North Island in the Seychelles, where the royal newlyweds are believed to be honeymooning, is the paragon of tropical island escapes – the Christian Louboutin of what travel types call barefoot luxury.
At £1,957 per person per night – the average honeymoon for two people costs £3,220 – the stylish resort attracts the super-rich, City whizzkids and A-list celebrities including Liz Hurley, Jennifer Aniston, Pierce Brosnan and JK Rowling. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are rumoured to have plans to exchange wedding vows on one of its two beaches.
Should you wish to reserve all 11 villas, ensuring privacy rather than paparazzi, the tiny granitic speck washed by the emerald shallows of the Indian Ocean will cost £43,000 – a remarkable flourish to what had been dubbed the austerity wedding.
For the considerable outlay, visitors to the fecund island of three small peaks and two white powder beaches stay in huge two-bedroom, butler-serviced villas of 4,843 square feet (450 sq m) made by Balinese thatchers and Tanzanian wood carvers. They have indoor and outdoor showers, staggeringly large bathrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows opening on to decks with private gazebos and plunge pools. Each villa has an electric golf buggy to nip around the sandy tracks.
At 8,000 square feet, Villa 11 claims to be one of the world's ultimate beach huts with a circular-flow swimming pool, cinema lounge and multiple levels cascading down the boulders to the sand. The resort's public areas, designed by the renowned safari camp architects Silvio Rech and Lesley Carstens, use upturned sun-bleached takamaka trees to create Daliesque columns for open-sided rooms containing rectangular reflection pools, sunken sofas and screens of roped coral.
The choice of the hyper-fashionable if slightly cliched honeymoon suggests the royal couple not only have a less stuffy idea of romance than his parents but also enjoy a more equal relationship. Charles and Diana's post-wedding travels in 1981 took in Broadlands in Hampshire, the family home of the Mountbattens, followed by a Mediterranean cruise on the royal yacht and a visit to Balmoral with his family – which suggests Charles called the shots rather than his younger bride. Whether North Island will be such an aphrodisiac is another question. William was born in 1982, eight months after his parents returned.
Prince Charles would certainly appreciate North Island's eco credentials. Like any exclusive tropical resort it trumpets its green policies including the eradication of rats, cats, owls and pigs – the legacy of its coconut farming days – and the re-introduction of indigenous trees and birds including the Magpie Robin. Villa 11 even uses recycled glassware made by projects in Swaziland townships.
Serious environmentalists might, however, question how eco a small island can be when more than 100 staff cater to the whims of guests to the 11 pampered villas.
I was lucky enough to stay on North Island before the resort opened in 2002 when I was marooned for a story about life as a castaway. It was truly beautiful if a little harsh. I survived on unripe mango, coconuts and pitifully small fish and was eaten alive by mosquitoes, now eradicated for guests' comfort. At night, giant turtles dragged themselves up the beach to lay eggs under a magnificent pink moon and fruit bats wheeled overhead.
When I visited years later to compare experiences, I found the spot where I had built a shelter of branches and palm fronds was now a turning circle for guests' golf buggies. And as I slumped on cushions of what is now the sunset beach, a plump man from Miami with a brightly coloured cocktail told me he "couldn't wait to recommend it to his well-heeled friends. Staying here is the nearest thing on earth to being Robinson Crusoe."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk
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