Curieuse and St Pierre from Praslin: Seven Listings, Two Islands, €46.53 to €130

This is the most-reviewed day out in the whole Seychelles inventory, and it is not close. The Praslin boat trip to Curieuse and St Pierre holds 4.9 stars from 1,808 reviews. Nothing else on these islands comes near that combination of volume and score.

Which makes the next fact odd: the same two islands are sold under at least seven different listings, from €46.53 to €130 – and private catamaran versions run well above that. The islands themselves do not change. What changes is how long you are out, whether there is a barbecue, and whether a third island gets bolted on.

What you are actually going to see

Curieuse is a granite island about ten minutes off Praslin’s north coast, inside Curieuse Marine National Park. It has free-roaming Aldabra giant tortoises. That is not a detail to skim – read how the operators word it. The listing for the most-reviewed trip says you will “look for giant tortoises”, not that you will visit them. The adults roam free; the only ones behind a fence are the young in the tortoise nursery at Baie Laraie. Most days you will walk into several; on a bad day you walk into two.

The standard itinerary crosses the island on foot from Baie Laraie to the beach on the far side, and the route runs on a boardwalk through mangroves. It is flat, it is shaded in parts, and it takes the better part of an hour there and back.

St Pierre is the other half of the name and it surprises people: it is tiny. A cluster of rounded granite boulders with a few palms on top, sitting in clear water. No one lands there. It is a snorkelling stop, and on most of these trips it is the best snorkelling of the day – which is why the cheapest listing of the lot is built around it and skips almost everything else.

The park fee, and the number that gets copied wrong

Curieuse Marine National Park charges SCR 300 per non-resident aged over 12. It is open 9am to 5pm daily.

Watch out for the figure SCR 200 – you will see it quoted for Curieuse in plenty of places. SCR 200 is the rate for the Sainte Anne marine park off Mahé, which is a different park under the same authority. Same country, same agency, different price.

Two more things from the Seychelles Parks and Gardens Authority that are worth knowing before you are standing on a jetty:

• Cards only on site. No cash is accepted at the parks; it is Visa, Mastercard, Amex or UnionPay, or you buy in advance at spga.gov.sc/tickets.
• Curieuse lists barbecuing among the permitted activities – relevant if your trip is one of the ones that does not include lunch. The seasonal Nesting Sea Turtle Trail, October to early March, carries its own SCR 150 fee.

Whether the SCR 300 is inside your ticket price depends entirely on the operator. The most-reviewed trip lists the park ticket among its inclusions but states plainly that it is €20 payable by card on Curieuse itself. It is the single most common thing to be surprised by on these trips, so read your own confirmation rather than a summary of somebody else’s.

The seven listings, ranked by what they are for

If you want the day everyone raves about: the Curieuse & St. Pierre Full-Day Boat Trip with Lunch at €79 for seven hours. 4.9 stars, 1,808 reviews. Snorkelling at St Pierre, tortoises on Curieuse, a barbecue lunch, and the guided walk through the mangroves.

If you want the same score with a smaller boat: the Curieuse Guided Tour with St Pierre, BBQ and two snorkel stops is €100.08 for six and a half hours, also 4.9 stars, 1,154 reviews. Two snorkel stops rather than one, and that is most of what the higher price buys.

If the barbecue is the point and the budget is not: the day trip with barbecue at €75 (4.6, 812 reviews) and the €75.50 version (4.7, 541 reviews) do the same round at a slightly lower rating. There is no meaningful price gap between these and the 4.9-star trip. Given that, the cheaper listing is not the better deal.

If you are travelling on a budget: the Curieuse & St-Pierre Boat Adventure with Snorkelling is €50 for seven hours, 4.5 stars from 470 reviews. Seven hours for fifty euros is the best hours-per-euro on the list.

If you do not want a whole day gone: the half-day snorkelling trip with no barbecue is €46.53 for four hours, 4.6 stars from 155 reviews. That is the cheapest listing in the entire Seychelles inventory – not just for this trip, for anything. It is the honest choice if you have half a day, if you have small children who will not last seven hours on a boat, or if you would rather eat on Praslin than off a grill on a beach.

The one to think twice about: the Cousin, Curieuse and St Pierre day tour adds a third island for €130 over eight hours, and it is the lowest-rated of the group at 4.2 from 153 reviews. Cousin is a special-reserve bird island and genuinely interesting, but three islands in eight hours is a day of transitions. Book it because you want Cousin, not because more sounds better.

Getting there in the first place

All of these leave from Praslin, not Mahé. If you are based on Mahé, the Cat Cocos catamaran crosses in about 1 hour 15 minutes and starts from around €56 per adult one way in economy – which means a day trip to Curieuse from a Mahé hotel is a ferry, a boat, a boat, and a ferry. It can be done. It makes for a very long day, and it costs more in transport than the cheapest listing costs in total.

If Praslin is where you are sleeping, this trip is the reason to be there.

The full shortlist sits on the snorkelling page, which starts at €46.53 across 35 listings, and the wider island-by-island picture is on island hopping. Curieuse itself, as a protected area rather than a boat day, belongs with the nature parks.