Date: Feb 15, 2007
Location: Port Victoria, Mahé, Seychelles
Next Port: Male, Maldives, Feb. 18
Quick Summary: Wow! What a magnificent place on earth…a rainbow welcome, lush green islands, wonderful beaches, reef snorkeling and a peek at one of Mahé’s wonderful resorts.
Report: We were up at sunrise among the outer islands of the Seychelles and enjoyed the sail-in to the main island of Mahé, and Port Victoria. These islands are granite, not volcanic, and are the remnants of a continent many hundreds of million of years ago created as the earth’s tectonic plates moved around.
Mahé is mountainous, densely forested and has many rocky cliffs. As we pulled into sunny Port Victoria, there were some raindrops (what in Hawaii we called “pineapple juice”) blowing off the top of the mountain, resulting in a beautiful rainbow welcome.
Capt. Dag has a wonderful way of heading directly perpendicular towards our docking space (where in this case there were boats directly in front and behind our spot). He then spins parallel to the space before moving slowly sideways to the dock. One can do that with podded engines and propellers (no central drive shaft) that can turn and be used in combination with the bow thrusters.
We were off the boat at about 8:30 am for our “Reef Safari to Cerf Island.” We boarded a 40 passenger launch for a 10-minute ride out to a glass bottom boat located in the national marine park. We transferred to this semi-submarine boat that had a deep, v-shaped hull with viewing windows about 6 feet below the water line. Though the space was tight, it was air conditioned and provided up close views of fish and coral as we moved over the shallow reef. We saw hundreds and many varieties of colorful fish.
We returned to our launch and enroute to Cerf Island, stopped to feed bread to the fish. They really swarmed after the food.
Next we stopped at Cerf Island for a cool tropical drink. Those who were not going to snorkel stayed on the beach while about 20 of us got back on the launch for a short ride to the marine park reef. Karen opted to enjoy walking along the beach and swimming in the warm water. Larry chose to go snorkeling. The guide anchored the boat so that one side of the areas offered an opportunity to swim over sea grasses and the other provided snorkeling over the coral. Both areas were teeming with beautiful fish.
Sadly, we learned that natural forces in the recent past have destroyed about 70% of the live coral in the park. The Seychelles experienced 1to 2 years of El Nino. This natural phenomenon resulted in greater hours of sun and higher water temperatures. Much of the coral was bleached and killed. Then the tsunami that hit the day after Christmas in 2004, dealt another severe blow. Our guide said that instead of the normal high/low tides every six hours, they had them every 5-6 minutes for more than 24 hours. The force of this rapid water movement broke up much of the coral. It will take generations to recover.
We returned to the Voyager at about 12:30 pm. After a quick shower and lunch, we caught the shuttle bus into Mahé, walked around, bought a few souvenirs and postcards and took some photos.
Then we hired a taxi for an hour to take us around parts of the island. We lucked out…our driver had lived on Mahé all his life and was a wealth of information. We drove across to the western side of the island, then around the northern tip and back into Port Victoria. We saw somelocal villages, beautiful beaches and even one classy resort nestled atop a rocky point above a sandy cove. This is definitely an area that any beach and water lover could easily return to.
We pulled out at about 6:00pm and enjoyed a nice sunset as we cruised through some of the northern islands before heading northeast towards the atolls of the Maldives…a two-day sail away.
Karen and Larry
Photos of our cruise are available at the following web site:
picasaweb.google.com/larryworldcruise
Photos from Port Victoria, Mahé, Seychelles have been added.
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