Praslin is the second largest island in the Seychelles, lying 37 kilometres northeast of Mahé — two hours by boat or fifteen minutes by air. When the French explorer Lazare Picault first arrived in 1744, he named it the Island of Palms. The vegetation was so extraordinary that General Gordon of Khartoum, visiting a century later, became convinced this was the site of the original Garden of Eden.
The centrepiece is the Vallée de Mai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of virtually virgin palm forest and home to the coco de mer — an enormous coconut shaped like a female pelvis that grows nowhere else on earth. The tree fascinated early travellers: the nuts floated as far as the Maldives, leading philosophers to believe the tree grew on the ocean floor. Emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg offered two gold florins for a single nut. The valley is also home to vanilla orchids, rare lizards, and three of the world's rarest birds: the Seychelles bulbul, the fruit pigeon, and the black parrot.
Praslin measures just 10.5 by 3.7 kilometres, but packs in beaches that rank among the most beautiful in the world — Anse Lazio and Anse Georgette are regularly cited as the finest. Huge, fantastically shaped granite boulders frame the sand, and the coral reefs offshore teem with hundreds of species of fish. The island is also the natural base for boat trips to the surrounding islands, including La Digue and Curieuse.