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
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.
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…
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!
