The captain’s incomprehensible intercom voice wakes me from half-sleep. The sight that greets me from the windows makes me think I’m not entirely awake.

We’re coming in for the landing and to my right I see tropical jungle and to my left the blinding morning sun bouncing off the Indian Ocean. “Is this a sea plane?” I ask the flight attendant and she smiles, impervious to my apparent bewilderment.

We land smoothly. On the ground. At Mahé International Airport; Mahé being the largest island in the Seychelles archipelago.

The granite islands of the Seychelles archipelago comprises 115 islands clustered around the main island of Mahé. Coming from the sub-zero temperatures of Johannesburg, the heat hits me like a tidal wave. It’s 7.30 am and already the mercury hovers at around 29 degrees, and the humidity is high.

Verena from Select Seychelles greets me with a beaming smile and fast tracks me through customs. The queues at passport control go on for miles but I get treated like royalty – in fact, the only people in the queue before me are the international footballer rock star Zanetti and his wife and children.

We board a Cessna caravan from the airport straight away to the island of Praslin. The smallish plane drones on like a vuvuzela in pain and takes off with a roller-coaster action in the fierce wind. I turn my attention to the myriad hues of greens and blues of the magnificent ocean beneath us in order to distract me from my impending shuffle off this mortal coil.

The flight takes only 15 minutes and Herweit, the man who is to be my guide for the two days, picks me up at the quaint airport in his smart 4x4. I stare at the undulating, mountainous jungle on the one side and the blue, blue sea on the other, fringed by a million palm trees.

We arrive at the modern four-star hotel of Coco de Mer which lies in over 200 acres of natural beauty on the edge of the Indian Ocean.  After a quick breakfast, my host Ash shows me to my air-conditioned room. It is huge and airy, decorated in blues and greens, almost right on the beach. There is a little private nook with a couch, which could be replaced by a bed for a child, and the room is purposely big enough to accommodate a family of four.

I contemplate sleep but instead I sit on my private balcony in reverie, listening to the rustle of the palms and watching the sea before me turn colour from shades of sapphire to light grey as clouds lazily drift before the sun. A drizzle, like the touch of a feather, brings some relief from the humidity and heat.

After lunch, I board a fabulous wooden yacht to La Digue Island. The waves play like white horses beneath the boat and we pass a myriad of small, uninhabited islands in the middle of the world. A timeless oasis, hidden away in the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, guarded by warm azure waters and fringed by teeming reefs, La Digue is the Seychelles of yesteryear.

A world away from the hustle and bustle of the modern world, La Digue basks in the ageless peace of a Seychelles almost unchanged since the earliest settlers stumbled upon the islands and claimed to have discovered the Garden of Eden. My host, Noelle meets me as we alight.

Her warm, smiling face belies a deep sadistic streak – she makes me ride a bicycle. For miles. I haven’t ridden a bicycle for about 20 years but I guess it’s like, well, riding a bicycle and after a couple of embarrassing incidents I hit my stride. The villagers and tourists, young and old, all ride bikes; an occasional small truck is the only reminder that actual vehicles are to be found.  

She takes me to a barely noticeable enclosure consisting of a tiny wall and there, before my eyes, I see beasts and dinosaurs from another age. I nearly fall off my bike - again - at the sight of the Aldabra Giant Tortoises. These lumbering beasts, which can live for over a century, can be spotted across the island.

I discover more wonders of nature the following morning when Herweit takes me for a walk through one of the most enchanting forests in the world – the Unesco-protected Vallée De Mai palm forest. It’s a remarkable remnant of the prehistoric forests which existed when the Seychelles islands were still part of Gondwanaland, the huge land mass which included what is now Africa, Madagascar and India.

Millions of years of isolation enabled a unique community of plants and animals to develop in the Vallée De Mai and some species are found nowhere else, such as the Coco de Mer palm – the largest nut in the world, weighing up to 20 kg. The forest possesses an eerie and haunting beauty and is almost totally silent with only the ancient mile high palms whispering in the breeze.