Seychelles February 14, 2007

Barb's beach--------Coco de Mer in the tree.













Seychelles, February 15, 2007 This is a friendly spider!

We left the Coast of Africa & headed north east to the granite remainders of a mid Atlantic continent of the past now breaking through the ocean surfaces as the 115 Seychelles Islands, some as high as 3200 feet peaks covered by tropical vegatation with unique birds & animals. The islands are sometimes called the Galapagos the of Atlantic. Here a mix of French & English Europeans joined previous settlers from Arabia, India and China.

Admiral Zheng He left the China mainland in 1405 in 7 expeditions to the coast of India and Africa, perhaps rounding the Cape of Good Hope. He sailed an armada of ships each500 ft.long and with 9 sets of sails & carried 21,000 chinese. They returned with giraffe, lions, spices, & perhaps some natives. The forward-looking emperor died & his successor & conservative isolationist leaders chose to burn the plans & the fleet of ships. They concluded they didn’t want what was out in the “other world” as they were the Middle Kingdom, the true world leaders. But, not for long!

Early in the morning we dock at the largest island, Mahe and its capitol, Victoria. Twenty-four of us immediately boarded a small, double decked speedboat that took us 25 miles to Praslin Island, the 2nd largest island. There we found The Vallee de Mai, also called The Garden of Eden, now a World Heritage Site. The renowned coco de mer, a double seeded coconut which may weigh as much as 80 lbs. grows there. The female version & the male version (see photo)are suggestive of the original Adam & Eve mating. All the tropical plants are impressive as they grow much bigger here than any other place in the world we have been. This tropical forest is also the home of the black parrot.

Next, we drove to the area where we would swim and lunch. We drove past several beautiful high end hotels. It is the tropical paradise for Asians, Indians, and Europeans. We spend several hours on Lazio Anse (beach) one of the worlds must beautiful beaches located on the Cote D’or (coast of gold). The fine white sand & azure colored, silky water was paradise for Barbara who told Jim to go back to the ship as she was “staying on the beach forever”! The creole BBQ lunch was the best native food so far. Jim’s luscious desert consisted of coconuts &fried bananas with carmel sauce over vanilla ice cream. Our day ended & upon our return to the ship we began sailing towards the Maldives.