THE SEYCHELLES

We have a special situation here. I typed up notes for the Seychelles, but Steve Jankowski did a better job. So we have both versions of the journey.

For Steve Jankowski's Seychelles Click Here

For Aaron's Version of the Story Click Here

For Just the Pictures, Click Here


Aaron's Seychellois Notes
May 2, 2001 to May 12, 2001 written by Aaron

Leaving Paris, oh the agony! But on our last day there, Laura and I did see a movie in English, Best in Show and it was very funny. We also ate a little McDonald's, but I'm not supposed to tell you that, so just ignore that. MacDonald's? In Paris? When Laura felt ashamed at our culinery choice, I told her what Judd Nelson told Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club when they sneak out of the library: "Being bad feels pretty good, don't it?" I don't break the rules, I make them.

Since Paris is pretty much behind even the most po-dunk town in Vietnam (Asia starts south of Calais, you know), we couldn't order us a taxi, but had to flag one down to get to the airport. Making fun of the French is almost as much fun as making fun of the British. For a last Paris Flat moment, click here. Steve J. put together a funny little page that caputres the essence of our Paris experience.

At the airport we met Raul Pomares and his girlfriend Ashley. Even that he had a girlfriend was top secret, but she turned out to be funny and nice and was a welcome addition to the team. Now there were six of us for the Seychelles, Laura, myself, Steve, Melissa, Raul, and Ashley. Originally, we would have five more, but then, the stock market began to dig further into the dirt than George W. Bush with a pick-ax in untouched Alaskan wilderness. Hence we were reduced to the bare minimum, six dauntless travelers, winging their way to islands, lost in the blue of the Indian Ocean.

Poor Raul and Ashley. They pretty much flew nonstop and then on the Paris to Mahe leg, they got stuck with bad seats, center seats, yuck. I offered them our seats...no, I didn't offer them our seats because it is bad enough that I have to fly coach. In the words of Jerry Seinfeld, "I can't go back! I won't go back!" It was an overnight flight and we landed in the Seychelles and were back in the heat, and that's when Raul, running on little seat and a bad back took over. It was amazing. It was like watching Brian de Palma's Scarface all over again. Raul had made most of the travel arrangements so we pretty much just had to show up, but like a coked up Al Pacino, he began changing money with locals, bartering for taxi cabs, renting us cars, and just getting us hooked up. I was amazed, as we all were. Raul pretty much made the entire trip happen, and I can't thank him enough. Laura and I were tired of choosing hotels and restaurants and all of that, so with Raul at the helm, we were set. And our exchange rate was incredible. The Seychelles' currency is at a fixed exchanged rate, around 5.50 Seychelles Rupees for a dollar, however, that is just the wishful thinking of the government. The locals were giving us twice that for hard dollars. We had not done this kind of money thing before, we just took the going rate, but we weren't with Raul "The Hammer" Pomares. At the airport, we gazed up the green hills to the waving palm fronds atop the granite cliffsides. Even the airport was beautiful. Here is a quick map of Mahe:

We got into our hotel, ate their shitty breakfast, and then we all crashed. After our nap, Laura and I went snorkeling, and again, we saw what El Nino had done to the coral. Some was trying to recover, but most was dead. We saw some fish, but it wasn't as awesome as we had hoped. We came back and that night, on the advice of a local, we went to a Creole buffet and had wonderful, spicy food. A little history of the Seychelles. For most of their history they were a forgotten French port until the Brits started using the island as a place for slaves they freed once they outlawed slavery. The Brits outlawed slavery over fifty years before the U.S. Civil War, and so when a British ship freed some slaves on the east coast of Africa, they took them to the Seychelles. Add French colonists and some whacked out Christians (enough for everyone even nowadays) and there you have it. The Seychellois are a wide mix of people of varying skin tones, they speak a Creole though I think the official languages are French and English as well as the Creole. "Pada Probleme" is no problem, though I didn't spell that right. Anyway, so with the French influence, the food was good. The grilled tuna, oh baby. The next couple of days we began diving twice a day, all around, ate shitty breakfasts at our hotel on Bao Vallon, but hey, it was free, and pretty much went lunch and dinner to the same pizza place where they had this awesome cabbage salad with smoked fish on top. Also at this pizza place, they had a guitarist/singer who didn't play one Eagles song. Not one. That is an achievement. I gave him money.

Again, with the coral dead, the diving was disappointing. Now the Seychelles are a great place to see whale sharks, but we weren't in the right season, and when it is the right season, the seas can get rough. But more about rough seas a little later. We had friends now to chat with at night so we didn't really focus on long explanations on our dive logs, and the first few dives were pretty much so so. They were fine. Okay. Fair. Steve and Melissa began to pine since the four divers were hanging out, but they were lost in the shuffle. So when Raul wasn't crashing cars or exchanging money, he was getting together a sea cruise for all of us to a protected marine park. I wasn't going to mention this, but...well, they drive on the left hand side in the Seychelles. This means that looking out for the left corner is a main concern but it is hard. I drove us all to dinner one night and nearly got us all killed because I'm used to worrying about my far right corner and not my left (the drivers sit on the right side of the car and I would keep trying to use my right hand to shift). One morning Raul and Ashley went out and Raul got too close to a ditch on the left side and went into it and was rescued by a Seychellois family. Funny thing about the Seychelles, I expected it to be another poor island nation but it isn't. If felt like Malaysia, or the richer parts of Thailand, but the future is uncertain. The government has strong ties to Cuba (though I didn't find cigars outside of the airport), and is more and more embracing a communist/socialist stance. Hence the businessmen are having trouble. Raul told us that if he had known about the political system on the Seychelles he wouldn't have come. The U.S. had had an army base there for decades but finally pulled out when human rights abuses had become scandolous and the Seychelle's government was buddying up with Fidel Castro. Most likely they only did it to get access to his cigars. I would have done the same thing.

As you can see, being above the water was more interesting than being below it, but one of the best days of the entire world trip for me, yes, the past 9 months at the time, was Saturday, May 5, when we went on a diving/snorkeling trip. The weather was nice, the water calm, and the diving was really nice. We saw turtles, but the best thing was the octopi we saw. Laura and I watched entranced at their colorful bodies with their flowing skin and slithering tentacles. The best part of the diving was the octopi, but then we also went to this beach and had a grilled lunch. The dive company was run by a German woman and her Seychellois husband, and when they weren't fighting, they were nice. I figured either they were going to divorce in the next five minutes or stay married through t his life and the next. But they could both cook. We were back in the tropics and the air was heavy, humid, and hot. Actually, this was the first time in the world trip where we dipped down below the equator, four degrees below the equator to be exact. So we were on this wonderful beach, lazying about, eating grilled fish, and loving life. We then went snorkeling, and that was a lot of fun. The rock formations in the Seychelles, that's what everyone goes there for. These huge granite pieces of rock, scattered about, remnants of India's exodus from the African coast. Even the Indian continent itself can't help littering. Anyway, snorkling around these huge canyons of thrown away granite boulders was amazing, and I slithered my way like an octopus around the rocks, up crags to the shoreline, and all around. I had a tense moment with a barracuda, but I showed him who was boss. Laura swam up and chased him away.

That night we ate at a nice restaurant and I drove us there very well thank you. Despite many people's objections at my speed and control. So ended one of the best days of the trip. I must say, it wasn't just scenery and food, it was the people. Being with friends again was really nice.

So on Sunday, begins the worst day of the trip. It is raining like hell and today is the day that I decide to take one of these Indian laxatives that I was saving up because on these islands, there is no fiber. Since the government can make more money selling it to other countries, there was a fruit shortage on the island, and outside of the Western world, whole wheat flour is unknown, so I was a little backed up. So before going out diving, I took a little Indian pill that promised that it was gentle to the system. As gentle as a Dehli-Amritsar train wreck. Now Raul is an experienced sailor so the sea was no problem for him and I usually don't get seasick, but on the way out to the dive site, Laura and Ashley were getting a little green. The waves were rolling and rocking. They Seychelles, like the Maldives, are in open ocean and so the sea can get pretty rough. I was going okay. We got to a world famous dive site, way out there, and then things got worse. Ashley and Laura were giving themselves pep talks, and I was just focusing on getting my gear ready, and we got into the water post haste, the ship thrown about by the crashing waves. Under the water, at these pinnacles, the sea was calm and so was my stomach. We didn't see much, but we did see a huge, and I mean huge, parrot triggerfish. It was probably the size of a shetland pony, and I am not kidding. Other than that gargatuan fish, we saw very little and then were back up to the boat. So here I am, constipated, and then another of my little foibles began to trouble me. I can't pee in a wetsuit. I know, I know, surfers, divers, all of you are saying, but that's how you keep warm. Everyone can pee in their wetsuit. Well, I can't. I've tried, but I can't. We get back into the boat, the waves are Gilligan's Island big, the tiny ship was tossed, and we had to wait to dive again. Between dives you have to have a sufficient surface interval so the built up nitrogen can escape from your system. We waited. I couldn't pee with the westuit on, so I stripped and jumped into the boiling water.

Some men have shy bladder syndrome, which means they can't just stand at a row of urinals and pee. Some men need some privacy. Here I was, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, I had privacy, but I couldn't go. I have stupid bladder syndrome. So I then was back on the boat, putting on my gear, my bladder aching, and then the Indian pills kicked in and I started getting cramps. Oh, and I was seasick from the boat pitching. I usually only get a little sick, just a little, and it's something I can shrug off. Not this time. I was nearly clutching the guardrails and feeding the Sergeant-Major fish. We got our gear back on and dove in. Oh, I wanted this dive to last a long time. I was breathing slow, trying to make that oxygen last as long as possilbe. With the pressure from the ocean, I didn't really have the urge to pee, so that was good, but my stomach was still cramping and I was still nauseous from the waves. Then out of the deep, flapping through the water, a collection of eagle rays drifted toward us, fifteen or twenty, and they were beautiful and then they were gone. All too soon, we were back on the surface, the waves were ten feet and foaming, and I was one hurtin' unit. I must say, I might have enjoyed the ride back to Bao Vallon if I had been able to use a stable toilet, but as it was, I was sick, cramping, nauseous, and needing to pee. We had been on the trip for nine months and that Sunday afternoon, it felt as if all of those nine months had been crammed into the hour long boat ride back to shore. Raul says that in the States, there would have been a small craft warning and we wouldn't have been out there, but this was the third world, life is cheap. I was feeling so awful, when Laura looked at me to see if I was okay, I told her not to look at me. The minute the boat was near the shore, I jumped off, and ran up the beach, across the road, and picked up the keys to the room, all with my speedo hanging down my butt. Just say no to crack. Once on dry land, well, the land wasn't dry under me, if you know what I'm saying. I could relieve myself, finally. I got into the room, took a shower, put on every warm piece of clothing I had, and then sat in front of the TV watching Seychellois T.V. It as a Christmas episode of MARRIED WITH CHILDREN. I was still miserable but then I'LL FLY AWAY came on, a show I never watched but knew about because it had gotten good reviews. An hour later, Dennis the Menace II started in French, and I turned off the T.V. I was feeling better, no, no I wasn't. I swore I would never dive again. We had a dive planned for the next day and I was already cancelling.

But the next day came, and since Laura and I needed money, I went with Raul to town. We left a 7:30, and I was thinking, "Okay, the dive boat leaves at 8:30, we'll never be back in time. Raul had a bunch of things to do, and so i thought I would be safe from getting back onto the dive boat. Wrong. In true American fashion, in true Aaron and Laura fashion, Raul was determined to do all the running around and then get back for the dive. And we did. I had not been rushed for nine months, and soon I was back in the mix, doing too much, fighting against time. No wonder we all have heart attacks and ulcers. Bottomline, the first world needs to learn how to relax, and who better to learn it from than the third world? Once again, I prayed that when Laura and I got home, we could live at a slower pace. We got back, got into our gear, there were two French divers there, pissed off that they had had to wait for us, but then when aren't the French pissed off? Making fun of the French again, have to stop that, but it is so easy. As easy as making fun of Americans. More Octopi, and then we left Mahe.

Click here for Mahe pics, compliments of Steve J., Baby!

La Digue. We took a high speed ferry to Praslin and then another ferry to La Digue, where on of the most famous beaches of the world is. La Digue is like what Koh Phi Phi was like ten years ago. No cars, few people, few roads. It is laid back and there is only one hotel with air conditioning and that is the shi-shi place that's a lot of money a night. Raul had been trying to book us rooms on La Digue, but he never got through to the place where we were staying. We went there hoping for the best. I never would have though that Lolth, Queen of the Demon-Web Pits would own a hotel on La Digue, but she does (by the way, Lolth was from a Dungeon and Dragons module and E. Gary Gygax thought it up, I suppose, but that's the allusion for those of you who don't know). The meanest woman in the Indian Ocean insisted that Raul was full of beans and she hadn't reserved a room for us because Raul hadn't put down a deposit. Nevermind he had spent a week calling the hotel and never getting through, but anyway, Raul and Ashley were staying in this cozy house turned pension and the four of us were out on the streets. I figured we could always sleep on the beach, but Lolth found us a room instead, for one night. We could say with her the next night, but moving turned out to be too difficult and her rooms weren't that nice. I went to her and told her and she said, "You are hurting my bizness!" I felt guilty, but I didn't move to her room.

We stayed at this little place, again, a house turned into a hotel, no Air Con, the room we were in was small and didn't have a bathroom. And it was hot. Hot, sticky, humid, hot. We were unpacking when Melissa came in, smiling nervously and shifting back and forth from foot to foot. "There's a big spider in our bathroom," she said and she said that over and over and I would say that over and over for the rest of the night. She had moved back the shower curtain to shut the window and saw the shadow of the thing on the other side of the shower curtain. I went to check it out and I was facing down Shelob, the spider-monster that attacks Frodo and Sam in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The spider was a classic looking hairy spider the size of my hand, if not a little bigger. I kid you not. I knew that if I didn't kill her quickly, I would lose the courage. I turned to Steve and said, "Steve, shut the door, and no matter what you hear, no matter what I say, don't open it." The door was closed, my fate was sealed. I took up the trashcan and the lid and went in to do battle. I hit it from the other side of the curtain, where Melissa had seen it, thinking to throw it to the floor where I could either step on it or throw the trashcan over it. But even though my swing was mighty and true, the spider clung to the curtain, throwing out a web to support itself. I then knew I had no choice. I hit with the trashcan lid. Crushed against the curtain, I brushed it into the trashcan and then dropped it outside. Either it was eaten or it scampered away, vowing a Morgothian revenge on me, but either way, we had no more problems with spiders. The roaches were big, but roaches aren't a big deal. I flushed one that was doing laps in the toilet at midnight the next night.

That night we ate at the mean woman's restaurant, and the food was fair and the service was bad, but Raul was a hoot! We talked about France, made fun of the French, and Raul went off on his childhood on the Champs Elysee, where his mother would dance for the soldiers, and the soldiers were always very "nice" to him, and it was hilarious. After dinner, we went with Steve and Melissa to check out the shishi hotel, and that's when Melissa decided that the next three nights she would be staying there. At the hotel, you couldn't pay using the Seychelle Rupee, you had to use American Greenback Dollar bills, interesting. As we were walking back, we saw that outside the hotel were a series of flags from countries around the world. Raul saw that the Stars and Stripes waved there not and he was still on a roll from dinner. "Oh," he screamed out into the thick night air, "they can use our currency but they can't even put our flag up. I wouldn't stay there, no way, not until they put our flag up." It was very funny.

The next night we moved into Steve and Melissa's room (even though it hurt mean woman's "bizness"), put up our mosquito net against any further bugs, and stayed there. The old woman who ran the small house was nice and had a daughter and a grandson. The grandson was cute as was their dog. I didn't really sleep much, it was too hot and sticky, but the room wasn't so bad and it was cheap. Raul and Ashley, the family they stayed with was great.

La Digue life was good. We checked out the world famous Anse D'Argente beach, the most photographed beach in the world. The tide was low and so we could walk around among the granite boulders, and we went snorkling, but the water was murky and shallow, and again, above water was just too beautiful. They have these huge turtles there that we took pictures of and we rode around on our bikes, taking everything in. We ate at Raul's place and the food was again superb, as were the people and we even pet the nice dogs. The next day we checked out Praslin, famous for it's coconut butt palm trees. Uh uh. Coco de Mer palms, not cocunut butt plants. But we trapsed around there for a while and then went to another famous beach, driving around the island, noting where the new docks were being built for the cruise ships. You see, big, huge development plans are good for third world countries, no, they are good for the leaders of third world countries. The government can secure loans from the World Bank and then make deals with contractors to work on these huge projects so that the leaders get huge kickbacks. The slower the work drags on, the more the leaders get the kickbacks, and then the more the construction company can make. It's funny, I read all about the Seychelles and there is housing and health care for everyone, guarenteed. Also, there is education and supposedly jobs for everyone. On paper, it all looked good. In practice, thirteen people were making a fortune and the poor people got poorer and poorer. Communism looks so good, it really does look like the answer. I kept thinking that maybe the poor weren't that poor, but the wealth was just redistributed around, so there wasn't that many rich people. But then that wasn't what I was seeing. Again, the Seychelles has a low population, relatively, and they seem to be doing pretty good. But there is trouble. The prices for our stay in the Seychelles were similar to the prices we paid in the Maldives, and let me tell you, if you want to pay out the nose for an island retreat, go to the Maldives. There you get what you pay for. The tourism people in the Seychelles know this but the government sets the prices, no matter what. In the end, that will kill tourism in the Seychelles. And with the U.S. base gone and trade up in the air, the poor really will get poorer.

For a quick pic of Praslin Coco-de-Mer, click here!

We didn't spend much time on the beaches in Praslin because we were too busy eating! Yahoo! We went to this restaurant and ordered way too much food. Raul ordered two desserts and just so I wouldn't be outdone I ordered two as well. Stuffed, we waddled out to the beach and then caught the ferry back to La Digue.

Our final day on La Digue, in the morning we went out to a nearbye island for snorkeling and sunning. This was our best day snorkling by far. The coral was thick there, as it was a protected marine park, and Laura and I swam up to the island, and I climbed up and around on the massive granite boulders, found a hidden beach, and played in the surf. The batfish were nearly tame, having been fed so much by tourists, and though it was a marine park, the locals were fishing there, driving their boats up through the coral to the beach, and one guide was even handling a sea turtle. My lovely wife unleashed her shakti, her unbearable female energy, and I thought the sea would boil from her wrath. While tourism can be an eco-friendly industry, maybe the most eco-friendly industry of all, it can also bring ruin. Too many boats, too many sport fisherman, too many bulletheaded tourist walking on coral or taking coral as a souvenir, and things can get ugly. The Seychelles is far away, and it not that heavily touristed, but it could be, and really, it should be. The people, both the locals and the tourists, need to be educated so that these things are around for our children. They won't be, of course, the earth will be paved, the sea will be as dead as Halong Bay, but it's a nice idea, conserving the natural world.

After our snorkling trip, we hung out at Raul's place. The husband of the house put on Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits, which Steve said, he probably had around for tourists only, but that was okay with me. I loved it! I got a little weepy, listening to Bruce. I missed my home, I missed the plains of Colorado, I missed the past. Twelve years ago I had been stolen away from my homeland and I wanted to go home, finally, permanently. Then we talked with the wife of the house about politics and our impressions of the Seychelles. She told us that the problems the islands faced were bigger than the islands themselves and we wished her luck. We then started talking about American politics, uh oh, and she then said. "You know, that Monica Lewinsky, she is a durty gul, she is not a woman, she is a durty, durty gul. If I saw her walk by I would throw a potato at her." Like many of the people we met, she liked Bill Clinton, was suspicious of George W. Bush, and when I told her my opinion, it was as she thought. She had her suspicions that George W. wasn't that bright of a man. Monica Lewinsky, she maintained, shoud have kept her big, fat mouth shut.

Thursday, May 10, we caught the ferry back to Mahe, and the sea was not cooperating. Melissa was green, I was okay, but others were not. Barg bags all around us were being used with gusto. On the T.V. screen in the first class compartment, where we were, they had an hour long video with this fat Seychellois rock star singing in these cheesy videos squeezed in inbetween tourist info about the Seychelles. I was okay with the sea, but that made me sick. Once on Mahe, we went to a hotel near town, and the cab driver wanted to talk politics again, and so we talked about that once more. That was one of the best things about the Seychellois, and about of the citizens of the countries we have visited, they want to talk about politicts, they are interested in their country. In the States, I am more interested with Mattew Perry's personal life than I am with state legislation that has a direct bearing on my life. Oh, Mattew Perry, be careful. You are walking a dangerous road.

We gave our computer and digital camera to Steve, to take back to California to give it to the Cheeseman's, so they could bring to us in Tanzania, so we'd have it for the safari. We had one last, weary meal, and then the next day, our friends left us. It was just Laura and I once more.

Click here for La Digue pics, compliments of Steve J., Baby!

That day we took off, officially. We hung out at the hotel, I worked on a short story and read, while Laura embroidered. We ate dinner, tried to watch T.V., but the only thing on was THE JAMIE FOXX SHOW (bad, inane, sitcom) and DUE SOUTH (a dumb-downed WALKER, TEXAS RANGER for the rest of us). I'm not sure which was one worse and I spent hours thinking about that. At three in the morning I decided they were equally bad, and then with such a question solved, I could sleep.

With much fear and trepidation, we then left the Seychelles on Saturday, May 12, bound for Johannesburg, South Africa, the most dangerous city on earth.