before. And even if you put your nose on the actual bark and inhale as deeply as you possibly can, it’s still quite unlikely you’ll smell a thing. Unless you’ve got an incredibly well-honed and potentially superhuman sense of smell. And yet, whenever we were near the cinnamon trees the smell in the air was downright marvellous. The part of the tree which is used to make cinnamon spice is the internal bark, so somehow this glorious interior bark smell was seeping through the entire rest of the tree to waft through the air, free-as-a-bird.
The Anse Major trail, once you’re on it, is super easy to follow, with a narrow pathway formed out of slightly wobbly old bricks which gave you a surprise every few minutes as they rolled underfoot. Not one for any of that professional hiking equipment, I was wearing a pair of Vans; Silke on the other hand was in the same rubber flip-flops she’d worn to climb up that mountain in Réunion. Probably not the safest of choices but she managed it fine. We pushed on in the baking hot sun as the path wove higher beneath the granite cliffs. A stream trickled downhill which I dunked my hands into and splashed over myself in an attempt to cool off a little bit.
Halfway along the wobbly path was a gaggle of Indian migrant workers who had stopped for lunch while they were laying some pipes. They nodded at us from their thali box lunches in any kind of shade they could find, although a couple had resorted to spots in harsh sunlight, beads of sweat rolling off their foreheads.
I was glad when the trail started to weave downhill again, into forest. The path was no longer clear at all, in fact for a while we were just clambering through leaf litter and dodging spiderwebs the size of pillowcases complete with spiders the size of my face. But we’d seen the white crescent of the beach from higher up, so knew we were heading in the right direction. And the bonus was that we could see there was absolutely not a single other soul there! What an absolute JOY! We’d made a few visits to Beau Vallon- the much easier to visit and therefore more people-filled beach further up the coast- but this secret paradise was way more my kind of style. Anse Major, here we come!
Anse Major beach
At last we surfaced from the trees, to the secret Mahé island beach.
And were met with the sight of 35 passengers relaxing on their trademark yellow and white stripy beach towels.
Silke was mad.
“Whaaat!? Where did they come from!!??”
They must have arrived by boat while we’d been trekking through the forest. The cheeky things.
Silke hastily found the scout in charge of the whole operation to find out how much longer the passengers were scheduled to be sharing the beach with us for. Half an hour was the answer, which all things considered, wasn’t too bad. Half an hour we could manage. Once they were gone, we shared the little bay with a mere two people.
What absolute tropical magic.
In short, Anse Major Beach is one of the best beaches that I have ever set foot on. The waves that day were a little on the larger side, but it was still fine to swim if we stayed closer to the shore, and the water was the perfect shade of vivid turquoise, all the way out to the island of Silhouette on the horizon. A streak of tiny colourful shells littered the diamond-dust sand in a perfect curve, bordered with the palm trees, forest and granite rocks that we’d just clambered through to get there.
And just behind the beach is a pool of crystal clear, and refreshingly cool water, fresh from tumbling down the mountainside and dotted with old white pieces of coral smoothed out by the sea. Let me tell you, after an hour and a half hiking with next-to-no shade and completely drenched in sweat, jumping into this pool was one of the best feelings in the world.
Leaving the trail
After a couple of hours (although we both agreed we’d stay longer if we could), we made our way back in the afternoon sun, bypassing the bus stop to grab some bottles of Sey Brew from a corner shop. If I’m honest, I wanted a beer as much for saving the bottle cap which features a turtle, as for consumption of the beer itself. But it was a refreshing and well-deserved end to the Anse Major trail, without a shadow of a doubt. The shop-owner congratulated us on hiking the trail in the baking hot sun, and let us know that the locals pronounce it in a way that sounds more along the lines of ‘Aunt’s Masseur’ than ‘Ant’s Major,’ which is what I’d previously been going for. That’s Seychellois Creole for you, it’s a very interesting language.
The beer kept us going through the little town of Bel Ombre and as we reached the sun loungers and resorts of Beau Vallon beach a black cloud that had been hovering over Silhouette island in the distance, began to lollop across the sky towards us. The wind picked up, the rain began to pelt down, and by the time we arrived back in Victoria I was simultaneously sunburnt and extremely soggy.
Logistical Statisticals
- The Anse Major Trail is fairly easy to follow, although if you want some extra guidance, find it on the All Trails app.
- Buses in the Seychelles cost a flat ticket price of 12 SCR per journey; which is equivalent to about €0.70.
- Currently- due to the pandemic- public buses are off-limits to tourists.
- The Anse Major trail is about 3.7 miles in length and normally takes between 45 minutes to an hour and a half to hike from one end to the other- depending on your heat exhaustion levels.
- Bring water, food and sun protection! There is barely any shade on the trail, and no facilities once you reach the beach.
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