First off, we had a formal night!
Then we had a game show night … Team Bar rocked it, including our custom t-shirts and favorite bar staff!
As soon as I found out that Jordan was canceled and we were getting a full first day in the Seychelles instead of arriving at 4pm, I scoured Viator for a tour. I found a half day snorkel tour and booked it, with Pat and Cyndi joining us. We were supposed to be picked up at 9 and they had asked that we let the reception know their tag number so they could park in the lot. Well, never figured that part out, so we just walked to the taxi area and waited. I did have their car tag numbers to we made a cursory tour of the parking lot but didn’t find them. Pat tried to call on What’s App but they didn’t answer. A taxi driver came up to us and when I told him we’d already paid for a tour but couldn’t find our driver he offered to call for us. I gave him the number and our guide, Kevin, answered to phone. Kevin had managed to park in the lot by the ship with the buses, so he pulled the car around and we crammed ourselves into a small 5 seater car. I had been told that we would be able to snorkel at 3 different locations.
Packed into the car like a bunch of sardines, we headed out for our first stop – Beau Vallon. It is a very wide, beautiful beach with low surf but no coral. We opted to continue on to the next stop. The entire time that we are driving Kevin is giving us continuous commentary on everything Seychelles. We learned about the government, taxes, school, foreign investments, road construction, cost of living … .you get the idea. He was very informative.
The majority of the roads were two lane, and unlike a lot of the islands that we’ve visited, this one had very few motorcycles or scooters. The roads were twisty and steep as we made our way up the mountain. Mahe, the main Seychelles island, is a big block of granite. Some of the other islands are also granite but a few are atolls, or coral islands. So, back to twisting and curving and blind corners and we eventually make it to an overlook point where we can look down over the harbor and marina. It was a beautiful view and I’ve had Pat and Cyndi share a few of their pictures because our phones were already in our underwater cases.
Standing on the side of the road, besides a spectacular view, I wondered if people that live on a tropical island ever get tired of the lush greenery, the sporadic daily rainfall, the humidity … there didn’t appear to be air conditioning of the mechanical kind in the homes that we were passing.
We were standing on the side of the road looking down and I stepped onto the grass and it wasn’t firm underneath, it was squishy. I was a good 2 feet away from the edge where it dropped off but it was still a very unsettling feeling. When I looked down I noticed something in the grass that looked out of place. I started to reach down and inspect it closer and Kevin saw what I was doing and picked up the object I had been looking at. In the grass it looked like the pointy bottom end of an ice cream cone that was a whitish color. What Kevin pulled out of the grass was one of the biggest snails I’ve ever seen. We passed it around, took a few pictures and returned it to the grass. When I looked up at the sky I was surprised to see a large bat flying. Kevin said it was a fruit bat – or a flying fox. I’d forgotten when I checked out the restaurant menus when I was doing pre-trip research, that flying fox was on some of the menus! Hard pass! Kevin said that, while they are mainly nocturnal, some have taken to feeding during the day because they are competing for the food supply.
Now we continue back down the mountain and eventually make it to the next beach. This one was Anse Royale beach. Gorgeous white powdery sand, a little wave action, but in a protected bay. The coral on the sides of the bay had been marked so that boats wouldn’t venture into those areas and it was safe for swimmers or snorkelers.
We unloaded our snorkel gear and headed for the beach. Cyndi and Pat had borrowed snorkel gear from Kevin and were getting situated while Jeff and I just got right in the water and headed out. The wave action and swimmers had covered the coral close to shore with a fine layer of white sand but further out the coral looked healthier and the fish more plentiful.
The above and below pics are fruit bats … flying during the day!
Jeff and I had ventured pretty far out and when we looked back to check on Pat and Cyndi, I noticed that they were staying close to shore. We went back to check on them and Pat’s fins were too small and Jeff wasn’t wearing his safety vest so I offered it up to Cyndi and we snorkeled some more. We were probably in the water for an hour at this location and had seen all there was to see so we dried off, loaded up the car and headed to the next location.
Our next stop was Anse Soleil. While there wasn’t much coral at this location, but it was definitely a photo opportunity stop. This location had the iconic granite boulders on the beach and a lot of wave action. There was a small granite outcropping offshore that Jeff and I headed out toward. We never made it that far because the currents were too strong and hitting us head on. We changed directions and headed into a watery opening between a couple of huge granite boulders. While there were some fish in this protected area, the strong current threatened to trap us in this area and I wasn’t looking forward to being smashed into the rocks. We instead, made our way back to the beach and spent some time taking some more pictures from the beach.
During our travels all over the island with Kevin today, we passed a location where they were in the process of building a 5 star resort on the beach. On the beach side was the skeletal beginnings of a large resort. Across the street was a multi storied, multiple structures, maybe 5 stories, being built on cleared land. Kevin said that the resorts have to provide housing for the workers that they bring into the country because the island doesn’t have enough manpower to staff the resorts (or not enough people who want to work – his words, not mine).
Our path back to the ship included the obligatory stop at an artist’s village, which was graciously passed on, and a drive through the marina. We also drove past the airport and encountered the only 4 lane road that we’d seen all day. This one actually had traffic lights on it instead of round abouts.
The Seychelles have been on my bucket list since I saw the famous picture of the huge granite boulders on the white sand beaches with the gorgeous turquoise water. Day one in this tropical paradise did not disappoint.
We headed back to the ship to drop off our gear and immediately went back out again with destination grocery store. Why? Because we haven’t checked for Dr Pepper lately and that’s one of my favorite things to do … see what they have and how expensive everything is. We picked up some crunches for Jeff and some laundry soap for our favorite bartender, Grace. There was a definite lack of soda pop in the store and definitely no Dr. Pepper.
Day one in paradise complete!