Wild and wonderful

The snorkeling was awful; poor visibility and we saw very few fish, apart from a couple of rays and one small shark. The fishing was disappointing. It rained a lot, torrential at times. We hardly saw any sun or blue sky. We did not get to see the full moon. But the wildlife, walking, meals and relaxing were fantastic!
Bird island is owned by an old Seychellois family. It is not a luxury resort. Their main focus is conservation. This is what makes it special. Many scientists come and go but Roby is the ‘hands-on’ man who patrols the 5 km perimeter 4 times a day, making his notes. He is passionate about what he does and gave us a wonderful talk on all the creatures that populate this small coral island.

There are giant tortoises, including Esmeralda, who is actually male, not female! He is reputed to be over 200 years old. Roby showed us how to ‘jack up’ a tortoise by scratching its back leg. They love it and stiffen their legs, lifting their shells high off the ground. (There's a video at the end of this blog!) Among other more common bird species, there are frigates, brown and lesser noddies, waders, plovers, long-tailed tropic birds, sooty and fairy terns -here's a picture of one of these with her chick. They're all ‘tame’.

Best of all, both green and hawksbill turtles lay their eggs at this time of the year. On rainy, windy Monday night, we came across a big green turtle (about 1 metre across) digging with her front flippers. We could see where she had come up the very steep sandbank. She must have been exhausted as instead of going further up the beach beyond the high water mark, she was busy digging just over the rim. We got there at about 9.15. She finished digging a big round hole with her front flippers, then dug a much smaller deeper hole with her back ones. We watched all this from behind her, lying on our tummies at the very edge of the hole. Only when she started to lay did we turn on a small torch - Roby had told us what would or wouldn’t disturb her. She was coy and had almost hidden the laying from view with her back flippers, but we could just see the ping-pong ball sized eggs plopping down. I counted 62. To cover the eggs, she flicked sand behind her with her front flippers and paddled a compact wall with her back ones, moving slowly forward as she did so. Although she didn’t grunt, it must have been a huge effort, as she rested between every scoop. We wondered if she might tumble down the steep bank and end up on her back, but she shimmied down on her shell with flippers out of the way as easy as you like and off she went into the sea.

We got back to our bungalow at 1.20 am. We both feel over-awed by the experience. We marked the spot 12 m in from the nest as we felt sure with the whole nest would be washed by morning – and sadly it was. But she is oblivious of course.

On Wednesday morning, Dudley was tired and so I went for a walk on my own and came across a hawksbill turtle coming out of the sea to lay! She went right up into some bushes, resting a lot, bumbling into and clambering over driftwood, grunting a little as she went along – she didn’t seem to have the sense to go round the obstacles. Turtles are very short-sighted. They are smaller than the green turtles. She’d wedged herself in under some branches and I wondered whether she might get stuck there and whether Roby ever helps them in these situations. A Swiss couple that we’d met arrived and together we watched her digging her hole – interestingly only at the back. Her eggs came out more than one at a time – sometimes 5 at once! Roby arrived and he broke off some branches around her and said we could scoop some sand out from the back to get a better view. She was also less shy and had her flippers spread wide open, so I got some good photos and also a little movie! I felt sad that Dudley missed this. Roby wanted to measure and make his notes etc., so we left him and her to it. Hawksbills lay up to 230 eggs, the green turtle fewer.
This is a paille-en-queue (long-tailed tropic bird) chick.

Why clothes?

As I stood under the fan, trying to iron good creases down the legs of my dear husband’s work trousers I thought:

Why clothes in the Seychelles? It’s so hot all year round – why don’t we all just go naked? Who decided that trousers with creases in them were smarter anyhow? It must have been a man and he would soon have changed his mind if he’d had to iron them himself, in the Seychelles in summer. My husband hates his bright red work shirts too. (He said he stopped to offered a colleague a lift the other day, then realized it was a postbox.) They could all wear red ties with the company logo on it instead, knotted loosely round the neck so that no-one gets too hot under the collar.

It would be a shame not to have some colour around. So maybe the older Seychellois women should still wear their lovely outfits with hats that are so much a part of the character of this island.

Also, the men that wear the huge rastaferian green, red and yellow beanies over their magnificent dreadlocks would probably be reluctant to part with these. They are certainly eye-catching, but so are the dreadlocks when allowed to hang free. Perhaps the tourists would want to show off their newly purchased sarongs. These could be knotted around waists. Cloths that so many people carry around to mop their sweating brows could become a fashion statement. They could be produced in lovely colours and made big enough to cover up strategic spots if one was feeling a bit shy.

Think of the money we would save on clothes, soap powder, softener, electricity, not to mention the time spent doing, hanging and ironing our washing. The company’s Christmas party would have been a lot more fun if everyone had been naked - just prettied up a little with bits of tinsel or coloured baubles.

FEAST OR FAMINE?

Christmas is coming. Normally by now the Christmas cake would have been baked and wrapped in its foil (full of Christmas cheer -plenty of brandy). Tins of pineapple rings and boxes of cherries would be ready and waiting to decorate a gammon, which would be glazed and cooked on Christmas Eve. So far I haven’t found gammon (turkey and legs of lamb, yes, at a price), or pineapple rings, or fruit mix. A small bottle of brandy would have been plenty for the cake, but there are none of those and SR’s175 for a bottle is just too much. A friend kindly brought us some fruit mix and cherries from Dubai, so we will have our cake but will eat it without brandy. It would be fun to be browsing for gifts in beautifully decorated shops, with choices to boggle the mind. But this is the Seychelles. There are no shops like that here. We've been spoilt in the past, being able to buy pretty much anything we wanted. All the things we can’t find now are luxuries anyway though and way out of reach for the majority of Seychellois, not to mention millions of others living elsewhere.

We came across an amazing sight on a jetty last week; two crayfish or lobsters, both huge but the one particularly was enormous – the biggest any of us have ever seen.

The men who’d caught them said that they had got them at a depth of 20 metres. Is this allowed we wondered? They will probably have been sold to a hotel or restaurant and provided a feast for someone, but not the men who caught them.

Then at another little café on the beach, an array of huge, gorgeous shells were displayed on the railing. One never sees these sorts of shells washed up on the beach these days, so surely they must have been taken live from the sea, way out, where very few people venture. People must buy them (and it is tempting as they are so beautiful), as otherwise they wouldn’t keep producing more and more. Perhaps this is the only way some people can earn a few extra rupees, so that they too can give their families a little Christmas ‘feast’, something a little different from their normal diet.

So we're forgetting about the ham and fancy dinner with all the trimmings. But it won’t be famine for us. We will have our ‘feast’ at a local restaurant on Christmas Eve. It probably won’t be a traditional Christmas meal but the food there is very good. How lucky we are to be able to afford this. If the weather is nice, we will go snorkelling on Christmas Day and feast our eyes on fish and hopefully turtles too. This is where we often go snorkelling (and there’s my little dream house perched on the rocks….)

Stars and the Universe

There was a fascinating programme on TV a couple of nights ago about stars, the universe and all matter that we find in our world today; scientists speculations about what happened at the very beginning of time, how it all began and continued, to form the world as we know it today. They talked about the 'Big Bang', the huge explosion of the very small but hugely charged only bit of matter that existed (they think). Then from this, they deduced that various elements formed, probably through violent collisions of atoms, first hydrogen, then helium and finally, over a very long period of time, all other substances that make up our world today, including our physical bodies. Even a substance such as zinc is vital to our physical make-up. According to one scientist , our universe is still expanding and at an accelerating pace. The conclusion is that eventually everything will fly apart and be dispersed so widely that it will all go back to 'nothingness'!
There was a bit about the incredible Mr. Hubble and his telescope. What a brilliant mind, able to conceive and build such an amazing instrument. What a team that was then able to get it out into space and working, sending those awesome pictures back to earth. Not only are the images of exploding stars (and so much more) breathtakingly beautiful, they are captured events that happened so long ago, it is difficult for our brains to comprehend. It is a treat to go onto the Hubble site and look at the pictures it has taken and continues taking.

But God wasn't mentioned once.....frequent phrases cropped up which expressed uncertainty about their theories; 'we think that', 'we don't know, but', 'this is probably the result of' etc. It is inconceivable to me that people - and such clever people with magnificent minds (also made by God in my view; if you need convincing, read Dr. Paul Brand's books Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and In His Image) - can think and assume that it all 'just happened' without Divine Intervention. For me, Creation and the Universe and all it consists of, all of its beauty so evident to all, is summed up in the last line of the Lord's Prayer:
'For thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, forever and ever, Amen'

I had just written the above in my journal and was then doing my daily quiet time and reading. As if in affirmation of what I'd written, it said in my guide; 'Habakkuk affirms God as the God of the Universe, glorious and splendid.' So it seems that Habakkuk and I agree then!

FRUIT, STAR-FRUIT & STARS

We had been wondering if the plants growing in our lawn that looked like pineapples were in fact these, when suddenly we noticed that one had started to flower and grow its fruit. An exquisite star-burst flower/fruit of many colours, mauves, reds, pinks, blue-greens, has pushed up out of the leaves. A pineapple is growing really fast.

Also in our garden, we have a star-fruit tree. We have never seen one of these before and don't know if they grow anywhere other than in the Seychelles.The tree has dainty little clusters of pink flowers, but the fruits are the real eye-catchers. They are large and look like shiny yellow decorations hanging in the tree. The skins are very waxy, but you can eat the fruit skins and all. They taste and look rather like oranges inside, being similar in texture and having the same kind of pips. When you look at them end on, or sliced through horizontally, you can see where they get their name from.

Two paw-paw (or papaye) trees in the front of our house give us a more or less constant supply of fruit. The birds get plenty too. I always used to cut these lengthways, but recently cut one across its circumference and was intrigued to see how the central hollow where the pips are is star-shaped. It is an almost perfect 5 pointed star. The star-fruit is more like a Christmas star.

The real stars here are exceptionally brilliant, as there is no pollution.

Wee beasties

There are pretty geckos here. They are shy and scuttle up the wall or behind a curtain if you get too close. We're fond of Freddy, a cheeky Madagascan fody. He knows his way in and out of the house and often comes into the kitchen to look for crumbs......

But that's when we stop looking at the 'wee beasties' through rose-tinted spectacles.....

The other geckos are much more intrusive and ugly. They get into everything. Our kettle and toasters have covers now. We've boiled a few in the dishwasher . They mess everywhere too. This would make good glue - it sticks to granite, tiles, glass wood, plastic etc.

Spiders run boldly into the house and then disappear, reappearing when you least expect them to e.g. when you're reaching for your towel. A lot of screaming goes on in our house We have been told they are all harmless - so why do they give us the shivers?

In the evenings, mosquitoes, enormous cockroaches, and sometimes flying ants or leathery rhino beetles come flying in. We take it in turns now to swat the cockraoches with a flyswatter - more screaming if we miss and they run towards us (yes both of us!).

We found a monster 12 cm long centipede lurking on a skirting board. It had two vicious looking spikes at its rear end. It clung tenaciously to the end of the broom, not wanting a flying lesson, but on the second swing, it sailed off into the bush below our house. Wasps make mud nests on curtains. Tiny ants get into the sealed sugar container....

Then out of the blue, three dragonflies grace us with their presence. One appeared in the kitchen, another in a bedroom. They stayed for a while, then flew away. I found a third one dead, but intact, with its wings spread. I was able to study it close up and was blown away by its beauty and intricacy; its iridescent wings, its little face, composed of many parts, the lacy web of its wings. Having these visit felt like a privilege.