Blogs from Mahé, Seychelles, Africa - page 11

Landing in Seychelles is fab, flying in low over the water, islands all around. I had this sense of Magnum PI the whole time. Strange. Would hate to think Magnum PI was formative for me, but i guess there were a number of monday evening TV dinners watching it when i grew up. The international airport represents one half of Seychelles - small and modest. The other side (or other half) lives a different life. For tourists, or semi-permanent residents, life is large, with yachts, private islands, helicopters, and luxury. I hope they keep the 'small' Seychelles - the landscape is more than enough, and the trappings of the mega-wealthy are not necessary to enjoy the country. Having said this, it's not cheap to visit - a fair distance from most places, and food and everything ... read more

This entry is one of love, romance and much more. I would like first to thank Jacqueline and Faith who made all this possible, you are both wonderful! Seychelles, this is a place of the wildest dreams. I've been waiting years to come here...right time, right place, right company. This is our first romantic holidays with Ma'ri...not that the one last month was not romantic...but this one is "us time"... The action place is a beach villa at the Banyan Tree...secluded place on Mahe Island. Our villa is amazing. We managed to go out the first day for a dream spa session...the second day we escaped for 2 dives out of Victoria...and today... we did escape...for breakfast! Between the private access to the beach, the private pool and the outside jacuzzi...it's full time spoiling. And ... read more

July 25 - July 31 Seychelles Following our relatively painless 4 hour flight from Johannesburg we arrived late evening in the Seychelles, a group of tropical islands in the Indian Ocean south of Dubai and between India and Africa. This is a complicated and expensive place to get to if you are not in the area and are coming just for a holiday in Seychelles. This is a very small country of about 84,000 people total. We are booked into the Le Meridien Barbarons for the next six nights for some relaxing in the sun. Sun ??? What is that ??? We didn’t see the sun for more than five minutes at a time for the entire 6 days except the day we left !! The weather was terrible, period. Wind, rain, rough seas, and cloudy ... read more

8th June: Well where to start on what I've been up to? A couple of weeks a go I went over to curiese island which is off of Praslin, four of us and a few staff went and it has a high population of indigenous giant turtles, about 150 apparently although I didn't count them personally - the humans on the island number roughly 10 though so they are pretty outnumbered. We stayed in a lovely little cottage right on the beach with a large veranda which you could just laze about on and watch the sunset each day. It was a lot more relaxed than back on main base and although we were doing work each day in between invert surveying (worms, shells, urchins, and sea stars) and turtle snorkels it had a holiday atmosphere ... read more

9th May: Hello managed to get back on a computer again today and a pretty eventful week it has been too. Firstly as previously mentioned there is a bit of a rat problem in our dorms and in light of this our health and safety director on base has setup "Rat Extermination Team Alpha" to try and combat the problem. This team of brave men and women were charged with dealing with the conquest of our bedrooms by the evil four legged rodents. Early results were promising and we managed to capture two rats, drown one rat and drew first blood on a forth. There were casalties on both sides though, one of the girls in our dorm had one scuttle over the window sill and one of our team Ryan "Rhino" Stapleton actually woke up ... read more