Silhouette Island

Silhouette is the third largest granite island of the Seychelles and the least developed, a steep forested cone visible from Beau Vallon on the horizon at sunset. Almost the whole island is national park, with no roads and no cars, and it carries the best preserved mist forest in the country. Sheath-tailed bats, endemic to the archipelago and among the rarest mammals on earth, survive only here. A single hotel and a small village occupy the eastern shore, and trails cross the island to abandoned plantations and empty beaches. Boats cross from Bel Ombre on Mahé in about forty-five minutes.