Exotic Seychelles. Part 2
La Digue Island
It is the smallest of the main three islands. But its size is quite enough for outdoor activities and many beaches. There is no public transport on the island and everyone rents bicycles. Although there are enough private cars here. On La Digue we had a room in a house with a tropical garden.
Every morning a red bird flew to us for breakfast to share our meal.
The first thing we did was to rent bicycles from the hostess for 100 rupees per day (6.15 euros) and set off to explore the new island. The beaches reach their peak of beauty by 11 o'clock, when the sun is at the right angle. Until that time, you can safely explore the island. Giant wild turtles live on this island. From time to time they made a stop to look at the next turtle.
The first beach that we came across is called Anse Patat. This beach has many underwater boulders and snorkelers swim with masks. We should get a mask somewhere and see what's going on. Near the beach, an expensive hotel with an attractive dinner price. I went to reception and asked for a tube with a mask. A very friendly girl happily gave me a really cool set and assured me that it was all absolutely free. Here is the service! Under water, a really considerable number of marine life was waiting for me. And beautiful views from the water to the beach. As experience shows, the most beautiful in the Seychelles is hard to reach. We went far inland. The views that pass by during the trip are already worth it just to ride here. And the amount of take away here is so dense that at any time you can eat inexpensively. The road gradually took a slope uphill and at some point it was easier to carry bicycles next to you.
But how beautiful! Giant trees entwined with plants. On the tops of the trees, the plants grew into whole thickets. Lianas hang everywhere.
And ahead of us was waiting for Anse Grande. In our ranking of the beaches of the island of La Digue, he took the highest place. Here the Indian Ocean demonstrates all its power and immensity. The most powerful waves of clear and beautiful water are falling on the shore. The whole picture takes place against the backdrop of a sign forbidding swimming. But that only fuels the interest. Without hesitation, we ran to the epicenter.
On such beaches, it is important to determine such things as the presence of stones under water, they were practically absent here, and the direction of the current. The waves are throwing you onto the shore. In this case, swimming will be relatively safe, because when the waves pull into the center of the ocean, I think it’s not worth swimming. Since the scope and height of the waves instilled a certain fear-delight, we had a call sign Dasha. After the wave covers Dasha, she must utter the sound of a dolphin. This will mean that my dolphin has successfully surfaced. Since after being covered by a wave, it was very important to make sure that everyone surfaced. Not everyone ventured into the ocean here. These beaches are probably the most extreme part of the trip, apart from the jungle hike, which we will have in just a few days. When we took a swim and got out of the water, everything inside calmed down a bit. Then there were two more beaches, to which you have to go along tropical paths and climb through the jungle.
The sun was unusually bright today. I was a little worried about not catching a sunstroke. The first on the way was Anse Petite beach. There were even fewer people here. On the beaches, local Creoles played exotic relaxing music, mixed cocktails and built many secluded gazebos from leaves and branches. We decided to get to the most inaccessible beach of Anse Coco. We walked through lakes, rocks, mountains, mountains again. The path was long and very hot.
The mountains had to climb specifically. And here we are. The beach was different from the previous ones, which had a twist. Real heroes rested here, who were not afraid to overcome this hot route in such heat. The beach was a bit rough. There were waves and rocks. In case of an unsuccessful miscalculation, it was possible to get injured great. I tried to swim there with a mask, but it did not end with anything good. I barely managed to dodge the stone. After resting and even sleeping, we started the long return route. But on bicycles from Anse Grande beach, one had to go down almost all the time. I even filmed a video, though I almost crashed into other cyclists with the camera. Since here we had take away everywhere, we even for the first time in the history of this trip could afford to have lunch. We usually took three or four cheese sandwiches with us. This was our regular lunch for two. But now we are chic! When we got to the hotel, burnt and tired, it was impossible to lie under the air conditioner. Speaking of combustion. It is total here, creams did not help. The best way is to swim in a T-shirt. At least for my skin type. Traditionally, in the evening we went to watch another unique sunset on the embankment.
Ah, romance. We also watched how a fisherman and his fisherwoman unloaded their catch from a sailed boat. An SUV came for us and took us to an exclusive dinner for 720 rupees for two (45 euros).
It was a restaurant at that expensive hotel, where I took a mask in the morning. They have a seafood buffet for dinner tonight. There was a very romantic nighttime atmosphere, a candle is lit on the table, local kittens share a meal with us under the table. There were many interesting dishes and delicacies from the inhabitants of the ocean. It was delicious. Well, quite a lot! Absolutely loved all the dishes. At night, the island is practically not illuminated, except for those places where there are buildings. We walked in complete darkness along the road towards our hotel. The denseness of the darkness was added by the closing foliage of trees. The number of stars that we saw above us is indescribable. We have never seen so many stars. It was billions of billions. We can assume that this is another attraction of the island. After I tripped over a big crab, we decided to turn on the flashlights. There were a little less huge crabs than stars. Crabs were everywhere. Some seemed to be asleep, as they did not react at all even if they raised their hand. But if you click your fingers, the crab seemed to turn on. Fantastic days!
Today we have prepared a very unusual trekking route. At first I thought it was a map error. After all, some of the trails run through the water.
The route starts to the right of the stone.
In the morning we arrived at the most photographed beach in the world! Since the beach lies outside the territory of an unnecessary park, you have to pay 100 rupees (6.15) for entering the park. Here and so everywhere it is beautiful, the park is no more beautiful than other parts of the island. It was about 9 am. The sun had not yet taken the correct position, and the water was only gaining its beauty. We had to get to Anse Maroon beach. We checked the path on the maps, which lay right on the water, but it was very deep. The second path on the maps goes sharply uphill and ends in a dead end. We checked. It really is, a real dead end. We tried to climb further over the rocks, but it felt more like madness than a track. Okay, let's go back to the beach and ask the locals. The guy mixing drinks was sitting relaxed on a bench peeling a coconut. Having learned about our plans, he said that we should go with a guide for 20 euros. Since the route is difficult and confusing. But we assured him that we could handle it. The guy was happy to give us a free briefing on how to get there. It sounded like he was telling you how to get through an obstacle course in a gladiator fight. Finally, the guy handed us a piece of coconut. The first trick was to wait for the low tide, which will begin in 30-40 minutes. Then, until six in the evening, the route will be available for passage. An indicator that you can go - the water should not be higher than knee-deep. At some point, the water began to recede at a rapid pace. On the Internet, we read that people rarely decide to go on their own and I'm not at all sure that someone decided. Good maps. I was shown an orientation trail. In the beginning, everything went pretty smoothly. We were really able to easily find tunnels in the rubble and boulder climbs where needed. Soon the sandy bottom ended, and we walked along the edges of the sharp baths. Sometimes it was necessary to branch off into the jungle and again go to the beach. Here in the jungle a couple of times we made a mistake. Here the principle is simple, if the road ceases to be similar to the road, then you need to look for a more similar one. If you try to build yours, it will be hard. When we realized how lost we were, we had to break through to the ocean. Under some stones we crawled in a plastunsky way. Some gaps were so narrow that you had to leave the bag, climb through, and then reach for the bag. But with thickets it was not without scratches. For the entire route, we wandered very strongly twice. On one of the palm trees hung two delicious giant coconuts.
For about 10 minutes I used various tricks to get them or knock them down. The attempts were in vain. The Universe descended and sent us a small classic coconut, which was waiting for us just on a stone. The second task was to open the coconut.
In the dashing nineties, my dad brought a coconut from the market, I was still very small then. Mom and I sat in the kitchen and watched as dad tried to open it. I remember how laborious and intractable it was. I remember how dad sawed it with a hacksaw for metal. But now we are one on one with coconut in the wild, who wins? For a couple of blows on a stone, it turned out to be split in half, and then the inner pulp was separated by the same method. But the idea that large drinking coconuts grow on palm trees did not leave.
We are finally at Anse Maroon! We did it. There were even about 10 tourists sitting on the beach. But the beach was kind of inhospitable. Fortunately, the tablet showed us that the real beach is a short walk over the blocks. There was no one at all on a real, really beautiful beach. One couple came, looked and left. We bathed here for a long time. While we were swimming, it even started to rain and stop. The weather was cloudy, but the beauty and azure of the water, even in cloudy weather, looked beautiful. The trip to the beach and the beach itself are worth the adventure. We highly recommend.
The way back was much easier, you had to follow the footprints in the sand. Returning to the coconut palm tree, I tried to finish what I started, dragging a heavy rock from the beach with me. Twice I missed, and the third time the stone got stuck on a palm tree. The next tourist will be in for a surprise when he tries to shred the coconuts)
At night, terrible downpours sometimes raged here, palm trees could not withstand the pressure. Having found fallen palm trees in the jungle, we got the long-awaited drinking coconuts. It was quite easy to open them, it was necessary to hit in the place where they have a tail and separate the tail from the coconut.
It was joyful and delicious. But more happy. Rain clouds were again replaced by a bright sun. We are back on the most photographed beach in the world. But to put it mildly, he was not photogenic. The water receded so much that the beach for 100 meters consisted of sharp stones.
That is, when the sun was still not high enough for the color of the water, there was a tide. When the sun was in place, the tide was low and the beach was ugly. In general, the beach is a mystery. Creole selling fresh juice spoke to me in Creole. Although they always speak English with tourists. It seems that since we were able to master the route without a guide, now we can communicate with them in the same language. Actually, the guy was shocked that we went without a guide and clarified whether we had reached the goal. He didn't seem to believe that we had survived. In the local take-away, freezer ice cream was also sold. This is what we needed for a good end to the day. In fact, it was only the middle of the day. But for our legs, strength and burnt body, it was almost the end. And the very end has come for my sports sandals. They adequately survived a lot of campaigns in many countries. But this is where they got really bad. And one of the harnesses literally hung on a thread. But they still had to hold out for three days. Lying in an air-conditioned room, I just couldn't get my head around how physically demanding the Seychelles can be. It's good that we love this type of trip and fortunately this jungle dispelled all our fears that 9 days in the Seychelles would be boring. Evening sunset time. At this time, tourists find themselves cozier beaches and watch the beauty. Guys from Germany lived in one of the rooms. In the evenings, we chatted for hours with them on various topics and exchanged tourist experiences. The guys told us that they had already managed to climb the highest point of the island. Maps also showed us that it was possible. But we were already wary of the cards. Now we at least hear confirmation from eyewitnesses. Several roads led to the peak from different parts of the island. We decided to go up the first one and go down the second. Attempts to find the first road in the jungle failed miserably, with about the same crash with which we will fail in a couple of hours. The locals assured us that there was an error on the map. And there is no such road. Okay, let's go to the other side of the island. We didn't have bikes that day. Getting between parts of the island was a whole hike. When we started to get to the beginning of the trail, the paved road went up steeply. Even on such a road, the climb took a lot of effort. Well, no bikes. After about 30 minutes the road began even steeper through the jungle. Soon the road leveled off, but the path was overgrown. The height of the living tunnel was somewhere to the waist. For a while we squatted and just broke through the plants. It didn't look like a road at all. But eventually got to the review.
Scratched dirty tourists broke through to meet us from other bushes and asked how difficult it was to follow our path. Although the paths no longer smelled here, tourists somehow got here. Looking at the dotted line of the map, you begin to find distinctive features among the bushes that can pass for a path. But now it seems to me that this imagination was already playing with us. We had to walk more than a kilometer to a fork, and then take another path to Anse Coco beach. I was glad that the road began to go down. The realization that there was no road came at a time when it was almost impossible to climb back because of the slope and the stones, which were so easy to go down. We had to get to the bottom and go out onto an asphalt road. You won't be able to go down all the time, because you need trees to hold on to them. And at times there are vertical height differences of three meters. As a result, it was constantly necessary to go loops. I grabbed some exotic plant and my palms began to smell like an asterisk. The descent was not very comfortable. Giant worms with hundreds of legs climbed in many places. This gave a spark to the trigger. We began to find signs in their postures. Here are two worms that clearly show us the number 12, and here are a couple more, they show 23. But we were not able to solve this code.
The main test turned out to be rotten branches and trees that broke at the slightest grasp. The ground beneath my feet also began to sag up to my knees. There has been no one here for a hundred years. It was no longer a hike, but a real survival course in the wild jungle. We found wild pineapples. Rather, only tops and roots remained of them, someone ate the tasty middle. At one point, I had an epic back fall on a very thorny plant.
When I felt dozens of needles digging in, my first thought was that these were the legs of giant worms. Soon the shoes were soaked with mud and the legs began to slip so that the already killed sandals were behind the heel. It was even hard to imagine that this could end. Maps strenuously showed the mythical path at our coordinates. When the cockerels began to come across, these were signs that the end was near.
The finale turned out to be a wet clay cliff of a meter and a half. We see an asphalt road, but we must make the last push and not kill ourselves. It was we who only approached the fork, from which the path we need to Coco Beach will begin. When we stood on hard pavement, I wanted to promise myself that I would never climb any track again in my life. I didn't want any more trails with no Coco. The very thought of the jungle was terrifying. I just wanted... but I just didn’t want anything at all.
We stomped to Teik Eveya. At the meal, we digested both food and bursting emotions after the descent. The catchphrase was “What are we doing with our lives? " What's next? In fact, it's only one o'clock. And we are already in the trash. In cities, we can walk long distances a day, visit many places in a day. And then walk through the jungle for 3 hours and the body needs to recharge. In fact, when you swim, the muscles seem to recharge. In weightlessness in water, it rests very quickly. This is the last day on La Digue. Most of all, we were impressed by the beauty of the park and Anse Grande beach. We went there on foot, at the same time we can fully enjoy the jungle on both sides of the road. This evening the island had the reddest sunset in the past 8 days. The next sunset will be from the plane. We return to Mahe.
Mae Again
Early in the morning we had to leave on the ferry that goes directly to the island of Mahe. But something went wrong and we were told that we would sail with a transfer. Due to the transfer, we literally missed the bus for two minutes, which runs every two hours in the direction we need to Mahe. We planned to conquer one of the mountains that we did not have time for the first two days on the island. But, apparently, nature itself pushed us away from the tracks. We drove to our usual Beauvalon beach, and from there we went to Sunset beach. The sun was merciless. The four-kilometer road was really hot. The beach turned out to be quite ordinary. But this was the last opportunity to swim in the Seychelles. Dasha dozed in the shade, and I sat in the water for about an hour. In order not to return back to the stop, we decided to go towards the bus station directly through the mountain. But the entire route will be paved, there should not be such extremes as yesterday. In parallel with us, a local resident was rising.
On the way, he told us a little about the island and about his profession. In the construction industry, our English was noticeably lame. Soon the guy turned to his house, and we climbed to the top. The neighboring islands, shrouded in azure blue, opened up to us for the last time and soon disappeared behind the hill of the mountain. I had an obsessive desire to buy ice cream, but there was a shortage in all the shops I met. Rather, it was possible to take only a bucket. There was also a shortage of water, but the store clerk took us to the pump and assured us that the water here was much cleaner than bottled water. This was our latest trekking route 14 in the Seychelles in the past nine days. This was one of the easiest routes, but no less beautiful than the previous ones. On the sides were local settlements, jungles and gardens. Even for so many days of stay, neither the jungle nor the beaches ceased to please the eye. At the end of the route was just the bus we needed. The last royal portion of takeaway and the last bus to the airport. The road to the airport is long, you can still enjoy the views and the green mountains of the island. Arrived at the airport. In front of the counter, Qatar Airlines reloaded most of the contents into one of the backpacks, “Please check your luggage to Kyiv, ” and we still have a relaxation tour in Qatar ahead. Let's hit the road!
Given the experience of the trip, I would recommend doing this route for outdoor activities:
Mahe Island - 4 days
Praslin Island - 2 days
Curieuse Island and Saint Pierre (transfer from Praslin and back to Praslin) – 1 day
La Digue Island - 2 days
The most beautiful beaches. It can be said that all the big mapped beaches are really beautiful. But most of all we remember:
Anse Maroon - La Digue
Anse Grande - La Digue (Dashin's favorite)
Anse Lazio - Praslin
Anse Georgette - Praslin
Anse Saint Jos - Curiosity (My Favorite)
Trip information
Date of travel: 01.11. 2017 – 11.11. 2017
Duration: 10 full days
Full days without rain: 2-3
Days when it rained a lot: 2
Flights: Qatar
Hotels: Booking + Airbnb
Excursions: All by yourself
Difficulty of the trip: 5/10 (average, physically it was really hard)
