The Seychelles' inner islands are built from granite, not coral, and the boulders piled on their beaches are unlike anything else in the Indian Ocean.
La Digue's Anse Source d'Argent is the most photographed beach in the Seychelles for good reason — house-sized granite boulders, rounded by millennia of surf, frame small pools of impossibly clear water; go at opening time or in the last hour before closing to have stretches of it to yourself.
The island runs on bicycles rather than cars, which makes it easy to string together several beaches in a day — Grand Anse and Petite Anse to the south are wilder and less sheltered, better for watching waves break than for swimming.
Praslin, a short ferry away, holds the Vallée de Mai, a UNESCO-listed palm forest that backs directly onto Anse Lazio, arguably the finest swimming beach in the archipelago; pair a forest walk with an afternoon swim and you've covered the two faces of these islands in a single day.
