Around the World: Seychelles

We arrived in the Seychelles on April 1^stafter 5 days at sea. The Seychelles are made up of over 100 different islands that are divided into outer and inner islands. The island we visited was Mahe which is one of the few islands that is made of granite. Scientists think that the Seychelles is the leftover parts of land from when Pangea separated. We decided to do a half day tour and then go out on our own after to see a few other things. Our tour started off with a walking tour of the town. We saw a clock tower to commemorate Queen Victoria’s reign (there is a matching one at Victoria station in London), we went through the local market which sold fruits, vegetables, fish and souvenirs. The market was really busy as we were there mid morning and everyone was buying their food for the day. Next we were headed to the beach. Our guide stopped the bus and grabbed some leaves from a cinnamon tree for us to smell. Mahe used to export cinnamon but they have stopped now, only the people who live on the island use the trees. After that we went to Beau Vaillon Beach which was really nice. The water was really warm and we got to swim for a little bit. After the beach we went to the botanical gardens to see the giant tortoise. They have about 15 of them...they were huge. At the garden our guide pointed out a tree full of fruit bats and explained what they would eat and such. She also told us that the locals love fruit bats and often use them in fruit bat curry...yum. After our tour we went into town again and walked around and then headed back to the ship. As we were sailing away we could see a huge house on top of Mahe’s highest hill which we were told it was owned by the same man who built the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (the tallest building in the world).