Seychelles (Bradt Travel Guide) Paperback – December 4, 2012

good

Someone very close to me was preparing to move to the Seychelles for a year, this book helped bring so much insight to the islands, the culture, its history and modern life. It still will never prepare you for the intense beauty and fantastic people of the Seychelles, but it is a must have for anyone contemplating a trip overseas to this African nation. I highly recommend it. I will be heading there myself in January. Thank you to everyone at Bradt for producing wonderful books like these.

If you are expecting the typical like Lonely planet/Routard guide, don't be wrong. I know that it's difficult to do an interesting guide of a really small place like seychelles, but at least you can have a rate of the best beaches, the differents pathways in the national park, a little bit more info about the price to the small islands. You can get the same info, and probably with more and more accurate info in the seychelles website. Don't waste your time and your money.

Nice part about history, climate, nature.Good to get an idea what to visit. But I have an impression, that reviews of restaurants and shopping places are paied buy owners. We found much better opportunities than restaurants in the travel guide. Do not follow tips for dining and shopping. Do not orginie trips with adviced agencies. We got a small travel guide at the airport for free, with much better tips.

Ho voluto provare un'alternativa alla mia "solita" Lonely Planet e trovo questa Bradt un po' deludente. Troppo commerciale, i nomi di hotel e ristoranti spuntano come funghi anche nei paragrafi che dovrebbero descrivere solo i luoghi di interesse. Avrei gradito una separazione netta tra descrizione dei posti, e attività commerciali. Non credo comprerò più altre Bradt. Se non vi dà fastidio la pubblicità ovunque, la guida è comunque completa ed esaustiva.

The authors have made a very thorough review of the Seychelles covering all the islands in the group, the wildlife above and below the water and every other bit of information the visitor may require. There is more than enough information for anybody visiting the islands, in fact the guide is the same size as many other Bradt publications that cover several countries within the one volume, so its comprehensiveness can readily be judged. My only criticism is that although the authors appear to be experts on this part of the world they do not seem to have much knowledge of other island groups, e.g. in the Pacific, so some of their eulogies and claims for the Seychelles are not justified in comparison.

I chose this guide over the Lonely Planet because it is focused on Seychelles only (Lonely Planet covers Seychelles, Mauritius and Réunion), so I was expecting there will be more information. I was disappointed. The best part of the book is the general section (Part 1), which covers the geography, history and natural history of the islands quite extensively (70 pages). This is a good introduction. But the detailed chapters describing individual islands (Part 2) focus too much on hotels, restaurants, shops, offices and the like. First, there are rather detailed descriptions of hotels and resorts, which, given that you must book your accommodation before coming to Seychelles, may be useful for planning your trip (but then there is TripAdvisor), but is useless ballast to carry around in the Seychelles. Then, the subsections such as "Discovering Praslin" mostly consist of listing hotels, restaurants, dive shops etc. which you encounter left and right as you walk the main streets of the towns, which is largely redundant with the maps provided and the description in "Where to stay" and "What to eat" subsections. What is scarce is information on what one can do other then sleeping, eating or shopping. For example, even though the chapter on Praslin does a decent job describing Vallée de Mai, it does not mention any other hikes, such as the beautiful trail from Anse Lazio to Anse Georgette along the undeveloped North-Western shore, nor the cross-island trek along the Salazie track. It does not make an attempt to identify best snorkeling spots, instead referring one to dive shops that offer snorkeling trips. A few hikes on Mahé are mentioned, but so cursorily that even finding the trail-heads would be difficult without additional information. So, overall, the book is not very useful for independent active travelers who want to venture away from the main street.

Das Buch enthält alle wichtigen Informationen zu Unterkünften, Transport, Karten etc. Es ist gut strukturiert und enthält auch brauchbare Tipps. Eigentlich bin ich ein großer Fan der Michael Müller und LonelyP. Reiseführer, aber für die Seychellen gibt es da nichts vernünftiges...Bin daher positiv überrascht über dieses Buch; die Informationen scheinen auch noch recht aktuell zu sein! Leider nur auf Englisch, aber sehr verständlich geschrieben.