St Helena

The Mantis St Helena hotel has 30 rooms in 3 separate room types. The 22 Contemporary Rooms are located in a newly constructed building linked to the original buildings by a terrace. The 3 Heritage Rooms are in the historic original buildings, together with 3 of the 5 Heritage Suites (1-3 Main Street). The remaining 2 Heritage Suites are located in the outside ‘Cottage’ (the original servants’ quarters and kitchen).  All rooms have en-suite bathrooms, air-conditioning, flat screen TV, tea/coffee making facilities, vanity dresser with international plugs, USB charger and laundry service.

The hotel has a large restaurant, cocktail bar, guest lounge and two spacious outdoor terraces.  Meals are a delicious blend of British, Malay and Chinese influences that makes liberal use of fish, spices and curries using local ingredients where possible. The culinary team is headed by experienced executive chef Roy MacAskill, while the restaurant itself can seat 60 in the dining rooms and 40 on the terraced areas. The hotels cocktail bar is set on the site of the town’s original ‘watering hole’ dating back to 1645 and is very popular with locals, offering locally distilled spirits & wines and the largest wine selection on the island, in addition to speciality cocktails.

Being a volcanic Island, St Helena offers a variety of dive sites catering for all levels of recreational diving, with Caves, Archway’s and reef like structures that welcome  an abundance of marine life, including 50 endemic species to the Island. These include, the St Helena Needle Fish, St Helena Butterfly, Hog Fish, also Nudibranch’s, such as The Tamaja, and Bornella to name a few.

There are 7 wrecks within a 5-10 min boat ride, however 3 wrecks requires an Advanced or higher qualification due to their depths ranging from 24 – 35m. On many of the general Dive sites Chilean Devil Rays are a popular sighting, along with Green and Hawksbill turtles. En-route to these dive sites you can encounter the resident 500-600 Pan-tropical Dolphins.

January each year is the beginning of the whale shark season, with the opportunity of snorkeling with 30 – 40+ whale sharks, this amazing congregation of adult female and male whale sharks usually occurs around mid – end of January and until April each year.