Travel Guide Frégate

Surrounded by a ring of coral, this large green granite rock is sure to awaken the Robinson d'opérette in all of us. Located 56 km from Mahé, the easternmost island of the Seychelles archipelago is a veritable Eden, measuring just 3 km2. One fine day in May 1744, Lazare Picault discovered it, noting in his logbooks the presence of numerous sea turtles and countless birds, especially frigatebirds. He named this piece of land Ile aux Frégates. Fresh water and an abundance of food (sea and land turtles, fish and fruit) would later attract pirates seeking shelter from the Caribbean and Madagascar. Several relics of their passage were unearthed on Grand Anse beach in the last century: pottery, knives, swords, axes and coins. Also discovered were cannonballs and three tombs dug into the coral, containing swords and bones. Today, a few caves cluttered with rocks and, at Anse Parc, a few piled-up stones known as the pirate's wall still attest to the presence of these forbidans, feeding the legend that the ghost of a pirate in search of lost treasure sometimes prowls the beach... The island has attracted many adventurers, including Ian Fleming. In possession of old maps of the area, James Bond's father is said to have walked the length and breadth of the island, convinced that it held a treasure. It's true that, perched on the heights of Mount Signale (125 m), where the eye drowns in the horizon, it's easy to imagine forbidans scanning the distance for merchant ships plying the ocean. It was also easy to find a place to hide a hypothetical booty on this piece of land. Finding one, assuming it exists, seems less obvious. The mystery remains and the dream goes on, amateurs beware!A generous nature. And yet, a priceless treasure is right there, visible to the naked eye, within reach of the first person to step ashore among the coconut, filao, takamaka, papaya, mandarin, banana, avocado, lemon, mango, soursop, orange, sour orange, coffee, vanilla vines, ylang-ylang flowers and other trees. Peter Hutley, who bought the island in 1972, set about turning it into a garden. Within a few years, Frégate was covered with fruit trees, vegetable plants and flower beds, and many workers helped to make the island prosperous. Unfortunately, the gardens were soon abandoned, and the weeds soon began to grow. But some tasty legacies remain from this happy period. Ah, the pleasure of quenching one's thirst with an orange plucked straight from the tree after frolicking on the Cafoule glacis! A haven for pirates, a prolific garden and a bird's paradise, the island has always been mysterious. Hovering in an infinite blue sky or hopping through the green foliage, hundreds of cardinals, turtle doves, terns, shearwaters and frigatebirds enliven the area - these sea eagles with their dark green plumage and forked tails have a wingspan of almost 2m. You can also admire the Dutch pigeon with its brilliant jet-blue plumage and hear a rare bird with a melodious song, the song magpie, which even decided to choose Frégate as its last refuge, a zwazo of which there were only around twenty specimens left in 1992, before the BirdLife association came to its rescue. Today, there are around a hundred singing there. Other scientists, magnifying glasses in hand, are studying another rarity at Frégate: the giant tenebrionid, or bib armé, a kind of beetle that digs tiny trenches in tree trunks. This rich fauna is complemented by giant scolopendras, enormous spiders and a few venomous scorpions. But don't worry! We're more likely to come across one of the large, harmless land tortoises that populate the island. Imported from Aldabra in the 1950s, some of them over a hundred years old, they've been taking it easy ever since, constantly gorging themselves on fallen leaves and fruit.Otto Happel's dream. Frégate the ecologist... and Frégate the hedonist! Here, millionaires rub shoulders with naturalists. The rustic Plantation House, closed in 1995, has been replaced by one of the most dazzling hotels on the planet. Since October 1998, it has even been one of the most private destinations in the Indian Ocean (along with North Island). A hotel? Not really, since this is a private island, whose owner intends to share its delights with a few wealthy guests - in other words, the privileged few whose dollars pay for the staff needed to maintain this 300-hectare paradise. Otto Happel became attached to this little floating Eden in his youth. Having fulfilled his dreams and made his fortune, he now treats it as a hobby, making it his priority to welcome his famous friends, as he did at the turn of the millennium. Richard Branson, Pierce Brosnan, Bill Gates, Serge Gainsbourg, Paul McCartney and Brad Pitt are just some of the stars who have visited. The German industrialist (manufacturer of cooling towers for nuclear power plants) is at home here, as nothing is too expensive to make Frégate the island of his dreams. Otto Hapel even overcame the elements by building a marina to anchor, among other things, his superb yacht (52 m long!). The work was a Pharaonic undertaking, with Frégate Island Private's total investment said to have amounted to over $40 million. It took a good three years for Otto Hapel's kolossal project to take shape, with the help of South African workers. Not only did he reforest the island (60,000 trees were planted), he also civilized it, creating small asphalt roads and developing agriculture. Today, the famous Seychelles granite boulders serve as a backdrop for the villas that line this panoramic corniche, each one offering a few rocks in complete privacy. This refuge of 17 villas closed its doors in February 2022 for a renovation program that is expected to last until mid-2025. The sanctuary promises to remain exclusive and unspoilt, and 18 much larger villas will once again blend into the natural surroundings. Clad in glass, stone and light-colored wood, they will be at the cutting edge of energy conservation, thanks in particular to the development of solar power. The project, which promises to be highly respectful of nature, will take more than two years to complete and should deliver another exceptional site on the archipelago's map of paradises.