Morne Seychellois National Park

Everyone comes to the Seychelles for the water. I was no different, and for the first three days I did exactly what three days of beach research suggested: beach in the morning, lunch somewhere close, snorkel in the afternoon. On the fourth morning I rented a car and drove up into the hills behind Victoria, following the road through Sans Souci toward the Morne Seychellois trail, mostly because the clouds that had been sitting on the summit every morning had finally lifted and I wanted to know what was up there.

The national park covers almost half of Mahé’s total land area — three thousand hectares of the island’s interior that have been left largely as they were when the French arrived in the eighteenth century. The main trailhead at Sans Souci is nothing dramatic: a concrete marker, a wooden sign, a path that immediately begins climbing through secondary growth before the character of the forest changes. Within twenty minutes of starting I was in cloud forest — lower, denser trees than the coastal zones, their trunks wrapped in moss, the ground covered in ferns and the occasional enormous root that crossed the path at ankle height with no concern for hikers. The light was green and diffused in a way that felt related to but distinct from the Vallée de Mai on Praslin. Wetter, more enclosed, carrying the smell of permanent shade.

The pitcher plants appeared about halfway up, growing at the bases of shrubs and in the wet soil beside the path, their traps hanging like small, mottled lanterns — Seychelles pitcher plants, endemic to these hills, surviving on the insects they trap and digest in an environment too nutrient-poor for more conventional eating strategies. I crouched to look at one that was open, the rim of its trap glossy with the secretion that makes it irresistible and lethal to anything small enough to fall in. Inside, something was already dissolving. I stood back up and continued climbing.

The summit of Morne Seychellois, at 905 meters, is the highest point in the Seychelles, and on a clear day it offers a view of almost the entire granitic archipelago — Mahé spreading below in both directions, Praslin visible to the northeast, Silhouette a dark shape to the northwest, and beyond them all the empty blue of the Indian Ocean in every direction. I sat at the top for twenty minutes eating a mango I’d brought from the Victoria market and watching a frigate bird work the thermals somewhere below the summit. The wind at the top had a coolness I hadn’t felt anywhere else in the islands, and I put on a long-sleeved shirt I’d carried since Oaxaca and forgotten about.

There are eleven marked trails in the park ranging from thirty-minute loops near the road to full-day ridge traverses. The Copolia Trail is a shorter and steeper alternative to Morne Seychellois proper, ending at a flat granite plateau with a vertical drop to the sea that produces the kind of view you need to stand well back from. I did the Copolia in the late afternoon of a separate day, arriving at the summit just before the light turned golden, and sat on the warm granite ledge while swifts — Seychelles swiftlets, tiny, quick — cut arcs in the air below me. The Seychelles swiftlet is one of about a dozen birds found nowhere else on Earth. Standing on that rock and watching them, I felt the full strangeness of this place: a piece of ancient Gondwana in the middle of the Indian Ocean, hosting species that evolved in isolation for millions of years while the continents rearranged themselves around it.

When to go: May through October is the coolest and driest period — best for hiking. The summit of Morne Seychellois is often in cloud in the mornings; start early and expect to be in the cloud forest for part of the ascent regardless of the weather below. Bring water, shoes with grip, and something light and long-sleeved for the summit. The drive up to Sans Souci from Victoria takes about twenty minutes.