Tuesday in the Vallee de Mai.

Ten days is a long time to stay at sea and swim twice a day. Don’t get me wrong - no one is crying in their goggles here. But doing a 10 day trip means it’s important to shake things up a little, perhaps with one or two land excursions. Fortunately, the Seychelles has what we need. 

The scale of this forest is awe inspiring and wonderful.

We paired last night’s dinner ashore with a morning land adventure. Last time we were here, we did a tour of Vallee de Mai with expert guide, Josepha Ernesta. It was so impactful I just knew we had to do it again. Vallee de Mai is one of two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Seychelles. This is a rare old growth, well preserved palm forest, and home to the endemic coco de mer palm, which has the largest seed nuts of any tree in the world. Nature’s design of this tree is nothing short of divine. From its elaborate above ground root system to its jointed base that allows it to stay intact in high winds, from its male and female varieties and the way it collaborates with a gecko for procreation, to fact that the female tree can support thousands of pounds of the HUGE nuts, I am so amazed at Nature and how perfectly it evolves species to purpose. What really hits home in the tour of the forest with Josepha is how critical balance is in a natural environment. One little southeast Asian ant species introduced in the late 60s nearly caused this entire forest - utterly unique to Praslin - to go to ruin. The keepers of this eden have researched and worked tirelessly to eradicate the ubiquitous pest and restore balance to the forest. They are succeeding, but it’s an endless fight.

As a guide, I so appreciate passion for and deep understanding of milieu from another guide. Josepha is so at home in this unique landscape, she almost senses when there is a creature nearby. She looks up, gasps and points to a tiny gecko, or a small, green tree frog 30 feet up into the canopy of endless enormous palm fronds. She impressed upon us how we hit the jackpot to have seen three different gecko species, the tree frog, a coco de mer snail, and we heard the song of both the Seychelles Black Parrot and the Blue Pigeon. All of these creatures are endemic, meaning they are found here and nowhere else in the world. I’m not a plant person, or a bird person, or a forest person, but my now two visits to Vallee de Mai with Josepha are experiences I will never forget. Our guests loved our time in the forest with Josepha and asked so many great questions that our tour lasted over 2 hours. Please, if you come to Seychelles, look up Josepha and have her share her knowledge with you about one of the world's most incredible forests. You can find her on her website: https://www.lasourcedesseychelles.com.

From the forest, we took our gang to lunch at the Reggae Bar - a local eatery that we hit twice before this trip started. The food is very local and incredibly good. It was nice for our guests to experience the flavors of Seychelles from the source. The ice cream and the sweet little pupper didn’t hurt either.

Myssie noticed the signs for the men’s and women’s restrooms used the male and female flowers of the coco de mer. Clever!

What our excursion also did was give Richie, Lisa and Margon time and space to do some really important things. Lisa had some new provisions to pick up and store, Romesie had some repairs to coordinate with our base team at Dream Yacht Charters, and Margon cleaned cabins and changed all the linens, including mine in my tiny little coffin berth. It would have been perfectly fine for her to just dump my clean sheets down my hatch, but she actually made my bed - no small feat in this tiny coffin and she is 6 feet tall - for which I am extremely grateful. She even put a chocolate bar on my pillow which was a sweet gesture and I’m so glad I caught it as my berth gets well over 100 degrees when I’m not in it and the hatches are closed. All of this to say that between the three of them, this boat was well restocked with sustenance and mostly repaired and definitely looking ship shape by the time we got back. Thank you to our crew. These tasks are not easy to fit into a few hours, let alone in this heat and humidity.

And hot and humid was the theme of the day, so we pulled in our dock lines and made for a nearby bay. We landed at Anse Volbert for a short meanderswim (Ok Catherine and Alina made a haul across the bay) and we hoped to cool off. Not quite. The water in the shallow bay was about 90 degrees. HOT. We swam around the corner just outside the bay and lost a degree or 2, but not enough to really cool our jets. We did see a very small shark, who looked a little startled to see us, and as it was a bit murky and getting on to dusk, we decided to head back to our yacht. 

Natalie got a climb in on our swim, something she does in every location she travels to with us. Today I was mildly concerned that the fruit bats overhead would mistake her for an orange in the trees!

No problem, mimosas were passed around and nachos appeared. If you know me, you know that no nacho is safe within my reach. It’s possible I spoiled my dinner, which is too bad because it was an incredible curry over steamed rice and garnished with coriander (pronounced CoriANDer by Lou Lou, which definitely makes it taste even better). Everyone else devoured it, along with Lou Lou’s famous Apple Tarte Tartin for dessert.

We’ll make for the islands to our east first thing in the morning, where we’ve already seen clear and cooler waters and abundant marine life. Our time in the forest was incredible, but it’s time to get these fish back in the sea.

Love,

Heather