Adventure!

http://gviseychelles.blogspot.com/

hey just a quickie, thought you should check this out.

- sazz

I am currently on Praslin (once again) after a few short but wonderful days on Curieuse Island and National Park where I spent my time helping out trying to build up the other GVI base. Mostly this involved schlepping things to and from the ranger station to "Our House" -- pretty much heaven.

Our house (on Cureiuse) is on a long sandy beach called Anse Jose and faces Praslin. The water is clear blue and the bottom sandy with an occasional rock which is a beacon for any sort of marine life.

How do you describe three wonderfully perfect days? I don't even know where to begin... First of all, Curieuse is both a terrestrial and a marine national park. Second of all, very few people get to stay there. Pretty much just the rangers, us, and the Giant Tortoises (who, by the way, love being scratched under the neck)...

We spent the days working, pulling apart a-frames, moving wood, and trying to escape the endless summer sun that was beating down upon us. Our nights were spent (mind you there were only six of us) playing Oh Hell and drinking beers and wine..l

The atmosphere was really peacefully and I have to say that it was by far my favorite part of the trip so far. I also did this pretty neat rock scramble / climb / boulder near the ranger station and got to the top of this really cool rock formation.

We snorkeled one day in supposedly shark infested water, despite the visibility being crap, the waves being huge, and well my enormous fear of sharks... Before we set off the rangers said "watch out, the monsoon weather has brought up the big ones..." but we weren't really sure if they were joking or not. At one point I got really far away from the group... In the past I would have bee-lined it for the nearest shore but now I was able to remain relatively calm. (Despite knowing there were, perhaps, 4 meter lemon sharks -- 4th most dangerous in the world -- swimming with or around or perhaps nowhere near me.

Curieuse is a pretty neat island. Besides the giant tortoises it used to be a Leper colony so there are a ton of abandoned buildings from the turn of the century. While it should feel creepy, I think its impossible for it to: especially when compared to the torn apart school ground that we're used to...

The most frustrating aspects have been the water shortages, the lack of anything decent to eat, and, well, the inescapable heat. It gets so muggy at night you feel like you are suffocating. I sleep next to the window and waited patiently for three hours before even a breath of wind came to cool me down.

On our way back today, the skies opened up and we got absolutely drenched. But so it goes... Now, I am in an internet cafe trying to get warm but failing at it. Curieuse was great and I think I have finally cured my fear of sharks...maybe...possibly...

Currently reading: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Just Read: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad....

Well its raining once again, my thoughts are scattered with all the mad dashing to-and-fro and trying to stay dry syndrome...

***

Note: I lost my cellphone over here. Whoops. My bad. (about time, isn't that what you are thinking?) So, sorry to my family but I don't know when I'll get to ringing you again...

And a late shout-out to Julie Blue for being awesome and watching my canary yellow upside down backpack.

Leigh Leigh, I can't believe you bought your wedding dress without me! Gah! Scary! Crazy! I want to see it!

Hearts, hugs, and all other things good.
- Sazz

P.s. for those of you interested, I will be getting into Boston at 11 am on August 5. Yeehaw.

Wow! What a weekend full of adventure! La Digue and Praslin were absolutely incredible.

La Digue
It felt as though I stepped back in time... Ox cart taxis and only a few scattered trucks running about streets that were simply overtaken with bicycles (amazing). Everyone road bikes.

After settling into our guest house, we took out bicycles and literally road down every road possible. It was fantastic riding up and down hills and visiting beach after beach. We saw all the "post card" beaches that are famously displayed whenever you google image the Seychelles. We also had a simply marvelous time going around by bike. I missed having pedals beneath my feet! La Digue is a very small island and we covered it in an entire day. For lunch we had hamburgers on the beach followed by a snorkel and a book reading session. I saw a moray eel and a couple of surgeon fish...nothing too exciting though I did manage to snap a nice shot of the eel!

After, we continued our trip down the edge of the coast stopping here and there for pictures and to wipe away the heaps of sweat that layered on. (Disgusting). For the most part it was a very relaxed day...

The night we went to a restaurant overlooking Praslin and Curie use island and watched the sunset (beautiful) while drinking cocktails. The night sky unfolded as if an artist were painstakingly choosing just the right golden hues. Our night continued by watching the constellations unveil themselves...really just the southern cross and the big dipper (which I didn't know you could see in the southern hemisphere!).

All and all it was a lovely day!

Praslin
Before we left for Praslin we were treated to a very elegant breakfast of egg, toast, and fresh fruit juice. We walked back to the ferry terminal and on the way stopped to admire a farmers "new-age scare crows" which were these super creepy manikins looking at computers and playing with telephones. For some reason, it reminded me of Fahrenheit 451, though I am not quite sure why...

We then stopped and chatted with a local man who was selling souvenirs and I ended up walking away with necklace. The ferry ride back to Praslin was short but beautiful. The wind let-up so there were no waves and it was a smooth, peaceful ride.

We got to Praslin and randomly decided to rent a car because it was CHEAPER than taking a taxi to our first destination and gave us greater flexibility as well. Emma drove (props to her for handling left-lane) and I navigated. Raph and Sam provided their UK and Australlian wisdom throughout our journey...

Our first stop was Vallee de Mai, which had been my one goal on this trip as it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I cannot explain the happiness I felt at having done what I set out to do. We paid an outrageous park entrance fee and then hiked around for an hour and a half covering all of the parks trails. It was really exciting to be there and to see the Coco de Mer trees. While there was nothing truly "spectacular" about the site (I knew I would see the Coco De Mers on Curieuse when I go there on Wednesday for four days), there was something tremendously wonderful about having done what I set out to do -- and to simply see that the Seychellois recognize the importance of having something "unique" to their country and that it is worth protecting. This was, without a doubt, one of my favorite stops for the day.

We then drove up the coast and stopped at Le Monde Cafe and had wonderful sandwiches. I had the Praslin Club which was bacon, chicken, and fried egg -- basically amazing before continuing on our journey. We did as much "circumnavigation" as possible and drove as far as the roads would take us.

Our end destination was Anse Lazoir (sp?) the beach rated the number 1 beach in the world... It was amazing: Sand, waves, a few large granitic boulders, sailboats, and deep water.

I got in the water and didn't get out till it was time to go. The first part I spent snorkeling (though there wasn't really anything to see, except look for shells). The rest of it I spent body-surfing. I must have body-surfed for about 1.5 hours with Raph. It was incredible though you had to be careful not to lose your top and after every wave you had sand pretty much every-where.

On my second wave my feet literally went over my head and I washed all the way up the beach -- in short, it was amazing. We stayed at this marvelous place for the remainder of the afternoon until we had to catch our ferry home, back to Mahe. Our ride back was quite enjoyable as we got to have a sunset cruise...

Anyways that takes me to this very moment and I have to jet!

Have a good week everyone.
<3 class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Sazz

Just a quick little update, nothing to long.

Current Location: La Digue

This week has flown by, partyly because we moved our weekend to be Friday-Saturday rather than Saturday-Sunday due to the tides here. Plus it has actually been SUNNY. What a relief! Last night we threw a halloween party (random, but awesome) and everyone dressed up in their best effort...it was amazing seeing what people could do with a little bit of creativity and the surrounding resources (including but certainly not limited to palm trees and coconut husks...)

I spent a lot of time this week making a garden for base because I need to stay active and can't stand sitting still for too long. Emma and I did our second solo dive together (The first was last week and was....interesting). This time it went amazingly well (I navigated) and we found a turtle (our goal) and followed it for seven minutes while recording its behavior: what it was doing, eating, and why...we are involved in helping try to figure out what happens to turtles during t heir "lost years" (the years between when they are boirn and become adults). Pretty Cool Stuff.

I also went and scoped out this huge granatic spire behind our kitchen one afternoon and decided that I would like to try and climb part of it. Two of the guys here are climbers so I think we are going to have a go at it next week...who knows! But it looks pretty sick (minus the fact that it's surround in coconut spiders which are big, scary, and creepy).

The diving has been pretty fantastic this last week as visibility is finally getting better. 25 meters vs. 2-5 meters makes a huge different. We also went to a better divesite (LIght house vs. Bay Ternae Central) and there were a lot of huge fish (snappers, emporers, bat fish, sharks ect.)

I helped in a Plankton tow this week to detemine how much plankton is in the water and to determine what types (I feel ignorant not knowing that different types existed) and trying to determine correlations between that and whale shark activity... so far no one has seen any. But we did have the "world expert" (no joke) on whale sharks come in and give us a presentation on whale sharks and on the grou p that lives here. There are about 355-480 resident whale sharks (juveniles) that come into the Seychelles from about June-October. They haven't gotten here yet and I am beginning to doubt I will see them -- but that's ok because I've seen a ton of other cool stuff.

On the Plankton tow, we did not see any sharks but I did specifically jump in the water to go looking for them. What on earth is WRONG with me! ( Don't worry, I was as weirded out and scared as ever! especially bewcause the vis was so poor!)

This weekend I am spending on La Digue and Praslin, two other islands that are apart of the Seychelles. On Wednesday, I am going to Curieuse Island for four nights...I am really excited about that because I get to see the Giant Tortoises and there are a lot of sharks and turtles in the water when you go snorkeling. (Yes, I am excited about seing sharks!)

The ferry over to Praslin and then to La Digue was AWESOME. Man I love the ocean. Huge roller coaster waves...I guess the fetch for the waves was the entire Indian Ocean so...makes sense!

Anyways, I got to jet... I am sure the internet here is costing me an arm and a leg.

XOXO.
- Sazzle << my UK nickname.

http://picasaweb.google.com/stokey.s/TheSeychelles#

These are pictures from my first few days here... Hope you like them. I couldn't figure out how to make a slideshow on here... I will keep trying though. Enjoy!

So I just finished a circumnavigation of Mahe island. It's taken about 3 hours and has been quite unexpected but very awesome indeed. My favorite part (hands down) was watching this big family of Rottweilers running along the beach and playing in the water. Man, do I love dogs!

The weather here has simply been rain! rain! rain! and although I seem to be impervious to getting too down about it, it does get quite annoying. It hasn't effected diving and I do find it rather cool looking up underwater, watching the rain pellets beat against the surface of the water.

There isn't too much reporting to do. This week we continued diving and learning our fish which culminated with a fish exam on Friday. We needed a 95 to pass and to begin doing our research. I passed. Yeehaw! I am now an Indian Ocean fish expert...or at least I can pretend I'm one.

Our fish couts are really important in helping determine how healthy the reef is as many of the fish we count feed directly on the corals. Other fish we monitor are for fishing and tourism purposes. It's important to monitor the species that are fished because mmany of tyhem are predators and if they are over-fished it can cause huge imbalances on the reef. Bay Ternae, where we are diving, is incredible. In 1998 it suffered a severe coral bleaching due to high water temperatures and 95% of the reef died. The reef has bounced back however and coral cover is back to about 40% -- good progress for 11 years.

This week we started doing turtle dives where we specifically go look for turtles, but unfortunately, no one found any. The day after, on a none-turtle dive, we found six of them. A little ironic. We also saw two squid.

Last weekend I ate octopus for the first time and it was delicious. This past friday night we threw a big creole barbeque and I must say, it was fantastic. The food was incredible. For desert we literally had sweet potatoes. They were potatoes in this sugary cream sauce. I like potatoes, so I was a fan.

Other than that life has been pretty low-key. I started another book. Atlas Shrugged. I've been wanting to read it for awhile and they had it on the communal book shelf here. Considering it was 1000 pages, I figured it would be good to pick up a book that might take awhile....

Yeseterday I found some ferral kittens starving in the woods and so unbelievable wet that it pretty much broke my heart. I couldn't just leave them outside so I ended up making them some porridge and milk and leaving it out for them. We aren't supposed to feed the cats but the poor things were nothing but skin and bones and i really just couldn't leave them there to die...

In response to some comments:
Leigh, I miss you being my arms.
The bull did have horns, though they were tiny. And yes, it has tried doing it again...

I also got hit by an eaten mango falling out of a tree yesterday after a fruit bat ate it. These things are massive and pretty cool but it scared the bajeeebers out of me. I was really confused as to why there was eaten fruit falling out of the sky. I've been cooking a fair amount and the other day found my own coconut, then husked it, drank the milk, and ate it. It was pretty delicious but the order of operations to get to the actual eating takes awhile, unless, you know, you are Seychellois and then it takes you about 10 seconds. (Took me about 45 minutes).

I wish I had some cooler stories to tell but between the weather and having to learn 100+ fish there hasn't been a whole lot of time to adventure. Plus, when we are on the base, we really can't leave. We do get to walk to the shop which is about (according to another trip member) "a 45 minute arduous treck through the hills" ... it really isn't that bad, but it is a bit of a journey doing it there and back. If I go, I usually only get an icecream but today they had chocolate! So exciting. Rollos are amazing especially after not having any chocolate for WEEKS.

Things I've liked a lot so far: Homemade bread, making bread, time to read, brainstorming for writing, coconuts, Seybrew (the local beer), diving, small sharks, bumphead parrotfish, humphead wrasse, Morray eels, sea turtles,

British drinking games, British expressions, British phrases... ok side note potato chips are "crisps." weird... Also they don't know the difference between jam and jelly... They also don't believe in creamy peanut butter, fluff, or peanut butter and jelly.

Things I miss: My family, Eel pond, the sail boat, friends, faltown, hiking, rock climbing, The loj, nuhoc, clam chowder, lobster bisque, swordfish at scraggy, Scraggy in general, Basset's Island, The Phusion, Water-skiing, QBA, Old Silver, Alaska (ok so that's not at home, but whatever), Bookstores that sell books in English,

Cool things I've learned: how to use a compressor, how to open and eat a coconut, fish and then of course more fish, what I want to do in the fall, what I want to do when I graduate,

Things I want to do before I leave: Go to th UNESCO world heritage site in Praslin, Go to Praslin, Go to La Digue, See a Whale Shark (fingers crossed),

What I hope to accomplish this week: read more of Atlas Shrugged, learn how to survey under water, Figure out a way to go to the Unesco World heritage site next weekend, Boulder, Help GVI start a vegetable patch on base, go fruit picking in the middle of the woods.

cool beans.
Miss you all. Keep the comments coming and put your name! not anonymous!
<3

Wow! It has been so long since my last update. (my apollogies) I am going to try and give a little summary of what I've been up to this last week...

On Friday a whole group of us who had been staying at the same hotel had to wake up extremely early to get picked up by the GVI Staff. It seemed like it took ages for them to arrive even though they got there pretty much right on time. After they picked us and some other people up we drove across Mahe (the main island) to get to base camp. The ride was fairly long and we had to go up some very windy, mountainous roads but the views were always amazing.

Our driver, Mario, along with his wife (Valerie) run base camp. On our drive, Mario filled us in on some local laws ect. ect. The most bizarre was that the legal drinking limit is 8 beers so they advised us to be very careful about walking at night or if we rented a car, driving. Fortunately, there are no roads where anyone can go particularly fast on because they are all so curvy and that death by auto accident is a very rare occurence. (Still doesn't make you feel safe though...)

Base camp is an old government bordering school. I wish I could describe how forsaken the place looks. Old derilict buildings dot the area as if that sort of thing were normal. None of them have roofs because the wood and beams were all stolen/taken for other building projects. The place would be perfect for a game of man-hunt or capture the flag if we ever had enough energy to put something together...

The building we live in is functional, albeit old, and it does have a roof. (Yeehaw!) The building across from us, doesn't so late at night when the moon is out and its eerily still and the fruit bats are making a racket, it's more than a little creepy...

The rest of the afternoon we spent unpacking, going through rules, health and safety stuff, blah blah blah... And then EMMA FINALLY ARRIVED. Half-way through the day, after her plane got delayed (again). She had spent the last several days in Dubai just hanging out by herself which she said was more than a little odd, especially because she's a woman.

The big group of us went out for a snorkel and when we came back we had a nice lunch... I'm not going to bore you with the details...

On Saturday, those of us who were not adveanced open water divers started working on that course which meant we got to go diving! We do all our diving in Bay Ternay and it is absolutely incredible. I love seeing all the fish swim by.

For our advanced open water certification we had to do five dives: underwater navigation, peak performance bouyancy, deep diver, naturalist, and boat dive (which is every dive we do) I did these five dives over the course of the last week and it was amazing how doing each really improved my ability to dive, plus we got to see some really cool stuff.

The procedure for diving off the boat is very regimented and very well organized, which is nice and over the course of the last week we've all adjusted to it and learned the rules and regulations.

I think so far my favorite part has been all the cooking we have to do. I've enjoyed making bread and cookies, calzones, and cakes as well as lending a hand to whoever is making whatever. Hopefully, I'll be able to cook when I get home.

Cool things seen this week: Coconut crabs, 2 meter guitar shark (google it), moorish idol,

Cool things done: Went into the woods and found bananas, used a machete, made calzone from scratch, did an emergency responder course, walked to a waterfall, ate shark (just a bite), almost finished House of Leaves (amazing but very intracate book), went bouldering (awesome), drew a sweet painting for a staff member for her birthday, got head-butted by a bull,

sorry this is so short and lame. I'm giong to have to think of a better way to post what I'm doing because an hour in the internet cafe + skyping makes it really hard to write good posts.

Ciao Bella
- Sass