Visit the Fascinating Curieuse Island

The name of the Curieuse Island was derived from the ship called La Curieuse carrying a team of explorers initially discovering the Curieuse Island in 1786. The Island is part the Indian Ocean Inner Island group of Seychelles. The island covers an area of about 1 sq.mile only but despite its size, a variety of vegetation and trees grow here which include Palms, Mangroves and Takamaka trees. To start your exciting journey, you can book an affordable cheap flights to Seychelles with us.

Due to the rich red colored dirt, the Island was once called Ile Rouge and was also home to a leper-colony formed in 1833 and remained active till 1965. While you are here you can still see the colony’s remains and the Anse St. Joseph’s former residence who was a leading physician. The residence is now a museum and an educational center as well for the tourists.

Curieuse Island is also home to the Seychelles center for Marine Technology which is a reserve and the marine parks authority. Work on an interesting project involving giant tortoises is also going on in which they are breeding them in captivity and then reintroducing to various other local islands. Due to these efforts about 500 Aldabra-Giant-Tortoises now live in the island and among them 300 have been put back into the wild. The island is also popular for being a nesting area for different kind of land species, sea-birds like the Seychelles Black Parrot which is rare to see.

It’s recommended to disembark on the Baie Laraie Coast while you are on your way to the Curieuse Marine National Park because the waters here are perfect for snorkeling and seeing the hump head parrotfish large populations reaching up to 3 feet in length. Giant Tortoises can also be seen wandering around the ranger station and the remains of the creole colonial architecture which are beautifully blended into the palms and mangroves from former leper-colony.

There isn’t any accommodation in the Curieuse Island itself therefore the closest you can get to an accommodation is in the neighboring island of Preslin which is not far. Same is the case if you want to eat or dine as Preslin is again the closest place you can go for it.

Curieuse Island’s weather the year around is consistent with average temperatures staying in range of 80 degrees with some cooler breezes for sometime which again act as a stabilizer to the region’s humidity. From November till March is the rainy season there but it doesn’t rains all the time in the island. One of the most popular activities is bird-watching, trekking and fishing.