This tour is not entirely a tour before you base yourself in 3 hotels/guesthouses rather than tour around each location on a bus every day or so which was unusual. This can be a very expensive tour with the locations that the tour leader takes you to for meals. I would say hunt around yourself so that you can find cheaper! Search for the 'locals' supermarkets for cheap water, etc. The cost of beer, wine, etc varies everywhere so getting from the supermarket & drinking in your room is better especially if like us we were on this trip with people who only drank water, tea and coffee! The highlight for me was Cousin Island optional excursion. If this is the type of holiday that you think you will do loads of snorkelling on choose somewhere else! The beaches are lovely but you have to travel to these as they are not where you stay! Hopefully when you go here the hotel on La Digue has had all it's construction completed as we stayed here when the hotel was closed to all but Explore group! You can hire bikes but check the seats as my bum was in pain for 2 days because of the rough concrete roads or dirt tracks but this is the cheapest way to get around all the island and see any beaches! Or walk! We missed some of the tours due to the bad weather on Mahe and La Digue so going for Xmas/New Year is not the best time of the year to go here. One person in our group has been here 4 times so there are people that enjoy this trip but not for us. I think that the Seychelles government are putting up taxes and will eventually price themselves out of the tourist market so only the Sheiks from Saudi, etc will be able to afford coming to this country. Another highlight was seeing angel fish on the snorkelling excursion from La Digue but it isn't as good as Belize for snorkelling! Tips for those wanting to coming on this trip - bring a pac-a-mac & sml umbrella! Bring only euros for paying for the tours (seems this is the currency you have to pay in for taxis, excursions & hotels & bike hire), dollars are ok but changing up into the local rupees as soon as you can is better due to the exchange rate! Would we visit again - no because it was too expensive & wrong time of the year to go! This was supposed to be a tour to Java & Bali but we had to transfer to another tour at short notice due to volcanic activity kicking off there so this wasn't on my top 10 places to visit! Hopefully you will get a more enthusiastic tour leader than we did too! Oh & we were celebrating a birthday on this tour but not one slice of cake did we see which is the norm on all Explore tours! Sorry Explore but this was an expensive trip and we were very disappointed! (TI 17th December 2010)
Response from Explore:
Thank you for your review of the above trip. While we do not usually comment on our customer’s reviews, as yours raised some disappointing issues, we would like to reply to some of the points.
The majority of items have to be imported to the Seychelles, which adds expense – especially as the Seychelles are quite a distance away from the nearest mainland. This will naturally impact on local costs compared with islands in the Mediterranean, or the Caribbean, we agree it is an expensive destination.
For our 2011 trip notes, we show a 3 course meal as costing the same as it would in the UK. And wine prices as being more expensive than the UK. We welcome your further feedback if you feel this needs reviewing.
We are sorry that there was work being undertaken at the hotel in La Digue. We were not advised of this prior to your trip. We have spoken with the hotel and understand this work has now been completed.
We are also disappointed that you felt your tour leader was not enthusiastic. We know from our customers how important it is to have a great tour leader, and it is therefore particularly upsetting to get feedback like this. This was your tour leader’s last trip for Explore, which perhaps affected her enthusiasm and we apologise that she did not meet your expectations.
We hope that you have returned from the Seychelles with some positive memories and hope to see you again on one of our trips.
Yours sincerely
Sean Hughes
Customer Relations Manager
