The Seychelles
March 13, 2025
Today we arrived for our visit to the main island of the Seychelles called Mahé, home to the capital of the country called Victoria. I’ve been so confused because our last stop was in Malé in the Maldives, and I thought someone messed up and kept posting the wrong destination. I have it figured out now! Anyway, a little background on the Seychelles is that the country is an archipelago (group of islands) of 155 stretching over 1 million square kilometers. It is off the coast of Africa and although it’s the continent’s smallest country and has the lowest population of about 115,000 it has the most prosperous GDP. Victoria ranks as the world’s smallest capital with a population of ~24,000 people. It was discovered first by pirates in the 1700’s followed by the French and then the Brits kicked them out and it finally it became its own country in the 1970’s. It’s truly a melting pot of every race and religion. There are 3 official languages: English, French and Creole. The literacy rate is an amazing 99%, clearly the highest in Africa. What I found particularly interesting is that it wasn’t inhabited by any humans until the pirates came. I was trying to think of any place that I’ve ever visited that hadn’t had an indigenous people and I can’t come up with one. I might add here that I forgot to mention that people have been living on the Maldives our previous port for over 4000 years.
Today was different for us because we were scheduled to dock at 10AM so there was no “big reveal” of our destination when we opened our curtains in the morning as we’ve had in our previous stops. Instead, we could watch the docking on this enchanting island. It, along with several others nearby rise out the ocean with amazing greenery and mountains. They are not volcanic like Hawaii though, they’re made from granite with massive edifices. Luckily our stateroom is on the on the port side of the ship where we could watch the docking. Our first impression was that if Oahu in Hawaii had a teeny tiny baby this was it.
We had a shore excursion scheduled at 1:30PM to take a 3-hour tour around this petite island and so we figured we had time to disembark and wander around a bit at the dockside until the tour departed. That is, until we got closer to the dock, and it hit us smack in the face – the smell. Who knew we would moor right next to the IOT (Indian Ocean Tuna) factory, one of the largest tuna processing plants in the world. With the heat and humidity, the odor was so strong and pervasive that the only thing I can compare it to is when we once encountered a dead whale on a Pacific Coast beach years ago. We shut the door to our balcony quickly, hoping to avoid the smell. No such luck, the stench followed us and then started coming in through the air conditioning. Blarg – we knew that we better eat some lunch before our adventure, but with that smell, it was going to be a challenge. I looked around for something to mask the smell while we ate, so I grabbed a spray can of natural citronella insect repellant and sprayed around the room, and it gave us a little relief. The strong smell was to permeate the entire ship until we sailed away at 10PM. Yuk!
Back to our adventure, we gathered our accoutrements, that is hats, cooling cloths, ID’s, water bottles etc. and were happy to head down to the bus that hopefully would take us away from this torment. Sure enough, within just a few minutes we were on our little 20 passenger tour bus escaping the reeking factory. I’ll elaborate on the tour in the pictures below.
But, just to follow up on my postcard search the tour guide told us that the post office was closed and would be gone soon as would the cash. All communication would be electronic as would the currency. Even your driver’s license would be virtual. I immediately wondered about what if some baddie got hold of the country’s internet, they might be in a bit of trouble. But I guess this is the future.
Regardless of the smell (only in the dock area) and the electronics our final judgement of the Seychelles was definitely 5 out of 5 stars. If anyone wants to make the trek for an exotic vacation, we think a stay on an island here would be an absolute dream.
Pulling into Victoria, island of Mahé, the Seychelles
Our first stop was the 200 year old botanical garden with the amazing Coco de Mer tree that only grows in the Seychelles and is extremely valuable and protected.
Tod with one of the pods that can grow to almost 30 pounds. The reason they don’t grow anywhere else is that the pods sink, instead of floating like regular coconuts.
Tod and a coco de mer planted by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1956. It has become a tradition for every visiting head of state to plant one when they visit.
See if you can spot all the hanging fruit bats in the tree. They are the only mammal indigenous to the islands. They just suck the juice from the fruit and drop the rest and they eat bugs too. They’re also known as “flying foxes” and are the largest bats in the world.
Me and one of my tortoise pals. They encourage you to stoke their heads because they love it! Talk about a petting zoo.
Downtown Victoria - An exact replica of Little Ben of which the original is located in London
Clothing store in a colonial building downtown with mannequins outside on the second floor. Some are facing the street and some are facing the wall. Kind of creepy…
Granite mountain, native hawk and the jungle
Cinnamon tree (white bark). Oil comes from the leaves and spice comes from the bark.
View down to our ship - center left
The dynamic duo in front of the jungle. We’ve never seen such dense and mature foliage. Some of the trees were absolutely massive and hundreds of years old.
Another deserted beach. Still driving on the left. Did I mention how clean the island was? I don’t think we ever saw a piece of trash.
View of some neighboring islands with a massive yacht dead center in the water. Apparently it belongs to some Sheikh. Seychelles are BFF’s with Abu Dhabai. There is a palace on one of the mountains.