The first thing to remember about this hotel is that one needs a car, the second thing is that there is no restaurant facilities, its self catering, but without the oven or a proper cooker, just a 2 ring and a micro. The room was fair and there was a sized terrace, air con worked ok. However, it got a bit cold at night and in the absence of a blanket so I had to turn it off. There was a TV with about 13 channels which took me a while to work out how to switch it on and get it to work. In the end I had to get the manager to assist me, The staff carefully took my temperature every day, even knocking on the door to get me to come down to take it. The hotel though is not really for singles, and its best staying in one of the bigger more expensive hotels if you want to mix with other single guests. Much of the time I appeared to be only one there, apart from American couple who were obviously spending weeks living there. The Restaurants around the area were ok but, to be honest, its not the best part of the Island: that honor goes to the the area around the CONSTANCE EPHILIA hotel on the West Coast. Beau VALLON is the nearest village and , to me, at any rate, it seems a bit faded. The hotel claims its 15 mins walk from the beach but I reckon that it is further. Quite a few of the restaurants were basically tourist traps, one or two were not bad, e.g. LA SCALA or MAKNEK, a local Indian. The weather, itself, quickly faded and it rained pretty much every day. The sea was also rough so diving was not pleasant, and visibility in the water was very poor. i went to try to walk the Coachella trail 3 times and each time it was closed, so was the natural history museum. Between the Corona, and the Christmas holidays, the Seychelles basically winds down at this time of year. Be aware of this if you think that its relatively cheap at this time of year. Also lying on the beach and getting drenched was not a great idea so one quickly runs out of things to do there in what is largely a beach kind of holiday place.. The principle town, VICTORIA, has a small fish and veg market, but otherwise there is not much to see there. The town seems full of economic migrants from African countries queing up to send their money back home at the money changers and banks. To cap it off the last two days there was a mini lockdown and all the restaurants were shut in the evening. I found one small cafe open the first night, but the second night I ended up eating a take away from the only take away open whilst sitting on the floor of the car park. Not really my taste. Summing up the hotel was reasonable, as far as it goes, but going at this time of year and in the midst of Corona was a mistake. The Seychelles, itself, looked like it had seen much better days. and the economy has been hard hit by an absence of tourists and it shows.
