Today was an overcast day with some rain, but we made the best of it. It felt like we interacted with a lot of locals and got a better flavor for life in the Seychelles. I realized that living on a boat makes it difficult to engage with others.
We started by having a lovely breakfast in the hotel. This was a map of the island painted on the wall in the breakfast area.
We talked to an interesting gentleman who was originally from Mauritius and is now living in Paris. He is here for business with the Seychelles Department of Tourism. He was going to ask his contacts about a camera.
When we got back to the room we had no power but it came back on within 10 minutes. Here is a picture of Victoria and the harbor, taken from our balcony.
A bird had nested on our balcony light. We thought she has a chick because she wouldn’t leave the nest when we were out there and there was a shell on the ground, but when she flew off we checked and no chick. 🙁
I tried to use the hair dryer on the camera, but it still was wonked out. I think the camera has served me well but is no longer functional. So we walked downtown to look for a camera and just to check out downtown.
As we were walking down there we passed the gallery of an artist whose paintings we had seen in La Digue and really liked. Of course we went in. They had reprints of the one in La Digue, but we were looking for an original that would go in our new kitchen. His work is very colorful and we like the idea of having some kind of food art on the wall. We think we found something we like, but we need to check the exact dimensions of the wall. Here’s a picture of the one we liked.
The woman at the gallery proceeded to tell us that the Seychelle economy was really hurt by the loss of tourism revenue during the pandemic. She said that the Middle East had helped keep the country afloat during this period because the wealthy sheiks wanted to maintain this area as a “playground”. I’m not sure if this is true, but it’s an interesting story. She also suggested that we visit the market as well as the botanical gardens today.
We continued down the street towards the market and came across a Hindu temple. There are lots of people who look Indian on all three islands. We went in and looked around. It was a little run down. Here are some pictures.
A little further along we came across the market which had stalls of vegetables, spices, and fish. Here are some pictures.
Next stop, the bakery for some bread. Typically we have one big meal a day and then have “a picnic” of bread, cheese, and some type of cured meat. We exhausted our picnic provisions before leaving the boat so we needed to replace them. We decided we would stopped at the grocery store for the rest of our provisions, then walk back to the hotel so we could get them into the refrigerator. We ddecided to have lunch at the restaurant that we had eaten at the night before. It was just as good the second time around.
It poured rain while we were eating lunch and we thought our plans to go to the botanical garden would be scuttled, but it stopped in time. We took a taxi to the botanical gardens. The botanical gardens consisted of a lot of palm trees, tropical plants and of course some giant tortoises (whose necks I had to rub). Here are a few pictures.
We had asked the taxi to come back at 4:30 to take us back to the hotel, but we were done with the gardens at 3:30 so we walked through the town. Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles, is a city for the local population. It is clear that tourists go to the resorts and don’t spend much time in the city. For example we didn’t see one t-shirt shop in Victoria. On our walk we past the hospital, the high school, and the university. Everything looks run down.
We returned to the botanical gardens to meet our return taxi. On the way back the taxi driver told us that this weekend they are celebrating a relatively new president. He was elected 2 years ago, but the celebration was postponed due to Covid. Our taxi driver clearly really likes the new president and says the former president acted like a dictator.
That evening we had our picnic in our room which is quite nice and large.