Seychelles - Mahe

One thing about modern travel is that you can get on a plane and end up in a completely different country and culture. We flew from Tirana in Albania to Dubai for a one-night stopover. We had the family from hell behind us on the plane. There were four kids and they screamed, banged the seats and raced up and down the aisles and the parents did nothing about it!

We overnighted in a hotel near the airport then got back on another plane the next day and flew to the Seychelles for some snorkelling on the way home.

We didn't really know what to expect. Seychelles' economy is very tourist-driven so we thought we'd find the people jaded and unfriendly but we were so wrong. It only took a short time for us to realise that the Seychelles has wonderful people. They are so laid back and so friendly! 

The Seychelles has a short but very interesting history. It has never been inhabited by indigenous people. The islands were first seen in 1503 by Vasco de Gama but it would be another century before anyone set foot on them. The Seychelles became an important port for slave traders needing to restock food and water and repair their ships. Slaves were often traded to pay for goods. It’s estimated that around 115,200 people were trafficked through here to Mauritius and Réunion between 1770 and 1810.

Over the years the islands were claimed by the French then the English, with both countries leaving their stamp on the language and culture.

Today, the Seychellois (the people of Seychelles) are a mix of the descendants of African slaves and French colonisers with Indian and Chinese rounding out the mix. The wonderful result is called creole, the amazing, fun and easy-going people we meet today.

Creole has become a language (a mix of French and African languages), a style of food (coconut curries, spices without being spicy, Indian-style lentils and a variety of fruit-based chutneys) and a culture. It has taken the best from a number of cultures and made a new unique one. We soon learned to love everything about it!

Our first week would be on the main island of Mahe where most of the population live. We rented a car and found the narrow roads with car-wrecking gutters a bit tricky but we had just had five weeks of practice driving on tricky roads in Albania so it was all ok.

We stayed at the small hotel run by a friend of a friend and it was perfect. A small beach was nearby and it was drop-dead gorgeous. Most of the Seychelles' islands are granite and these huge boulders look really cool on the beaches.

We had amazing views over the ocean and watched some incredible sunsets from our balcony.

Like many countries, the Seychelles has to import labour to help with the tourism industry. We met many wonderful people from the Indian sub-continent here.

We explored as much of the island as we could in a week, working around doing nothing strenuous in the hottest part of the days. First up was a hike to a beach in the National Park. We went early to avoid the worst of the heat but I still struggled a bit. 

The lush greenery was amazing. Apparently they'd had a lot of rain in recent months.

Almost nothing but vivid blues and greens.

The beach was stunning. A simple beach cafe sold curries and rice but we were too early for this sadly. I had a lovely swim and subsequently coped much better with the heat on our walk back.

We had bought some snorkels and masks and jumped into the beach near our hotel. On our first swim we saw a turtle, heaps of fish and these elegant eagle rays.

There were some big schools of small fish.

Sadly, a lot of the Seychelles' coral has died due to coral bleaching in recent years. I had read about what is supposed to be the best location on the island for snorkelling so we headed there. Old ruined buildings were scattered along the road in. The lush rainforest immediately tried to claim them.

Crabs and their holes were everywhere.

These gorgeous red birds, that look very much like a red sparrow, are called the red fody or Madagascar fody.

Again, the beach was stunning!

A park ranger happened to be there and she explained that the beach was shallow for a long way. She wasn't wrong. It must have taken us an hour just to get out to where the interesting rocks and fish were. During that hour we snorkelled over lots of dead coral so I suspect the info I had read that said how good this spot was for snorkelling might have been written before the coral bleaching.

Some rocks in the bay were home to young sea birds that baked in the sun.

On the way we found this tiny beach. There was nobody around and we had it all to ourselves. It was good to get out of the water for a bit of a rest. Amazingly, a freshwater creek ran down the beach to the sea and it was perfectly drinkable. We rested up in the shade on our own gorgeous little private beach then continued on.

I think this is a striped snake-eel. Apparently they like to be half hidden like this.

The granite boulders make for fun snorkelling!

Batfish.

These different type of batfish were huge and there were many of them!

There were heaps of these colourful guys.

By now we had been out in the water for about two hours and we were getting tired. We also realised that we hadn't put sunscreen on. We pulled back into "our" secret beach on the way back for another drink and a rest in the shade.

It took us nearly another hour to return to where we started. On the way we saw a few of these weird clusters of shells. I know that an octopus can cover itself with shells to hide from predators and I could see sucker-type things underneath but they didn't look like octopus suckers. I did some research and I think they're a type of anemone that covers itself with shells at low tide to protect itself from the sun. Amazing!

We had to walk the last bit as the water was so shallow. Something cut John's foot a bit but it wasn't too bad.

By now we were starving so we headed to the nearest town. A man heard us saying that we were looking for food and he asked us if we would like a beach bbq, It turned out that he ran a tour boat and had just fed his clients and we could have what was left - for a price. It sounds terrible that we ate someone else's leftovers but it was absolutely delicious! John had fish, I had chicken and it was all served with a simple salad on the beach. It was wonderful!

We sat at a table and chairs on a gorgeous beach and had wonderful food!

Navigating our way back. You've got to love a country that has a road called "No Worries" Rd!

We saw churches in most towns. The walls were often fully ventilated to let breezes through. It must be pretty hot here sometimes!

There were a couple of restaurants nearby that we ate at. One was a very overpriced creole buffet but at both places we watched some amazing sunsets. What is it about sunsets in the tropics? Every one we saw was stunning!

We snorkelled a few times at our local beach. There were hundreds of these small fish in very shallow water.

In one area the water was thick with millions of tiny plankton-like creatures. It was like swimming through soup! You can see them against John's dark rashie.

I'm really going to have to limit the number of sunset pics in here!

Mahe is the largest of the Seychelles islands, but it's still not that big. One day we drove around most of the island and it took maybe 2.5 hours, although the narrow roads were often busy and were slow going. We passed many beautiful beaches on the way.

One stop was the Jardin du Roi. This 170 year old spice garden contains all sorts of interesting spice plants, most of which are not native to the Seychelles. We saw cinnamon trees, nutmeg trees, pepper plants and the famous coco de mer. This rare tree is only found on certain Seychelles islands. The nut of the coco de mer is the largest seed in the plant kingdom and is oddly shaped, being the shape and size of a woman's buttocks on one side, and a woman's belly and thighs on the other side.

The front side.

The back side (pun intended!).

Red fody in the garden.

Much to our surprise, they had giant tortoises here! These live on a number of Seychelles islands and this particular species is only found in the Seychelles. They were very tame.

We saw a group of local kids all dressed up with flowers in their hair. We later heard some singing and found this. Christianity is clearly alive and well here!

Next stop was a historical plantation house called Domaine de Val des Pres, built in 1870 during the British Colonial period. There is supposed to be a museum here about the history of slave trading but we never found it. Why? Because this property happened to be the venue for a day of the month-long Creole Festival that was happening at various locations around the island and around the country. We targeted coming here on this day so we could see the festival.

The grand house showed none of its sad history. Instead it was surrounded by merriment and a real party atmosphere was prevalent.

Ladies sold crafts under the wide verandahs.

Plantation shutters were essential. I simply can't imagine what it must have been like for English people to live here without aircon!

Local stalls, mostly selling food and drinks, were set up in the grounds. One guy had a game where you had to throw hoops over bottles of drink. The guy in the blue t-shirt kept buying more and more rings until he won all the alcohol he was after. I suspect it might have been cheaper to just buy the bottles from a shop.

Large pavilions were decked out for festivity. A band was playing at one end and people danced the afternoon away inside.

From what I could learn, this type of dancing is called kanmtole. This is the creole version of the dances that the colonists used to do. 

Many people wore very bright clothes.

The event finished at 6pm and, as the afternoon wore on, the dance floor got more and more crowded. John and I had a dance and the sweat just poured off us. The Seychellois can really dance but nobody made fun of our feeble attempts :)

We bought curries from food stalls and ate them on the beach, chatting with families who were picnicking there. We then headed home, hot and tired but happy.

That night (it was Saturday night), a huge party happened somewhere near us. We had put up with barking dogs for all the previous nights but this one took the cake. Not only was the music loud but the dogs all barked at the music as well....

Sundays seem to be family days at the beach. We snorkelled from our local beach around to the next one, called Sunset Beach, and it was lovely to see groups of people out having a good time. 

We had fun watching this group play tug-of-war. (The women won.)

The beach was really lovely.

We finished the day with another drop-dead-gorgeous sunset.

We saw fruit bats everywhere. Some flew really close to our balcony. They were more active in the evenings but we could always see some during the day too. They were quite interesting to watch.

That night we drove to Beau Vallon, a popular town on a beach a few kilometres from where we were staying. We explored the area a bit and ended up at a famous beachside pub called the "Beach Shak". It was packed. It was really hard to order anything but eventually we ordered food and drinks. A band was playing and people were really getting into it. The Seychellois music was great! After a while, a young woman who had been dancing a lot dragged me up. She had long black dreadlocks and looked amazing in a little white dress and matching white smile of perfect teeth. Luckily, she got me up just as the music switched from local to western. I could dance to that at least, haha. At one stage her equally dreadlocked brother joined us. I was the only tourist on the floor. There weren't many tourists in the place at all, and everyone was really friendly. After a few songs the music switched back to local music and my new friend tried to teach me how to dance Seychellois style. Basically it involved gyrating your bum continually while moving your feet in complicated dance steps. There was no way I could coordinate all that! It was a truly wonderful evening, even if my clothes were sodden with sweat.

The capital city of the Seychelles is called Victoria. There's a famous creole restaurant there called Marie-Antoinette. It's located in another old plantation house and Henry Stanley is reputed to have stayed there while he waited for the boat to take him back to England so he could tell everyone that he found David Livingstone (as in "Dr Livingstone, I presume?"). The restaurant was founded in 1972 and is now a national monument.

We had a lovely dinner here one night. I have very happy memories of driving home afterwards. We had the aircon off (a rare treat!), the windows down and the warm air blew gently in our faces. John had one arm out of the window, savouring the night air. When we passed likely looking culprits walking on the narrow roads he would call out, "Egghhhh, kadou?" (Whassup?) in a Seychellois accent. (These are the only Seychellois words we've learnt that aren't French-based.) It was very funny.

On our last day we explored Victoria. There is a strong Indian community here and there's a gorgeous Hindu temple.

The famous clock tower was erected in memory of Queen Victoria, shortly after her death.

We were thrilled with our stay on Mahe. Ok, so the heat kept us indoors a lot and the coral bleaching was disappointing but the people were amazing and the culture was so interesting!

We are looking forward to exploring this further on two more islands over the next week.

Hooroo!
Heather and John