Passage to India

This was the title of my second cruise and after our first day visiting the primeval palm forest of the Vallee de Mai, we set out across the Indian Ocean.  Three days at sea to reach our destination, the Maldives.  Some folks get a little stir crazy  after a day or two at sea not to mention three... but I love sea days.  Time to present/hear lectures which is fun and interesting, but really I just love sitting on deck, watching the water, the clouds, seabirds, flying fish... listening to the breeze, the waves... It hasn't gotten old yet!

Eventually the ship does arrive though, and our first few stops were along the lines of sun sand and snorkel... and we suffered through.  The first "landing" was barely that... a wee uplift of sand and coral and a few shrubs, but totally sufficient for a beach snorkel base!  The Maldives claims the lowest high spot of any nation... something like 2.5 meters is essentially the highest "peak" to climb in this island nation!

See how the ship is anchored off shore, then we launch the zodiacs and ferry folks in to shore, usually maybe a 10 minute affair, depending on depths and weather.  I have to say weather over here was lovely... calm seas, no williwas or spontaneous fohn winds to deal with, just tides and currents and a brief rain shower was all we really had to contend with... and not even much of that after hearing stories from folks experienced in the area... pretty uneventful driving really.  (surely I've just jinxed myself though for the UK season!)

Our next landing on the atoll of Fuldihoo was a true experience... I don't know about you but I've always heard of the Maldives as a posh beach getaway hideaway for fancy people... but lo and behold there are locals that live there too!  Haha.  The little I learned has piqued my interest even further regarding the long history of seafaring and trading in the Indian Ocean.  Maldives was an important source of dried fish in the history of trading... boats would come up the coast from Sri Lanka and India, and trade goods for the fish.  

Being a nation made of 100s of specks of coral atolls, there's not much else of an export.  These days the country is importing a lot, and looking to buy land in order to relocate its entire population as the threat of becoming slowly submerged with rising sea levels is turning into a reality.  There was a tsunami a few years ago and not much warning so the people on Fuldihoo climbed up on a bandstand platform that was set up for a festival... that raised platform raised a couple meters off the sand was the HIGHEST SPOT ON THE ISLAND.  Talk about different realities.

 We had a really lovely visit at Fuldihoo, the people were gracious, happy to have us there and share a bit of their world, and put on quite a welcome with traditional dancing, town tour, and demonstration of how life works with traditional tools and making just about anything you might need from some part of a coconut tree/fruit.  This was after passing through the village with its immaculate and well constructed school, pharmacy and health clinic... not at all any sort of primitive living.  At the same time I was chatting with one of the local guides about the social scene and he was saying that there are just a few hundred folks on the small island, two families really but finding someone to marry isn't too hard because its ok for cousins to marry.  But also now more people are meeting each other via Facebook so it's even better.  I wasn't too surprised at this, seeing as all the local guides and other villagers taking pictures of the tourist spectacle that had come to town-- they all had nicer smartphones than we did!

A stingray skim-by as we wait for the zodiacs

Coming ashore

Local men watching the tourist spectacle

My gorgeous guide, and her cousin (they're not married!)

Kids watching the spectacle

Maldives pride at a local shop

Food demo, fish paste and tuna with chilies or some other amazingness slathered on a sort of wheat tortilla chapatti thing... I ate as many as they would give me and my fingers were dripping with goodness!

A few more days of sun and snorkel and then we were off to Incredible India!

Sun and snorkel and...

Well I think the pictures will mostly speak for themselves... More recently it's been a simple life, the Passage to India bit, driving zodiacs ashore for folks to swim/snorkel from the beach, and/or including an anchored zodiac in the mix as a snorkel platform, for folks to check out reef areas in deeper water.

Earlier with the Durrell wildlife trust group we were more active on land but it's morphed into the island and atoll show. Here's a photo of our destinations for the first voyage

Here are some shots from the island of 

Alphonse, in a southern group of Seychelles... a fishing vacation destination, 

but for us it was a nice island walk through an old coconut plantation, relaxing beach, and a spectacular frigatebird colony, hundreds soaring off the north end of the island.

Tying up the boats so we can go ashore

Then there was Aride and Gran Soeur... part of the "inner islands", up north and grantitic with proper forest/vegetation and really interesting geology.

Aride was amazing, tons of seabirds totally unconcerned with a herd of humans wandering around close to their nesting areas... just next to the trail and overhead!

Look at the black blobs up above... Nesting noddies using wet leaves draped over the branches!

And tropicbirds on the ground, and fairy terms on bare branches in the understory...

Banyan fig

Home sweet home... Then there was the awesome geology on Gran Soeur... ancient granitic bedrock uplifted then eroded, it's rather large-crystalled and a bit crumbly... resulting in rounded and fluted shapes... 

Paradise found?  

My last visit in Seychelles was the first day of my second cruise... to Praslin island to the Vallee de Mai world heritage reserve to see the infamous coco de mer... the "sea palm", once thought to grow out in the middle of the ocean and guarded by a mythical Garuda-like protector... the female-shaped nuts that washed ashore only in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and the malabar coast of India inspired legends, assumptions of aphrodesiacal qualities, and royals-only edicts where if you were a peasant and found to be in possession of one you could have your hands chopped off!

A young one growing just to the left of the group of folks, The trees produce the largest leaves, fruits, and seeds of any known plant on the planet.  And the male "organ" is appropriately shaped to complement the female...

Coco de mer nut (female)

Male catkin... Google coco de mer images, you'll find some good ones!

Palm forest... primeval really 

And then we were off, three days at sea towards the Maldives!

Aldabra

After some time at sea heading north from Madagascar (breakfasting outside while watching red footed boobies soar-diving for flying fish...) we reached Aldabra.   this world heritage site was a very interesting environment.  Too quick a visit of course, lots of paying attention to group tours and driving boats so my photos aren't particularly fantastic I feel like.... but they do have a seasonal volunteer program to go and work on conservation projects... hmmmmmmm!

Aldabra is sometimes talked about as the Galspagos equivalent of the Indian Ocean... animals unafraid of people and distinctly evolved in this environment.  The site itself is an elevated coral atoll made of several islands, with a huge interior lagoon... you can't really see across to the other side. As I understand it, Aldabra is named after an Arabic word that means the green land or some such-- after the fact that the lagoon is so large that it reflects upon to the clouds above-- creating a green tinge to the clouds... thus the 'green' place.  Maybe you can see that in this pic, a little aquamarine tinge in the lower middle here?

Within the lagoon there are little blobs of islets, called 'champignon' because with tidal action the limestone has been undercut leaving mushroom shaped islands behind.  The inner lagoon drains entirely at low tide so we had to time our activities correctly or get stuck inside or try to fight against the tide to enter via one of the few inlet channels... Which doesn't really work.  We actually had great luck with our schedule and had a whole morning to access the lagoon, and had an afternoon in a drift snorkel again with the right ride direction.  The lagoon is home to red footed boobies, lots of green and hawksbill turtles (saw some mating actually!), rays, and there is even a resident pod of dugong... We didn't see any but the thought that the island and its seagrass beds are healthy enough to have dugong reestablish themselves on their own.

Cruising the mangrove-lined channels past red footed boobie and frigatebird rookeries

Navigating the shallow lagoon...

Oh yea, and then there's the tortoises...

And tortoise poo... They're herbivores ;)

Dugong had been hunted out in the 17-1800s for food by the seafaring traders that were so numerous in those times... they took tortoises too, turning them on their backs on deck to keep them alive for fresh meat for months... in this way the various species of giant tortoise throughout the islands of the Indian Ocean were exterminated, all but those specific to Aldabra because it was such a remote island ... there they persisted long enough until a conservation ethic developed strongly enough to protect the remaining individuals... now individuals from Aldabra have been exported to other Indian Ocean islands for tourism attraction but also to assist with ecological restoration...  They are herbivores and crop the vegetation back to native plants evolved to persist rather than plants that are tall growing... so in one example on Round Island near Mauritius the tortoises help to control non native plants, allowing for other native species, lizards etc, to rise in number... pretty neat!

Also of note, the giant coconut crabs, tree dwellers and ground scavengers...

Another excellent end of day