Sorry about the repeat of one picture in the previous post!
November 29, 2011
A Seychelles Adventure
Seychela adventure…
Now cu’mon, you didn’t think I was going to leave without having an adventure did you?? I HOPE NOT!
A few friends of mine and I decided we wanted to see the national land and sea park which is famous here in Seychelles. We start work earlier so we can have more time during our break for the day to enjoy the park. We start off walking in the direction that we think the ferry leaves from…stop to ask the port agent and find ourselves around the corner at the marina only to find out that reservations have to be made one day in advance and that the boats don’t run on Sunday (being an island girl-I definitely should have known that)-but no fear, I found us another way. One thing you learn traveling all these places is that you won’t know until you ask… So that’s what we did, after a few across the water exchanged in creole, a man named michelle comes over and offers to take us for 100 euros! (My Chinese bargaining skills seem to really be coming in handy these days) of coruse we bargained down much lower and in US dollars. “A few of my friends are coming along, you don’t mind do you?” He says, “of course not” I say-being my trustworthy adventuresome self.
Ten minutes later we’re on the boat sailing away saying goodbye to The World
Before....
Michele and his friends Emmanuel and Maxwell are great tour guides on our way to the park…a few pictures below…please note-beauty is only captured at about 15% here…so use your imagination, because it was breathtaking.
About twenty minutes in…we a re crusing along, the water is beautiful…comparable to Exuma if you’ve ever been there, and it’s low tide so very shallow and you can see straight to the bottom. So what did I do? Ask the captain to stop so I could jump in! It was so refreshing, except for when they started to drive away as a joke...that was a little scary, I must admit. Unfortunately-no pictures of that yet, they were taken on a friends camera.
We get to the national park and anchor close to a sand bar where we leave our tour guides and start our adventure…
Upon arriving on the sand bar, one of the girls says “you know…we left all of our belongings on the boat, what if they just drive away?”… I figured, we’d come this far… if they’re gonna steal them, well they’re gonna steal them…but I deem myself as a pretty good judge of character, and I know my island people. So off I go, with my Swedish goggles and leave the others on the beach sunbathing…my first encounter with a huge sting ray scared me a little, so I thought a bit of rock climbing might be a better strategy.
The tortious...
As you can see from the pictures, all the islands are very mountainous. I climbed a few here and there…took a few pictures, then moved on to what I thought to be a public national park. We walk through and up some stairs next to a little house with some dogs on the porch… there’s a sign kari reads “please do not feed to tortoises”- please do not feed the tortoises-what tortoises? Then we look around, and what we thought to be large rocks were tortoises!! It was really cool…and like a bunch of girls, we’re laughing, screaming, taking photos until we hear a loud voice “hey!” “hey!” the others start running…but I stick around, wanting to see where and who the voice was coming from. As I turn around an old british man walks out in his yellow bikini bottom and yells at me for being on his private property without paying the tax…
Paying the tax I say, I thought this was a national park. Well, apparently it’s not…and there’s a tax…and unbeknownst to me, our boat captain told the ocean patrol that we were locals, and that I was his sister! See the resemblance…
After...
So we evaded the taxes…but still got yelled at by an old man in the process-but hey, what’s an adventure without an old british yellow bikini wearing man right?-oh and tortoises, they were pretty cool too. Needless to say, it was a pretty awesome afternoon-working 10 hours days, 7 days a week-totally worth it for a Sunday afternoon like this one!
Bon voyage! The ship is now in expedition mode until Dec 14th, more stories to come!
Seychelles FINALLY
Arriving into Seychelles
I now know how the guy in castaway must have felt when he got stuck on that island…except I got stuck on a ship! Sailing was nice for a few days-but then when you start to feel sick from all the recycled air along with the constant motion from wind and rough waters, it’s not so glorious anymore. The dolphins held me over for a little bit-but they started to wear off the last few days.
Finally, we arrive on the main island in Seychelles Mahe. It’s a country of about 80,000 with 115 different islands-also the home of the new royal couples honeymoon J Apparently there was a shark attack here a few months back- a great white that killed a honeymooning couple, so now all of a sudden everyone thinks they will get attacked by a shark I find that interesting…when there is a car crash, people don’t stop driving around? Anyways…needless to say, of course I still planned to go swimming.
As soon as we get in people start leaving the ship in packs… I’m itching to go but have to wait for my break at 14:00. Finally, I get outside-on land, that isn’t moving! We took a walk into town, nothing special-just took in the scenary. It reminds me a lot of home-of downtown Nassau, the people, the smells, the churchs, the traffic, the back yard bbq’s. It’s nice-also I blend in a little more-except for the fact that I don’t speak Creole.
It's the simple things in life... Pirates?
AT SEA
Today was an extremely hectic day at work…and at sea. I am working in Food and Beverage Administratio right now, and basically it’s the job where you manage everybody and everything. I like it a lot, and enjoy being really busy all the time, but today, was just crazy! Nothing went as planned and on top of that it was really rough so even when you got to sit/stand still, you were still moving lol.
By the time I got to my break...I only had 2 horus before I had to be back for the evening shift…but the great thing (for me) about living on a ship is that we are always completely surrounded by water. I opted to take my short nap outside on the crew sundeck in the breeze and fresh air. As I was lying there, not sleeping of course, I decided to sit at the front and just watch the ocean…a few minutes in, I saw what I first jumped to think “sharks!” haha…obviously they weren’t sharks because they were jumping high out of the water, but they were a huge family of dolphins, about 15 of them racing with the boat. It was amazing…they were playing in the wake, and with each other swimming under the bow of the boat. After that moment, today became the say I saw wild dolphins…instead of the day I worked 13 hours J oh the simple things
Even though the sea days aren’t the greatest…it gives the crew time to hang out on the sun deck…with our harmed gunman of course J
Entering the Suez canal
Pirates?
On our journey from Haifa, Israel to Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles… we are under 24/7 pirate watch as we are crossing the Suez Canal, Red sea and The Gulf of Aden to get into the Indian Ocean. The ship is under high security with special officers onboard specifically armed with weapons and other ‘pirate fighting’ items. It’s actually kind of fun you know…living under pirate watch. We had a huge meeting with all the crew going over what to do if an attack happens…what to look for, etc etc and of course not to try to take pictures when we’re under attack-apparently people do that, I would probably be one of them lol. They say it’s unlikely, which it is probably is…but hey, the unlikely can happen. They even created dummies all around the ship to ward off any oncoming vessels as you can see below in this picture…
Beautiful sunset over the Red Sea
November 28, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)