25 + 2 years in the making.

In 1995 I was on an underwater film expedition in the Red Sea. The boat we lived and worked from was a rugged little motor boat that that took SCUBA divers on tours. When not in the Red Sea, they explored the exotic waters of the Seychelles. I had never heard of it.

Over the course of my time on board I heard many stories from the crew about Seychelles. They talked of Giant Tortoises the size of an arm chair, beautiful smooth granite boulders that lined pristine white sand beaches. Beneath the surface, they talked of wild things - huge manta rays and sea turtles, tiny technicolor nudibranchs and fully thriving coral reefs teeming with anemones and clown fish and a million pulsing things you could and couldn’t see.

They talked about an unspoiled Eden.

As I packed up to head home, the Captain of the boat offered me a job working with them on their Seychelles season. I wanted to work as a dive master and photographer, but he told me unequivocally that I would be cleaning crew, unlikely to have much if any time in the water. I wanted to go. But I knew being in a place like that and only seeing it through the window might drive me mad.

I declined.

For years I wondered: What if?

I never forgot about the Seychelles and its mystique - so isolated in the middle of the Indian Ocean. A cluster of 115 granitic islands spanning hundreds of miles, the archipelago sits about 1200 miles off the east coast of Africa and about 700 miles north of Madagascar, about 500 miles south of the equator. It has a population of less than 100,000 people, mostly of Afro-Indian-Creole heritage.

Isolation breeds diversity.

Although the island nation is part of Africa, culturally, influences come most predominantly from India, along with East Africa and a history of slavery and European colonialism. Never host to an indigenous culture, the people of the Seychelles come from a mix of (not) nearby continents and circumstances.

In biological terms, the islands are home to many endemic species – those which have evolved with distinct differences from their mainland counterparts, found here and nowhere else.

And so, sitting alone in a vast tropical blue span of ocean, the Seychelles is a place like nowhere else. A place that has to be visited to be truly experienced.

SwimVacation has been humming along for 14 years now, and it felt like time to shake things up a bit. We have a wonderful asset in the dynamic duo of Richie Rome and Lisa Dixon, who have crewed mega yachts all over the planet. They have seen everything and can navigate anything and with them, we can go anywhere. So when I came up with the idea of hosting occasional, very special, one-time-only-location 10 day SwimVacations, the very first place on my list was of course the Seychelles.

This unique SwimVacation trip has been two years in the making. Research and conversations and communications and more research. Assembling an intrepid group of guests game to travel the great distance to join us. Assessing, inquiring, a little bit of guessing and as always staying open to what will arise. Packing. A lot of organization and packing.

Hopper and I met with Zack and Alina in Portland, Maine, on a cold rainy day last week to go over final details.

A meet up and overnight with Richie and Lisa in Lisbon. Yes, there were little bottles of Port to celebrate.

We have crew and guests arriving via a variety of routes. My fellow guide Alina and all around crew guy Zack are flying 12 hours straight from Boston to Doha, Qatar, then another 4.5 hours to Mahe, the biggest island in Seychelles. They will ferry on to our starting point, the island of Praslin (pronounced Pray-leen) to meet Richie, Lisa and me, who will be there by Thursday. I left Maine on Monday night, bussed to Boston, flew from Logan to London to Lisbon where I met up with Romesy and Lou Lou and spent a night. (Side note / pro tip: You do not have nearly as much time as you think you do to get to your gate at Heathrow Airport. Plan to head to the gate early, then leave earlier. If you’ve flown from there, you know what I mean.) From Lisbon it’s 7.5 hours flying to Dubai, then 4.5 to Mahe. We have guests coming through other points in Europe, Ethiopia and Israel. The only common thread between the routes is that they are all long. We traverse the big belly of the Earth to hit the Seychelles – no shortcuts here. From the US, it’s a full 2 days + of transit.

We are all willing to do it. That’s how strong the allure of Seychelles is.

As I look out the window of 4 airplanes touching 4 continents and crossing multiple time zones, oceans and seas, I love to watch the landscape below shift. The textures, the color palettes, the style and imprint of human habitation. A rolling visual cue that I am somewhere else, somewhere new, somewhere far.

It’s far, this place.

My favorite.

SwimVacation has become my favorite and most frequent work in this stage of my photographic career, and really, it feels right that it’s with SwimVacation that I will finally, (finally) 27 years later, see and swim the Seychelles. I will finally immerse in its spice and variety born of isolation.

I’m glad to be jumping in on my terms and with a group of people as excited for something new as I am.

It’s time.

Heather