Seychelles

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Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles

We arrived at this much anticipated stop on Friday, the 25th of April. Our 9.5 hour excursion was right up there as one of my top picks since we were to board a small boat and head over to Praslin Island a World Heritage Site and often called the Garden of Eden. The first bit of bad news was that for the first time in the trip, we ran into rain. The second shocker we got when we down to the lounge to get our Trip Stickers and found out our Excursion had been cancelled because our small boat had lost an engine and declared unseaworthy. Here it was 8 AM and our ship was not going to sail until 11 PM, and it was raining! We looked into getting another boat to Praslin but the last Inter-island Ferry had just left @ 7:30 AM. Fortunately, there was one Excursion still open, Mahe Highlights, which was a 7.5 hour bus ride around the island so we booked it.

Turned out to be a very good move. Although I'm not a fan of long bus rides, this one stopped every 30 minutes and hit some very interesting spots. The first was a visit to downtown Victoria and the most interesting attraction was the City Market. Here the locals shop for fresh vegetables and fish and this market would quickly closed down in the States! There was an excellent display of whole fish including red snapper, barracuda tuna, etc but there was no refrigeration or even ice? and there were flies all landing on the fish. but there was also a couple of dozen egrets stepping over the fish and picking off the flies. It was quite a sight!

The next stop was the Botanical Gardens and they were truly lush and beautiful. To my pleasant surprise, they had a couple of Coco de Mer trees, which only grows wild on Praslin Island and was one of the reasons I wanted to go there. This tree gives off the biggest nut, up to 60 pounds and looks like 2 nuts fused together that looks like a Woman's butt! They also had some giant 200 year old tortoises that reminded us of the Galapagos Islands. We got a few pictures but the rain kept our picture taking to a minimum.

Next we headed up into the mountains and some great picture stops and the rain started backing off. Interesting country side and the predominant vegetation was Cinnamon Trees although lots of other spice trees as well. Stopped for lunch at a beautiful beach and low and behold, the sun broke out and we had a great swim and got in our best beach combing to date. Nothing spectacular in the way of shells but found a few and the sun really boosted our spirits. Turns out we really got lucky compared to the other excursions that mainly stayed around Victoria and the northern beaches and had nothing but rain. The guide we had also helped make the trip. She had been on a tour when the Tsunami of 2004 hit the Indian Ocean and she was able to point out homes that had been covered with ocean, etc. Island only lost 2 people but had plenty of damage.

Got back to the ship around 4:00 PM, took a shower, attended the 5:00 daily Mass and headed ashore for a local dinner. Downtown Victoria is pretty deserted after 6:00 PM and only has 2 restaurants. We checked them both out and selected the Creole one, (official language of the Seychelles is Creole) and had a great dinner. Mahe really turned out to be our best stop to date.

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