Villa de Mer Praslin Island

... told me to hop in the van and he would take me there, and so I did. We pulled up to a little shop where there were a few options, none of which were spectacular, but a few that would suffice. Maxim walked up to a younger kid who was inside the neighboring shop replacing a flat tire on a bike, and began chatting with him. I had told Maxim that I would need one for two days, and if possible, I would like to leave the bike at the ...

... car I had previously rented is waiting for us in the parking lot. Even better, Neal was able to arrange the rental of a local home for our last night in the Seychelles. As we say goodbye to Monkey Puzzle, we know that we still have one more day to explore the Seychelles and that we did with lunch at the ...

... The coral heads are some of the best I’ve seen on the trip, making for a fine snorkel.

Once back on the boat, we half-heartedly attempt to set a stern anchor so that we’d have our bow set into the waves which caused a substantial amount of roll our first night. Feeling we were setting it too close ...

Anse Lazio, Prasllin -> Beau Vallon, Mahe'

Today we leave the northern island group behind. With southeast trade winds blowing steady between 15-18k you can’t ask for a better beam reach as we head off southwest to explore the northwest side of the Mahe’ 30M away.

It’s a perfect sail with one maneuver to reel ...

... colored fish of all types and size including eagle rays, lion fish, blue and green striped grouper. The water is shallow, maybe .5-1.5m below the surface so the light is fantastic. Coral formations are beautiful. We must have spent at least 2 hours in the water. This has to be one of the best snorkel locations in the world.

We’re back to the boat ...

... in 3-4m of sandy bottom. But, then we wouldn’t have a great memory of cooking our mega-red snapper while rocking back and forth in the salon. All I can say to Lisa is --- sorry.

As you might have guessed, nothing was going to keep Marcello from cooking our red snapper that day. The only question was how. HE consider the grill but felt it was too small ...

... sailing in rather than spend another suffocating night in the anchorage. In hindsight, it might have been wiser to remain protected in Baie St. Anne as I had gotten lazy and was no longer checking the local weather forecast. But, not knowing what was coming, we left again for a lovely “faralla” sail to Anse Petit Cour with 9-12k tradewinds at our stern.

Petite Cour, Seychelles Islands gmanvento

Today we dive at Dragon Teeth. Called like that because on top and under the water, the rocks look like giant teeth. Charmaine is our dive master, she is very nice. This dive cannot beat yesterday's but we do enjoy it. At the end of the dive, I saw something, I never saw before: 2 women jumped in the water to smoke because you cannot smoke on the boat. And then: the impossible happens: hubby convinces me to do an AFTERNOON ...

... tale huff of their occasional neccessary breath, and the subtle distinct splish of their brief surfacing. Some moonlit nights I could even see them jet through the moonlit waters around us. On those occasions I noticed that they were much smaller then the variety I seen off the coast of Tanzania. I wander what it is that brings them to us. Is it that they find Karaka motherly, with her smooth large shape and careless glide? Perhaps in fact they can tell ...

... Back at Takamaka, we find a parking spot and a nice, shaded beach, where DP sees a school of hump-head wrasse, which are enormous. The only other time we've seen them was in the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia. Also sees an unusual khaki-and-light-green banded pipefish, a turtle, and another spotted eagle ray. These are different to the normal rays, in that they have more of an actual head, and are using it to shovel up food. MP goes ...