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EDITS Travel
ATaste of Paradise
by Peter Holthusen
THE AMIRANTES
There could scarcely be a corner of the world
further removed in both distance and spirit
from the everyday than these remote Indian
Ocean islands. The Amirantes are part of
the Outer Island Group of Seychelles. They
stretch about 155 km from the African Banks
in the north to Île Desnoeufs in the south, all
of which lie on the shallow Amirantes Bank
(Amirantes Plateau, with depths of mostly
25 to 70 metres), except the main island of
Desroches in the east, and Lady Denison-
Pender Shoal at the northern end.
It would appear that the Amirantes were the
first of the Seychelles’ islands to have been
discovered by Europeans in the 16h century,
when the Portuguese explorer, Vasco da
Gama, on his second voyage of exploration in
It is sunrise over the Indian Ocean and on the ivory white sand a solitary figure
is greeting the new dawn. He slowly lifts his fishing nets out of the water and
hangs them out to dry. Then something moves. As if from nowhere a tiny pink
crab appears, scuttling sideways across the beach. It skims the surface, barely
making an impression in the wet sand. And then they are gone and once more
the beach is totally deserted, proof that in a crowded world there are still some
places that remain unspoilt, but then this is the Amirante Islands and it was
recently my good fortune to pay this pristine archipelago a visit.
1502, named them “Ilhas do Almirante”, the
Admiral Islands. They were almost certainly
known to early Indian and Arab traders in
search of fresh water and food.
Along with the main islands of the
Seychelles archipelago, the Amirantes group
were first visited by the British in 1609 when
the ships ‘Ascension’ and ‘Good Hope’
arrived at Mahé during an expedition for the
British East India Company. They made no
claim to the islands, which remained largely
uninhabited. That was until 1742 when the
Frenchman, Lazare Picault, landed on Mahé
at Anse Boileau and claimed Seychelles for
France. Formal possession was asserted in
1756. By the time of the Treaty of Paris in
1814, the islands were passed officially to
The pristine Amirantes – there could scarcely
be a corner of the world further removed in
both distance and spirit from the everyday
than these remote Indian Ocean Islands.