Bizarre Beach Sights

Chicken Wing flapper

She stands facing the sea, staring fixedly (with her oriental eyes) at a point on the horizon. Her knees are slightly bent, her feet are spaced apart, arms bent. She flaps her wings, up and down, up and down.

Frisby whizz

Well muscled and glistening, his rottweiler in tow on a very tight leash, he strides from one end of Sunset beach to the other in his speedo, proudly strutting his stuff. He ties up his dog and plunges into the sea. He emerges dripping and reaches for his orange frisby. Then the magic begins. He dazzles with his skill, spinning it, boomerang like, under a leg, over an arm, around his head, over and over.

Here’s a picture of his turf.

Sea Strider

With eyes focussed on a distant point, his feet taking big steps on the sandy bottom, arms akimbo, he strides along in the sea parallel to the beach.

Skew swimmer

She’s trying to swim breast-stroke, in her big ‘swimming pool’, but one foot keeps splashing out of the water. She does 100 strokes. Now she attempts back-stroke. She’s looking up at the clouds and counting to 100. She’s swimming skew but she doesn't realize this. At 85 her bottom hits sand. She’s right at the water’s edge.
Nobody notices or cares. Here, you’re free to do pretty much whatever you want.

Here’s a picture of her big ‘swimming pool’.

"You fill up my senses..."

Night after night.....
I’m sitting on a big rock under the branches of our avocado pear tree.
I’m watching the sun setting into a millpond-calm sea. Silhouette island is a two-dimesional cut-out. The sky is on fire.
The knobbly granite presses into my skin.
Way off to my right, the music so loved by the Seyhcellois drifts my way, throbbing gently.
The sweet scent of some exotic shrub in my neighbour’s garden fills my nostrils.
The taste of the Bourgeois fish we had for supper lingers on my palate.
Seychelles....you fill up my senses.

But on some days.....

My skin feels hot and sticky, itchy and prickly and I'm irritable with the heat that goes on day after day. It's much warmer than it says in the brochures - it must be global warming.

I look at the majestic Albiza tree in front of our house and I feel sad...and mad. Someone has ring-barked it and it is withering and dying. It used to be green and lush. At dusk, the fruit bats used to swoop into its leaves and hang, wrapping themselves into barely visible pod-like shapes.

The stinky pong of the tuna factory has oozed its way through the hills and slithered up toward our house. I long for the wind to turn.

I can hear the pitiful mooing of one of Andy's cows. It must be tethered somewhere near us again. Is its rope too short, has it grazed everything within reach, is it thirsty and hot like me? I would love to set it free.

Man's encroachment on this beautiful island leaves a bitter taste.

This too is Seychelles.

No place is perfect. There is no paradise on earth.

Snorkelling

We enjoyed ‘out of this world’ snorkelling off an Angel Fish Ltd. Laguna catamaran, at Anse Coco, La Digue (the rocks on both sides of the beach), Ave Maria (which is small enough to swim right around), and Round island (the southern side).

You don mask and flippers, splash into the crystal clear turquoise sea. Cool water laps at your skin. You taste salt in your snorkel. You're looking straight ahead at a very ordinary scene. You put your face under and everything becomes extraordinary; the underwater world is totally magical. Schools of mullet shimmer just beneath the surface.

Looking like miniature Dumbos, a squadron of small squid line up their defence.

Way down in the murky blue, a school of the huge, very strange Napoleon fish suddenly appear, and swim sedately by.

You lift your head out of the water to see where you are. You've reached the rocks, poking up out of the water; no surprises. You put your face into the water again and thrill at the sight. The rocks' hidden parts plunge dizzyingly down into the depths below. They’re split, cracked, tumbled or stacked, smooth or gritty, furry or spiky with algae or coral. Fish teem around them, chomping, or shelter in their crevasses and caves. In the sand at their feet, you see rays and turtles.

You see the very common, but exquisitely beautiful blue-striped surgeon fish everywhere. Also prolific are the gorgeous powder blue surgeons, with their bright blue bodies, yellow dorsal fin and black and white heads.

Only one pair of the magnificent palette surgeon fish, electric blue with bold black patterns, shows up at Ave Maria. (Ile de Coco teems with these gorgeous fish.)

You see the Oriental sweet-lips – as someone remarked; “Who said spots and stripes don’t go?” They do in this striking looking fish. And there are plenty of beautiful parrot fish too, in a huge variety of colours and sizes.

You're followed by the inquisitive spade fish.

Appropriately, you also see plenty of angel fish, two in particular; emperor and semi-circle - adults - the juveniles are far less common. Semi-circular white and blue stripes on the black body of the juvenile give the fish its name. The adult is completely different; its body pale brown, speckled with black and outlined in the same powder blue as their fetching eye shadow. The juvenile emperor is similar in shape and colouring, but is patterned with concentric circles. The adult has striking yellow and purple stripes and a yellow tail.

Wherever you look you see schools of fish....

......and so you wallow in a watery wonderland.

Photos courtesy of Rob and Sal.

The hot sky whispers summer dreams....

“The hot sky whispers summer dreams and the sweet feet go out to sea together.” Sal’s beautifully expressed sentence sums up the ‘once in a lifetime’ sail we, five Feete, had here in the Seychelles.
We ‘shop around’ but Angel Fish Ltd. are the most helpful. The price has us gasping, but once taken to see the Laguna, it is all over – we’re sold... simply can’t say no.
Skipper Ronnie and chef Danny welcome us aboard. One deluxe and two other double cabins (decorated with hibiscus in typically Seychellois fashion), all en suite, comfortably accommodate us. The wobbling turquoise water beckons, through ‘windows’ in the floor.
Ronnie suggests mooring overnight at Anse Coco, La Digue, to be sheltered from the NW wind. We set sail and choose our spots to tan, relax, read, snooze. We all shift around, but none of us is surprised to see Captain D at the wheel before long! Danny produces an excellent lunch of red snapper and salads, followed by fresh fruit.
Late in the afternoon we anchor in the beautiful cove. We have a fantastic snorkel around the rocks on one side. (The snorkelling needs to tell its own fishy tale.) We also swim to the beach for a walk. Ronnie kindly takes us quite close inshore with the rubber duck. By evening we have the whole gorgeous spot all to ourselves.
The full moon comes up over the sea. Patchily tanned but feeling good after a day in the sun, we sit down to a delicious dinner. Quite early the next morning, soon after the moon sets and the sun rises, we snorkel amongst the rocks on the opposite side.
Sailing around the northern end of La Digue, Ronnie anchors quite near the jetty, so that Danny can go by rubber duck to get milk for our breakfast! Next stop is Ave Maria. The dive boat soon leaves and again, what a pleasure it is to be the only people there.
Our last anchorage is off Round island.
We enjoy Danny’s superbly cooked carangue while sailing back home to Mahe. Ronnie docks expertly at 5 pm. Back in their beds on terre firma, five Feete, still rocking, sleep soundly, under the nearly full moon, dreaming sweet sea dreams.

A walk to Anse Major

If you’re in the Seychelles, give yourselves a treat and do the walk to this stunning little beach. If you want a longer walk, you can park your car at La Scala restaurant at the end of the Bel Ombre road, or you can be lazy (like we were) and drive as far as you can along the road. There is a sign saying ‘No cars beyond this point’ at an abandoned house. Here is Big Foot near the start. There are amazing rock formations everywhere.

Here are the Brittains and D sweating their way along the path. You will sweat a lot, but it will be worth it....you'll see.

Here’s Marie resting in the walk through cave.

Marie's nearly there. There’s the small cove of Anse Major, way down there on the left, beyond the small shelter and picnic table.

And there it is in all its glory.

You've reached the beach. If you drove as far as the old house, it will probably have taken you about an hour and a quarter to get there, at a very leisurely pace. Now you can have a swim in the sea, or in the fresh water pool if the sea’s too rough. It often is. Don’t take chances. There are no lifesavers around.

Marie and Jane have stopped to drink in the silence and the view. You can do this anywhere along the route. If you’re lucky you may see blue pigeons, the graceful long-tailed tropic birds or fairy terns, swooping in pairs. You might even see rays way down there in the sea, or a school of dolphins swimming lazily along in the distance.

Heading back toward Bel Ombre, you get a totally different perspective. DO IT!

Sour oranges, bitter pill, sweet pineapple

She holds out a bag in her right hand. It is full of little oranges, the ones that grow here in the Seychelles. They’re very sour with lots of pips. The bitter pill is in her left hand. She gives me back my story, folded up. She’s read it to her children. “They laughed at it,” she says. “It sounds so Enid Blytonish.......children here wouldn’t say “Oh my gosh!” and it didn’t ring true for me either.” “Well, it was presumptuous of me to write a story for that age group, when I don’t have any contact with them,” I say. “I hope you’re not upset,” she says. “No,” I say. “It’s what I needed to hear. I asked for your honest opinion.” So, now I'm home with my sour oranges and my bitter pill. My neighbour calls me over. She has a huge sweet, sweet Seychelles pineapple. The season is almost over. She cuts me a generous chunk. Yay, someone from Portugal has read my blog and likes it. He's sent me a hug.
I peel some of the little oranges, squish out the bitter pips and put the fleshy segments at the base of a bowl. I add bananas, mango (from Randolph, the fruit seller at the beach), papaya (off our own tree) and the sweet, sweet pineapple. My husband comes home. “Lucy’s kids made fun of my story,” I say. “It’s rubbish – but I needed to hear it. But a man in Portugal likes my blog." We laugh and eat the fruit salad. It’s delicious and the pineapple is so, so sweet.

A gem: Round Island, Praslin

It’s small in global terms, but ROUND ISLAND, Praslin, Seychelles sits like a huge emerald jewel in its setting of turquoise sea. You can only get there by helicopter or by boat. Once on the island, the only modes of transport are ‘a pied’ or by golf cart. A few narrow roads and paths twist and turn up and down its humpy middle.

Your own personal butler takes you to your villa by golf cart and gives you a guided tour of the island. There are only four villas, three of which are two bed-roomed. Each bedroom has its own en suite bathroom (beware of the Jacuzzi jets!) and outside shower (but very civilized, with hot water). Reading on loungers on the veranda is wonderfully soporific. There is another much larger villa, delightfully rustic, with its own swimming pool. All are set in lush green shrubbery dotted with colourful tropical flowers – an ongoing supply of blooms to decorate beds!

You can climb the wooden staircase to ‘heaven’. Climbing up and up and up between amazing sculpted granite rocks, one gets to a viewing platform. Up there, you can see Mahe and Fregate on a good day... and have a candle or moonlit dinner at night! Or you can bird watch. We saw blue pigeons, the majestic fregate birds, the beautiful long-tailed tropic birds and fairy terns.

There is a restaurant and bar down at the small beach and another (the main one) overlooking a swimming pool, round of course. The chef conjures up meals fit for royalty - so good-looking in fact, that they deserve to be appreciated as works of art before being consumed.

The snorkelling in certain areas at the base of this jewel, is excellent. You can also sail or kayak.
Round is a true gem.