EXPLORING THE PARADISE OF PRASLIN AND LA DIGUE

WEATHER: Rainy, sun, overcast, cloudy, sun

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: A visit to Anse Source D’Argent aka MOST BEAUTIFUL BEACH IN THE WORLD!!

BUMMER OF THE DAY: It rained on and off

BUYS OF THE DAY: A Coco der Mer bracelet

WORD OF THE DAY: Just stunning

Today is the day I get out and about and see some of the other islands that the Seychelles has to offer.  It is also the day that I am changing hotels, so with all my bags packed last night, they are going to be delivered to my room at the new hotel sometime during the day, so I have left 3 bags – hopefully all three make it okay.  Based on that fact, I have taken my ‘spare’ money kitty with me (approx. 1800USD cash) as well as my passport in case something does go astray.

I was up at 5am and it was still dark, I was showered and dressed and up at reception to pay my bill at 5.45am and to get a light breakfast before my pickup at 6.10am. The sun had just risen behind me just before 6am, so I was able to snap some last photos of this pretty cool resort just before my transfer arrived. 

We had a few pick-ups along the way to the port.  I got a look at the Hilton, which looks like any tropical Hilton, with thatched roof reception, looks exactly like the one in Fiji and Tahiti.  That’s the thing staying with big chains sometimes, you could be anywhere in the world when you stay in one, but on the upside you know what you are going to get as they are all formatted – so it depends on which way you look at things.  So we collected a German and French couple here.  The other 2 properties were small B&B’s and there seems to be a lot of them around.  They were 2 groups of French ladies, so all up we had a full 22 seater bus and then off for the 20 minute drive to port to catch our ferry to our first island Praslin (said Pralin).

There are 2 main companies in the Seychelles.  Creole Travel Services and my company Masons.  As we pulled into port there were at least another 6 Mason vans, cars and buses mixed in with Creole’s own vehicles.  As it is a local ferry, there were also people getting dropped off with boxes of stuff, including a TV, a vacuum cleaner, an air-conditioning unit and all sorts of other stuff.  I bet they hate sharing this ferry with the tourists.   So it was busy.  The ferry wasn’t letting people on yet, so we were all milling around till 7am when they pulled up the step bridge and they let us on.  We had been given a duplicate ticket, so as we boarded they took the top copy and the bottom copy we had to show again to get upstairs and to find a seat.  There was no seat allocation.  I decided to sit right up the back, in the last seat, on the left hand side hugging the wharf.  I was in a row of 4 seats and an Asian man came and sat on the last seat.  As we were waiting, it started to drizzle slightly, and besides me getting a little damp a beautiful rainbow materialized over the mountains.  I’m telling this has to be some form of good travel omen right!  So at 7.30am, the engines roared to life, we had around 200 people minimum on board and we motored out of Mahe port.  It was still overcast and the water from the last shower decided to come off the ferry’s roof and got me wet and the Asian man decided with the drizzle blowing in and now getting wet from a stream of water off the roof, was too much and he moved seats, which was good, so I could move to the middle seat and get the whole row to myself and be out of the way of the water as it drained.  It is only water after all.  I had bought my IPod and not knowing what the weather was going to be like I bought an Elmo snap lock bag to put it in if the weather turned to crap and I had a plastic bag for my camera.  One needs to protect the gadgets.  As we cleared the harbor, Adele was right and the waves turned and they were vicious.  The ferry ride was an hour and 15 minutes and they had 2 toilets on the upper deck and trust me they got a workout.  People we walking around the deck, I think most of them were just trying for fresh air to combat the seasickness, but they were getting rolled around like rag dolls, walking around like they were drunk.  It was comical to see them holding on for dear life, knees bent, waiting for the wave to subside and trying to get in a few more steps before the next roll came.  I do feel sorry for people who get seasick, I’ve only have had it once, and it is a horrible feeling. 

8.45am got us pulling into Praslin, and there were a lot of green faces all looking a little bewildered.  Spew bags were getting deposited in bins as people disembarked.  Poor bastards, what a terrible way to start the day.  The wharf itself is tiny and there was an organized chaos as all 200 people got off to try and find their tour groups for the day.  Masons were all over it though and had us all standing in groups, getting double checked off lists and then introduced to our guide for the day, Marie Lisa.  I was with a group of 2 Asian parties, the German couple, a Spanish couple and 2 French couples.  As we pulled off the busy little wharf it turned out this was going to be a tri-lingual tour with French, Spanish and English as the languages.  I guess that has to be expected with such diverse tourists visiting an island in the middle of nowhere.  Marie Lisa was doing a great job; it can’t be easy doing a trilingual tour.

Our first stop was the Valle De Mai National Park.  This is the home to the world’s largest nut the Coco de Mer, which is in the shape of a woman’s pelvis.  It is quite an erotic looking nut, and all the promotion of the nut is based on that fact.  A very sensual nut I have to say!  As all groups were also visiting the Valley it was a little bit of a shit fight when we got there, but we weren’t the first group to arrive and we weren’t the last, so we just needed some time for the groups to spread out a little and then we were able to make our way into the Valley.  It had just started to rain as we got in, but most of the palms were keeping us mostly dry as we continued in.  It was officially declared a nature reserve on 18 April 1966. It consists of a well-preserved palm forest made up of the Coco de Mer, as well as five other palms. The Coco de Mer has the largest seeds of any plant in the world; the leaves growing up to 6 m wide and 14 m long.  The tree grows to 25–34 m tall and the leaves are fan-shaped, 7–10 m long and 4.5 m wide.  There are 2 separate trees with male and female plants. The male flowers are up to 1 m long. The mature fruit is 40–50 cm in diameter and weighs 15–30 kg, and contains the largest seed in the plant kingdom and the fruit requires 6–7 years to mature and a further two years to germinate.  The Coco de Mer holds three botanical records; the largest fruit so far recorded weighed in at 42 kg; the mature seeds weighing up to 17.6 kg are the worlds heaviest; and the female flowers are the largest of any palm.  Pretty interesting stuff considering it is a palm tree after all.  It is hard to tell you the size of the fronds, I rekon if one fell off it could well possible kill a small child – they are massive. 

As we walked through the palm forest the rain was getting heavier, so after seeing really what we came to see, the Coco de Mer nuts on the trees, male and female varieties, we decided to cut the tour a little short and head back for some shelter.  It was getting quite heavy and the Asian contingent and I had umbrella’s the rest had nothing to protect them, the poor buggers.  So we killed some time at the visitor center as we waited for our bus to return.  This is where I bought a small bracelet of a Coco De Mer with a few beads either side.  I didn’t want to go too crazy with the nut, as I think I would feel subconscious of wearing something that had more than one nut on it, as it really does look like a woman’s pelvis and people who don’t know what it is might think I was some sexual freak – it really does, wait till you see it.  I thought I went a little crazy at the shop, well the Asian groups, both of them, bought an actual Coco de Mer nut to take home for the grand cost of 245AUD.  As they are a protected plant, you need to get a special certificate for the nut to say you bought it and didn’t just help yourself and I guess it is one of those ‘one of a kind’ purchases you just won’t get anywhere else I suppose.  When you get home where the hell do you put it?  It really does look like a woman’s pelvis, so I am sure the options would have limits.  Anyway, the money goes back into the national park, so each to their own purchases.

As we all piled into the bus for a 20 minute ride to Anse Lazio Beach, which has been voted as one of the top ten beaches in the world, the sun decided to make an appearance for us.  So we just hoped it held out for the next hour while we got some decent beach time in.  Praslin is also very lush and mountainous and after travelling pretty much half way around the island, it got us to the tip and the beach.  We only got 45 minutes here, our main beach stop was going to be on La Digue, but it was long enough for people to have a swim and get some photos.  It was a beautiful spot, the colour of the water is so blue, and there are different hues it is just stunning.  The sand is a fine, fine white sand and it was just amazing.  The sun was also out most of the time, which helps accentuate the colours of the water and I got some great photos.  This was also the beach that a shark had killed someone a month ago, so they have now installed a shark net around the main section of the beach, so people can swim with re-assurances that there will be no shark sneaking up on them.  Are they 100% safe those nets?  I was happy to just dunk my feet in as I walked the length of the beach and back again.

All back in the bus again at 11am for the journey back to the port to catch the 11.45am ferry to La Digue.  This ferry journey was only 15 minutes, so shorter compared to the last one, but just as rough as soon as we left Praslin Harbour.  It was now overcast with patches of sun and showers which I can handle; it is the heavy rain of this morning that could ruin a day trip like this when it is based on 2 beaches.  Arriving into La Digue was like an era gone past.  The wharf was tiny, and there were fishing boats and small cargo boats loading and unloading what the island needs to survive.  Supplies for hotels, shops and locals alike.  There is not an airport on La Digue, only a helicopter pad, so everything comes in on boats and ferries.  We walked off the wharf to have our ox and cart waiting for us.  The cart was one of those carts that you see pulled behind tractors at fairs, 2 rows of bench seats facing each other but it was hooked up to an ox instead.  I was first on and the smell of that creature was pretty retch-able if you didn’t have a strong stomach.  The German lady sat across from me and her face told me she was touch and go with the smell – it was quite funny.  So with 12 of us on one and the other 12 on another cart behind us we set off for the restaurant for lunch.  The ox looked like he was in awesome condition and as we were travelling along you could no longer smell him, so maybe it was just where he was standing that the smell emitted from?  But this guy is carrying 12 people in a cart, all on the weight of his neck.  The cart has 2 long arms each side and are then connected across his neck.  How the hell can he do that.  Let’s say we are all 80kg (I wish) as a median, so that makes at least 960kg without the weight of the cart.  Amazing.  The handler was walking next to the ox the whole way and when the ox slowed down, he would pick a branch and then wave that like a bag of carrots to the ox and he would speed up on the eternal hope to get the leaves in his mouth, which the guy let him have twice, so it wasn’t all mean.  It got a little hairy a few times, the handler went back to help the other cart that was lagging behind with the rest of the group and ox boy was walking on his own.  This wouldn’t normally be a problem if you were in a field, but we were on a skinny road that had HUGE open drains to handle all the rain they get.  The ox would veer pretty close to the edge and the German lady and I would look at each other and look around with a crazed ‘where the hell is the handler’ look, as he yelled something out behind us and the ox veered back into the middle of the road.  This happened a few times and it was a little scary to say the least.  The other scary bit was after the ox struggles up hill (his breathing was labored the poor thing) you guess it we had to come back down.  How the hell were we supposed to do that with no brakes?  It was a steady decline angle and basically the ox just runs, with us attached I point out, and somehow manages to control the weight behind him to get us to the bottom safely.  There is a lot of potential for something to go wrong there, like the ox slipping, I wonder if my travel insurance covers oxidental damage ha ha ha ha…..

Lunch was a creole buffet at a local hotel and it was delicious.  Not to say we were ravenous after such an early start and only having fruit and a tea for breakfast.  We got an hour here to gorge and use the facilities before heading back out onto the tiny paved street to thankfully have motorized transport waiting for us to take us to the beach section of the trip and the part I have been looking forward to the most.  It only took us 15 minutes to drive there passing a lot of self-contained little houses along the way up for rental or occupied with people reading or just sitting in the small balconies watching the world literally slip past and also dotted were a few hotels.  It is very very laid back here.  You would not come here if you had big expectations of luxury and pampering.  It is a village island, the main transport is getting around by bicycles, no shopping centres and the main reason would be to relax and do not much.  If that sounds like you then La Digue is the place you should be.

As we got off the motorized cart, same set up as the ox cart, 2 long benches on each side, just attached to a truck this time, there was a mound, no make that the BIGGEST mountain of coconuts I have ever seen.  Coconut palms have been called the 'tree of life' because of the huge variety of uses. They are cultivated throughout the tropics for fibre and fuel, but are best known as a food. They are also the seventh most important vegetable oil crop in the world.  There was a lady there with a stake securely in the ground; she was then dehusking the coconuts by striking and twisting them onto the steel spike.  It looked like hard work.  She would throw the dried outer husk on this massive pile; the flesh in its whole was thrown onto another pile.  She would then reach for another coconut on the third pile to her left and start the process all again.  The fiber is used for stuffing, fire and for plants.  For desiccated coconut, coconut cream, oils and other processed forms, shells of coconuts are split with a hatchet of knife and the white meat is removed. Oil is made from copra which is the dried meat of the coconut and can be milled to produce cake or oil used in cosmetic, industrial and medicinal products.  The shells are used for all manner of utensils, vessels, carvings and even charcoal hence the name of tree of life comes from.  Nothing of this plant goes to waste.  Makes you appreciate coconut products a bit more when you know what work is involved to get the final product.

We then started the 10 minute walk through coconut forests, past a vanilla plantation and a quick stop at some land tortoises they have enclosed close to the beach.  They were massive, and considering how many of them there were they didn’t smell at all.  There were I would have to say 30 of them of all ages from 30-90 years old, in the open air enclosure.  They came right up to the stone fence that was waist high and you could feed them leaves off branches and their necks reminded me a little bit of snakes as their long heads stretched to get to the leaves.  I guess I will be seeing something similar in the Galapagos but with no fence-that scares me a little after seeing these guys.  They were quite nimble as well moving around which also surprised me.

And finally THE BEACH!  We got given 1 hour and a half hour’s here at the Anse Source D’Argent Beach.  MY GOD – this was an AMAZING beach and I have to say the BEST beach I have ever seen EVER!  Man how can I explain it, it followed the coast on the west of the island, so there were a lot of mini beaches broken up by the large granite rocks that also ran around the coastline.  The first section was a skinny beach that faced back towards the main island of Mahe, so it made for some great photo shots with the amazing color of the water and there were some black clouds on the horizon rolling in to give the photos some depth and more black colours.  As long as the rain held off we would all be happy.  So I then kicked off my shoes and waded around the rocky crops and explored all the little beaches that finally got me around the point and to the main beach where a lot more people could sit and admire the view.  There was no island view from here, but the reef had breaking waves and you could see the storm clouds better here and made for some great panoramic shots.  I just cannot stress just how magic it was here.  AMAZINGLY BREATHTAKING.   The colours were so vivid and with countless different hues of blue were just spectacular.  So I pulled up some granite, pulled out my book and just soaked up the whole experience without even opening a page to read it. I just couldn’t tear my eyes away from the view.  It was worth going to the whole effort of the day to get 90 minutes of this view.  So eventually time ticked (too quickly) and it was time to make my way back to the meeting point.  So I walked back the same way, wading around the rocks and of course getting some more photos, this is definitely a time when you cannot have too many pictures and back to the truck for the 20 minute transfer back to port.  We had 20 minutes to kill before our 4.30pm ferry back to Praslin, so I was able to squeeze in some souvenir shopping, getting some postcards, stamps, presents for the girls, magnets and a new bangle.  It has been awhile since my last purchase you know!  I also decided to get a bottle of coke to take back with me, so I walked into this small local corner store, got the coke out of the fridge and was looking at the rows of biscuits they had behind the counter and you will never guess what I saw.  Boxes and boxes of Arnotts BBQ shapes, Bacon and Cheese and whatever the other flavors were, they were the only 2 I was interested in.  Can you believe I am on an island off an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean and there are boxes of ARNOTTS!!!!!  Well I couldn’t pass up the chance no matter how much they were, but can you believe that they were only 2.30AUD a BOX!!!  So I have snapped up 3 boxes and hopefully that will carry me through till London where I can replenish stocks for 6AUD a box.  Unbelievable right!!!!  All that done in the 15 minutes.  Then back on the ferry for the 15 minute journey back to Praslin.  The waves / weather had not improved and this time I sat on the wrong side of the ferry and there were times when we hit some waves and the spray got me sitting where I was.  It was only for 15 minutes, all gadgets were in plastic bags and it was quite refreshing having the salt water on my face, so the lady and I just grinned and bared it, and there were no other seats to move to anyway, it was a full house.

We arrived back onto Praslin at 4.50pm and then had to wait till 5.30 for the ferry connection back to Mahe.  It sort of wasn’t enough time to walk into town, so they let us board the ferry early and I just sat and read my book for 30 minutes till we left and I am sad to report ate half a box of my BBQ shapes already.  But boy they were good!!!!!

Now I should have learnt my lesson on the smaller ferry coming back to Praslin, the water was rough; I was getting wet so I should have sat on the opposite side of the ferry heading back to Mahe.  So we departed at 5.30pm and as soon as we had left the safe haven on the bay, the waves hit us with full force and every 5-10 minutes we would hit a massive wave and with the wind blowing the spray would hit us, and sometimes the force of the spray was like needles.  So needless to say after the first 20 minutes everyone cleared out of the back section of seats except 5 brave souls and I was one of them.  There was an Asian couple 3 rows in front of me who pulled out their towels, and every time they thought some spray was coming they would raise their arms above their heads with the towel as protection.  It was funny to watch because they misread more waves than they got, so they still got pretty wet anyway.  The guy got it together by the end, but they thought it was hilarious and it gave me something to watch for the hour 15 minutes.  The other 2 people were locals.  As we steamed out and the first spray hit, the chick 2 rows in front pulled out her flannel to wipe herself off each spray.  Okay so she has done this before, but by the end of the journey, the flannel was just useless, we were so wet.  The guy who was in front of me, just put on another t-shirt and then when we arrived into Mahe he took it off.  I tell you there were some cracker sprays and I ended up putting on my jacket and putting on my hoodie to try and keep myself dry, which was useless after over an hour of getting drenched.  Why didn’t you move I hear to ask?  Well firstly I am not sure what seats were left as there was a mass exodus after the first spray and secondly, I think I would have seriously fallen over had I tried to walk in that weather, people couldn’t even open the toilet doors the wind and rolling was that severe.  And with that comes sick people and I think there were more on the way back than going over.  Lots of people holding sick bags and making runs to the toilet.  Ughhhhhhh disgusting.  I am thinking this is a ‘normal’ journey though as Adele had warned me days before about not eating too much for breakfast and with people flying back rather than take the ferry.  Yeah well I can see why!!!  It was dark when we arrived back into Mahe at 6.45pm.  All the same people loaded back onto the bus for our return back to our hotels.  We did have a different driver and the first hotel he stopped at none of us were staying there!  Weird, so then we drove straight back out again and headed to the first French drop.  He was then looking at the manifest for like 5 minutes and then he worked out where he had to go next.  Second French stop done.  He then looked again at the manifest for like 10 minutes, so I piped up and said you just have the Hilton and Bliss to go.  So we set off and after we did the Hilton drop it was just me and the driver to which he then proceeded to tell me that he wasn’t supposed to be working tonight and his boss phoned him up asking him to step in, so he put his 4^th glass of bourbon down and came down to the wharf.  Ummmmm I don’t really think you should be telling me this buddy.  It explains why he was all over the place with the hotels – just get me to my hotel safe..please…please…please which he did no worries after stopping to talk to some-one on the side of the road – um hello, client in the back!

But I made it safe and was more than happy to get out of that bus. 

I felt a little out of place at the new hotel as I haven’t even been here before, but I found reception okay and was checked in pretty fast.  They have Wi-Fi here in the reception only, so it will be good to get on tomorrow and touch base with some people.  After I had finished my cold ice tea, I was asked if I had any baggage.  Um I was hoping it was here, it was coming from Sunset Beach, oh yes was the reply, I was just checking!  Yeah right! As long it is here I don’t really care.  By this time it close to 8pm.  It made for a very long day getting up at 5am till getting to my room at 8pm – 15 hours and I was wet and tired.  The hotel is split over a road, so I am staying on the non-beach side which I am okay with.  The room is pretty big and decked out in beach stuff.  Literally stuff picked up from the beach, driftwood, sea sponges, shells, driftwood lamps and decorations on the walls.  It is certainly more funky than Sunset Beach, but very different as well.  There is a small reception this side; breakfast is also served this side so unless you wanted to see more beaches this is a pretty cool spot.  I even have my own terrace with deck chair and all.  I would hope that I could use it tomorrow if the sun comes out, but I have a feeling that will be a pipe dream I think.

No dinner, too tired and couldn’t be bothered.  I read for a little, uploaded my pictures to my external hard drive to get them ready for tomorrow to upload o Facebook and then I slept like a baby with the rain bouncing off the roof again, just for a change!  I think today I stepped onto the most beautiful beaches in the world, no word of a lie and to think I am in the middle of the Indian Ocean with nothing around these islands for hundreds of kilometers; it really makes for a special place.  Untouched by the hustle and bustle of the 21^st century.

I explored the paradise of Praslin and La Digue and I loved it.