Praslin to Mahé, Seychelles

13 - 15 May 2008

The Sexy Coco Fesse

We took the ferry back to Praslin and then took off for the 15-minute hop back to Mahé where we were to spend our last 3 nights in the Seychelles. We flew past St. Anne Island, looking in vain for the house that is in one of the 1830 paintings by the Danish sailor Frederik von Scholten, marked ‘St. Anne, Seychelles’. The house should have been by a rock but we could only see signs of the recently built luxury resort.
On arrival at Seychelles International, we filled up the plane with Avgas, including the cabin tank, in preparation for the 9 and a half hour flight on Friday to Salalah, Oman. The price was a reasonable US$ 1.97 per litre – cheap compared with the US$ 4.16 we had to pay in Réunion.
Then we rented a car and drove to Chez Batista on the southwest coast of Mahé. There were a lot of Internet duties involved with the Middle East aeronautical charts, etc., so we stayed put all afternoon and evening. The charts still haven’t arrived in Réunion so we are going to ask Jeppesen to ship another set of charts directly to Muscat via DHL. Received an email from FSI, our agent in Germany, with the clearances for overflight of Yemen (needed for the flight to Oman) and for Iran. So now we are cleared all the way to Geneva!
Chez Batista is right by the beautiful beach of Takamaka and we eat our meals with feet in the sand, both of us facing the sea. There’s good snorkelling here too and we just managed to fit some in before sunset.

14 May. Mahé. Although we have the en route charts for the flight to Oman, we still need the approach charts so Flemming emailed some of our Earthrounder friends before we set off for the day to ask if they could scan the charts and email them to us. By the time we returned to Chez Batista in the late afternoon, both Marga and Ralf Hannemann (who recently completed their round-the-world flight) and Jim Nisbet (who is in India, having just been in Oman on his way round the world) had sent us the charts. A big ‘thank you’ to them for their help.
While Flemming worked, Angela went snorkelling and saw a spotted eagle ray. We had a delicious lunch at Jardin du Roi, a spice garden up in the hills in the centre of Mahé, then wandered round the beautiful garden with fruit bats flying about. At last we got to see the coco de mer palm tree, whose fruit is called coco fesse because it looks like a female’s buttocks. This rare palm grows naturally only in the Seychelles.
Dinner was also very good at Chez Plume, Anse Boileau, recommended by some Canadians we met at Hell-Bourg, Réunion.

15 May. Mahé. Flemming went on a morning dive to Shark Point where he saw a reef shark and two manta rays.
We drove to another of the beautiful beaches on the west coast for lunch at the Anse Soleil Café. At lunch, we met Charles and Anna Lise, owners of nearby Lazare Lodge. Coincidentally we had tried to book there but they were full. We told them we had a ‘mission’ to locate a house with a rock beside it on St. Anne Island that was painted in 1830 by the Danish sailor Frederik von Scholten and Anna Lise was hopeful that it could be found. We agreed to email them the photo of the picture and they would go and look for it.

There was good snorkelling at Anse Soleil, and later we drove south to Intendance Beach, a long beach with big breakers and a strong current.
We had a quiet evening at Chez Batista and went early to bed in preparation for tomorrow’s long flight.