We did have a Holland excursion booked for this day (Sultan’s Dhow Adventure) but after the short snorkeling time that was allowed on one of the Seychelle’s excursions, and checking with the Excursions desk where we were told at the most 30 minutes would be allowed, we decided to cancel. I got onto Viator and found a strictly snorkeling tour, 5 hours, and saved $400 over the Holland tour.
Our Viator tour started at 8am. We managed to get an early tender and got to shore at 7:45. When we walked out of the immigration building someone was holding a sign that read “Read Gail x2”. My maiden name is Reid and my middle name is Gail and I think that Viator might be under my maiden name, but I didn’t remember. Anyway, this young man was taking his group to the Spice farm. He suggested that I walk over to the street gate and … YAY! There stood our guide holding a sign with my name on it. He also had another sign so there were 2 more people from the ship that were going with us. I took his sheet of paper for the others and walked over to the doorway and within a minute 2 ladies said “that’s us.”
We had to walk with the guide down the street and around the corner to meet our driver. The other ladies were Sharnia and Diane. We loaded up in the SUV and started our harrowing drive of 1-1/2 HOURS to the location of the beach where we would board our water transportation.
Now I say it was a harrowing drive for a number of different reasons … the road was 2 lane, but at times the traffic was 4 vehicles wide with clearance between vehicles of mere fractions of an inch or less. Compound this with potholes big enough to swallow children, motorcycles passing on the wrong side of the road and even on the sidewalks in some areas, and an amazing number of public transportation buses that were constantly pulling off to the side of the road to pick up/let off passengers. Then add to the mix, that this was apparently rush hour. And if that isn’t enough, then why don’t we throw in some rain to make it even more exciting. And finally we will add an incredible amount of people lining both sides of the streets and in some areas, livestock tethered along the side of the roads.
The drive took us to the very north end of the island. Along the way, on the 2 lane roads, the towns mostly ran together and occasionally a road would branch off and head another direction. We stopped at a roadside market for the guide to purchase some water, a watermelon, a coconute, a pineapple and some bananas for our snacks.
At some point we found ourselves in a more rural setting with rice paddies that were surrounded by mango trees. There were people working in the fields and I saw a group sitting in a circle pounding the ground with handfuls of grasses – I’m not a farmer but maybe they were separating the rice from the stalks? I’ll have to look it up.
The women here were all dressed very colorfully with long flowing, wraparound coverups and headscarves. With the large Arab population here, we even saw a few women that were totally covered with the exception of their eyes – and they were dressed in all black. I can’t imagine how hot that must be. Numerous women were balancing and carrying items on their heads, and they made it look effortless. The school kids all wore uniforms. The men didn’t have any special type of dress, they seemed to have transitioned to mostly western wear – jeans and t-shirts. Our guide yesterday was wearing a long, ankle length, white, long-sleeved tunic over his clothing.
Women, if you saw them in public, were mostly observed moving around, shopping, or seemed to be task oriented. The men, however, were mostly seen sitting around and visiting with each other. It seemed that we always saw large groups of men gathered together and these groups never included women. The exception would be the men that had a stall in a market area. This behavior was not limited to this country, it has been observed the entire time we’ve been in Africa.
The people that were on the sides of the road would raise a hand and put up a finger or two. This designated that they were asking for a ride and further indicted what direction they wanted to travel. Our ride was “not for hire” as it was a private transport, but if we hadn’t been in the car the driver would be free to pick up anyone he wanted to and help them out.
It seemed like it took us forever to get out of town. It seemed like the traffic jam would never end. We passed houses and markets built right on the sides of the road. The sidewalks looked dangerous and uneven. The roads, filled with potholes, would require that we enter the oncoming lanes to avoid them. This was easy to do when there wasn’t any oncoming traffic, but it was harrowing if there was. Did we slow down? NO! And we would miss the oncoming vehicles by mere centimeters! And tailgating … and braking and stopping so that, I swear, their bumpers touched. I hope I’ve been able to help you envision the traffic.
Our next stop was at a police checkpoint. While we couldn’t understand what was being said, the officer at the passenger window who was talking to the driver and the guide looked like Idi Amin. He was a big man. Driver’s license and papers were offered up, the decals on the front windshield were checked (learned later they were tax stickers), and the officer walked back to his vehicle but continued standing outside. Our guide kept a close watch on him in the side mirror. After a couple of minutes the driver got out of the car and went back to talk to the officer. It looked to me like he was being lectured. The driver appeared nervous and since the officer knew I was watching, I turned around. I’m not sure what transpired, if a bribe was paid, or it was just police being police, but the driver eventually returned to the car and we continued on. The guide and driver seemed to be very happy that we were continuing on.
We eventually turned down a side road. Our next stop was a security gate to pay the entrance fee to the beach area where our small boat was tethered. The beach was white sand with granite rocks interspersed. The rocks had algae growing on them so you could tell that the tide was out. We reached the boat and loaded up for our ride to the marine reserve.
The Mnemba Atoll Marine Reserve is surrounded a private island with gorgeous white sand beaches and what looked like some kind of pine tree. You are only allowed on the island if you are a guest that pays upwards of $1000 per day U.S. I don’t know if it is true or not, but information online says the island is owned by Bill Gates.
We passed another small boat that waved us down. They had two passengers on board and were having engine problems and another boat was on the way to switch out. We hooked them up to us and pulled them for a while until their rescue boat showed up. Then we continued on and anchored in an area that had a lot of small boats and large dive boats. Initially it looked kind of treacherous – disorganized chaos – but as soon as we got in the water we were able to easily swim away from the boat parking lot.
Prison Island was an amazing spot yesterday to snorkel for the coral, today was all about the fish. We have found this at previous “marine reserves”, the coral looks horrible because there are so many people in the water stirring up the sand and it settles on the coral, but there is usually an abundance of fish because fishing isn’t allowed in the marine reserve area.
Below us we saw a bunch of people diving, but trust me, they weren’t see much more than we could see from the surface because the water wasn’t that deep here (maybe 20-25 feet). The schools of fish were incredible. I can’t recall seeing this many fish in one place at the same time before. We snorkeled to the sandbar back and forth a couple of times – probably spending a little over an hour in the water. At one point I spotted an octopus but then a diver spotted it and chased it in under some coral to not be seen again.
I saw the largest group of sargent-major fish that I’ve ever seen swimming together – usually there is just a pair. There were huge schools of convict tang, but that isn’t unusual. There were also large groups of needle fish and two other types of fish swimming in large schools. Once again … having problems getting the underwater pics to load into the blog so I’ll update when I get home and have faster internet.
We were met with fresh fruit when we got back on board. The watermelon and pineapple were great, didn’t much care for the coconut. The trip back to shore always seems like it goes faster. The tide was out from earlier so we had a longer walk back to the car. On the beach we observed a man sitting off to the side beating something with a log. Jeff asked our guide and he said he was “tenderizing am octopus” ☹
You wouldn’t think the ride back would be more memorable than the ride to, but on the way back (the same route) we passed through 3 more (different) checkpoints. Our driver made it through these without any “lectures” and we ended back in the afternoon rush hour traffic which for some reason bothered me a lot more than in the morning.
It had rained while we were away and there were puddles of water “hiding” all the potholes but the driver apparently knew where they all were!
All in all, it was a good snorkel day and we were able to see the country and observe how the people lived.
Later, we learned that the excursions that left from where the ship was anchored, had a lot of rain and the snorkeling wasn’t good in the area. We were lucky!
The following picture is cloves being dried on the side of the road.
