Seychelles

10 records, and the only tropical country in the register where the islands had ecosystems worth protecting before they had hotels. Granite rather than coral, forest rather than palm rows, and a conservation record that predates the resorts by decades.

Three of these are reserves that run a hotel to fund the work rather than the other way round. North Island rebuilt an ecosystem the plantation era destroyed and calls it Noah's Ark in its own documents. Cousine takes ten guests on an island with a resident conservation team. Frégate reintroduced species that had gone.

The granite matters practically as well as visually. These are high islands with shade, walking, elevation and weather, which makes a week here structurally different from a week on a flat coral island where the only geography is the beach.

The cost is reach and season. Mahé is the hub and most of these need a second flight or a boat, and the southeast trades between May and September bring wind and seaweed that the photographs omit and the records do not.