Anse Lazio, Anse Source d’Argent, Beau Vallon: Which Beach Works on Which Day

Almost every picture of the Seychelles is one of three beaches, and they lie on three different islands with ferry time in between. That is the first thing worth knowing: you do not choose between them in the morning. You choose where to sleep, and that mostly decides which one you see.

The second thing is that they behave differently in the water, and the differences are not cosmetic. One is patrolled. One has no reef in front of it. One is only swimmable at certain hours of the day.

Beau Vallon, Mahé: the one you can actually use

Beau Vallon is the wide bay on the north-west shoulder of Mahé, and it is the least photogenic of the three in the sense that matters here: it has a road behind it, hotels along it, boats on it and people in it. It is also the beach with the most reliable lifeguard presence in the country, with a swimming area marked out by buoys and patrols during the daylight hours of the high season – and the high season here means November to March.

If you are travelling with children, with a weak swimmer, or without much confidence in the sea, this is the honest recommendation, and it is not close. The bay is wide, the gradient is gentle, and somebody is watching. One caveat belongs with that: those are precisely not the calm trade-wind months. In July the bay lies flat, but do not count on anyone on the sand counting heads.

The catch is seasonal and it is the opposite of what people expect. Beau Vallon faces north-west, so it is sheltered and calm during the south-east trade winds from May to September – exactly the months when the south-facing beaches are churned up. From November to March, when the north-west monsoon blows onto this coast, Beau Vallon is the one getting the chop and the wind. A flat photograph taken in July and a grey, wind-blown afternoon in January are the same beach.

Anse Lazio, Praslin: the postcard, with a real caveat

Anse Lazio is on Praslin’s north-west coast, and it is the beach most people mean when they say they have seen a picture of the Seychelles. Pale sand, granite boulders at both ends, takamaka trees for shade.

There is no reef in front of it. That single fact explains most of what can go wrong here. A reef takes the swell before it reaches the sand; without one, waves and currents build quickly, particularly around the boulders at either end, and they build on days that do not look dramatic from a beach towel. There are no lifeguards. Look at the water before you get in, and treat the ends of the bay with more respect than the middle.

It is not a dangerous beach. It is an unsupervised one, which is a different thing, and the difference is worth holding onto because nothing at the entrance tells you either way.

Getting there is the part nobody mentions

Anse Lazio sits behind a hill, and the hill is the reason the beach is quieter than its fame suggests.

By bus, routes 61 and 62 run to Anse Boudin; from the stop it is roughly a twenty-minute walk, and the last stretch over the ridge is steep enough that people arrive at the sand already warm. Worth knowing before you plan around it: SPTC buses have been cashless since 1 July 2023. Drivers take no money. Every passenger needs their own travel card – or the SPTC app, whose QR payment works on any bus showing the QR sign in the windscreen. Cards are sold at the airport, at SPTC sales offices and at post offices on Mahé, Praslin and La Digue, and at the shop in the inter-island jetty building. Normal services run between about 5.30am and 7pm, so an evening at the beach is not a bus evening.

By taxi it is straightforward and the descent to the car park is short. If you want the beach at eight in the morning, or you want to leave when you feel like leaving rather than when the timetable says so, a car is the thing that buys you that – you can compare rental cars for the Seychelles and see what a couple of days actually costs before deciding whether the freedom is worth it. Plenty of people decide it is not, and take one taxi each way.

There are toilets and showers near the entrance and restaurants at either end of the bay, which makes Anse Lazio the easiest of the three to spend a whole day at. Bring cash for lunch and do not count on much shade at midday beyond the tree line.

Booked as a guided day, the Vallée de Mai and Anse Lazio full-day tour pairs the beach with the palm forest for €65, 4.6 stars from 377 reviews – the cheapest way to see both without solving the transport yourself.

Anse Source d’Argent, La Digue: the one with a gate and a timetable

The most photographed of the three is also the only one you pay to reach and the only one that is closed at night. Access runs through L’Union Estate, the entrance fee is SCR 150 for foreign visitors, and the estate is open 6am to 6pm.

And then there is the tide, which matters more here than anywhere else in the country: behind its reef the bay is very shallow, so at low water much of it is ankle to knee deep and the famous pools between the boulders are wading pools rather than swimming. The full version of this – the gate, the pass that flips to the next day after 4.30pm, the tide table, and why you should ride there before ten in the morning – is in the La Digue by bike guide, because on La Digue the beach and the bicycle are the same decision.

Seaweed: the question people ask after they arrive

Neither the brochures nor the beach entrances mention it, so here it is plainly. Seagrass and algae wash ashore seasonally, and which coast gets them depends on the wind:

• May to September, the south-east trades push seaweed onto south-facing shores, including the south coast of Praslin.
• October to April, the wind comes round and the deposits land instead on Praslin’s north-east side, along Côte d’Or.

None of this makes a beach unusable and crews clear the busier stretches, but it explains why two people describe the same bay completely differently depending on the month they went. It is also an argument for the north-west-facing bays – Beau Vallon and Anse Lazio among them – during the trade wind months.

Choosing, in one paragraph

If you are based on Mahé and want a swimmable afternoon without planning, it is Beau Vallon. If you are on Praslin and want the picture, it is Anse Lazio, early, with an eye on the water at the ends of the bay. If you are on La Digue, it is Anse Source d’Argent at high tide, and you pay at the gate. Anything else is a boat day, and the island hopping listings – 35 of them, from €46.53 – exist because most people eventually take one: Praslin and La Digue in a single day from Mahé is the common version, and the Sainte Anne marine park boat trips are the short one from Victoria.