Travelog for: Nami Geneveva

It's my turn to go along today. We drove south through Anse Royale


turned towards the mountains



it got pretty green




then the car stopped.




I wonder where we are. I could see down into the bay.

lots of plants and flowers


and there's this house.

Now what's this? Aldabra Giant Tortoises live here. First they were further away, but when I wanted to have my photo taken with them, one of them came to see what I am. I guess they are used to human tourists but not to toyvoyagers.




It's good that tortoises generally don't make any sudden movements.

We're at the Jardin du Roi. It's located in the mountains above Anse Royale. Close to here was the first and biggest spice plantation of Seychelles. It burnt down but a local family founded the new Jardin du Roi close to the original place and started cultivating all the spices that first made the islands rich. I had no idea what soem of the plants look like that our normal spices or  fruit come from.




Here's a male coco d'mer palm. 


coffee


curry


vanilla


 
A beautiful view of Anse Royale with the Île Souris.

 

grapefruit



Here we are going down the plantation, through bushes that are used as a hold for the vanilla plants.





cacao



nutmeg




papaya


Isn't the landscape amazing?



Below the plantation there's a small farm.


Cows seem to mostly be held like this here.







On top again.

Then we went up from the house. The property is more extensive than it seems at first sight.


pretty


different kinds of chicken, small turtles and fruitbats were kept in cages like these. I hope they also get to walk free a bit.


mahogany



We opened a freshly fallen nutmeg.



You can never be far from the ocean on these islands.

A look back at the house.

citronelle

fire tree



What a great root. Aren't we photogenic?





A frog-mummy.



Are those his killers?


How tall...


Look, some sensitive flowers (or Kräutchen Rührmichnichtan "little-herb-don't-touch-me" in German) They closed when we touched them.



What could this be?

These are some unusual roots.


A view over the forest.


Pride of Barbados

These snails have become something of a plague on the islands.


Here are the fancy chicken.




Jackfruit or Pomme Jacko



Frangipani


Here we get a better look at them than otherwise, but it's still great to see them fly. They sail in the air, even now at midday and when they land in a tree there's usually already another one there and the greet each other more or less friendly, usually it sounds like less.




The baby Aldabra Giant Tortoises are kept seperate. The might be young and small for such a tortoise, as they get over 150 years old and over 300kg heavy, but they are huge to me.


A way to tell someone to go away in German is to tell them to go where the pepper grows. Well, we're there.





Corosol



lemon


Here's another one of those huge palm spiders, luckily they stay in their nets. (as far as we've seen in a total of 3 weeks on Seychelles with lots of those spiders everywhere)




tree of life



Lots of pepper again, they sell in in the little shop off the restaurant and use it for the food.



You see that there are these granite rocks everywhere. Here under teh cover of the palms they are less bizzarly shaped from the water.




Breadfruit and banyan



sugar cane



Next there's the banana plantation.







The fruitbats were here to feed.

We can even hear some from up there in the tree. Sometimes one can see an outline when they move or see their brown heads.

There's one flying very high.


These fruit are called coeur de beuf. The are kind of creamy inside.

It's called Jardin du Roi because the family who owns the land and runs the plantation claims to derive from the mysterious Monsieur Poiret, who landed in Seychelles in the early 19th century. 
The story goes that in 1802 a bit sailing boat unexpectedly anchored before Victoria and from it came a young man who was accompanied by a distinguished older gentleman who introduced himself as Dangreville and the young man as Monsieur Poiret. Monsieur Poiret planned to settle on Mahé for a few years, he stayed forever.
Monsieur Dangreville arranged for a house and servants for the young man and then left as suddenly as he'd arrived. Even though there are exact logs about arrivals and departures, there's noentry of the name of the ship that brought Monsieur Poiret or with which Monsieur Dangreville departed. There are however documents that Gouverneur Queau de Quincy gave M.Poiret a piece of land and slaves. M. Poiret was well-respected but kept himself isolated. Ha planted cotton and rice and at some point married the daugther of a settler. They had two daughters, named Marie Lisette Dauphine and Marie Elise Dauphine, traditional names of the French royal family. Rumors spread, that M.Poiret was from that family, might even be the Louis XVII himself.
Monsieur Poiret didn't talk about his origins until much later and to this day his story couldn't be verified.
He claimed his father had been King Louis XVI, who'd been executed. He himself had been imprisoned and been rescued by royalists in 1793. Someone had bribed the guards and replaced him with another boy. After that they had hidden him in churches and on farms until Monsieur Dangrville could accompany him to Seychelles. The governor, who was partial to the French royal family, had eased the formalities for his immigration to Seychelles.
When Monsieur Poiret died at age 74, copies of letters from 1800 were found, in which the 18-year-old son of King Louis XVI asked for help among the European nobility. His family still owns silver with the emblem of the French kings.
The small museum on the plantation is dedicated to old agricultural methods and this theory.



I don't even want to know what all this is.

old maps





There are more than a hundred theories about what happened to Louis XVII. Many are obviously false. This is one of the more believable in the eyes of the experts.

A real coco de mer. The are protected, only those with an official green number may leave the island.

You can see why it's from the female palm, opposed to the seeds, which we saw earlier on the male palm. Other than on a botanical garden like this, they only grow on two islands: Praslin and Curieuse.


We had lunch at the restaurant. It was really good.



There's even more than we've seen. We went a short way into the water garden.

Refreshed by lunch, we started out again. We drove back to the coast and then around the south of the island.




On the west coast we reached Baie Lazare.





We decided to take a walk along the beach.


Another little canal that drains into the ocean with the tide.



There were lot's of these little Portugese men-of-war at the beach. In Germany they are called Spanisch Galeeren.

We climbed on a huge rock directly at the water and had a great look. It was windy but refreshing.





This is where we came from.


Then we drove home and watched the clouds rise over teh mountains.

We got some yellow-fin tuna tonight. It was really big! The man who takes care of us in the house also bought it for us and is taking it apart expertly. So nice!


First the fins came off.



In Germany we say that 'dinner has been saved'.

Today we are watching common mynahs. They are introduced birds and are on their way to becoming a problem, because the compete with native and local birds for nesting places and may eat their eggs.


They were very shy and careful. We had to sit out there for a while for them to come near us. They mainly circled us the whole time.

We went to the beach again today.


There's a breadfruit tree.



This pretty and curious seasnail is a nerita plicata. She trying to see what disturbed her.









Another African landsnail, they are everywhere.

We went golfing on the local golf course today. It's not part of a hotel and only has 9 holes, but theyhave different starting marks, so they are counted as 18 holes. The clouds early in the morning keep  it from being unbearably hot and sunny.


The palms are devious, they are so thin but the ball generally hits them because the fairways are that narrow and normally the ball is catapulted on the next fairway instead of the one I'm playing on at that moment.

Very scenic, probably with ocean view.


This Seychelles Giant MIllipede is an endemic species. It eats rotting leaves and is mostly nocturnal.

We found a local artist who paints islands scenes on silk.

Not far from the house there's a craft village where handmade souvenirs from Seychelles are offered.
This is the restaurant and some shops.



Afterward we drove to Anse à la Mouche.



And to Anse Boileau.

We wanted to visit the tea plantation up in the mountains today.
This is the view going up the road above Victoria.


Here we are at the ruins of a boys' school run by monks. When there are no clouds one has a beautiful view but the mountains were hanging in the clouds once again giving the ruins a haunted atmosphere.







This is supposed to be a view to the ocean at a different time.





Next we drove to the tea factory. We coudl see the tea fields from the car.

We wanted to have some tea. It was 3:30 and they were supposed to be open until 4, but...time is relative here and the ladies were closing up the tea room already and the truck with the workers from the tea factory left when we arrived.
We just had a quick look around and then drove on.



Some people were planting new fields.



We found a great point for a view of the next bay and the small islands before it. It was sunny but the light was filtered by the trees and then by the camera.






We drove up to Port Glaud. Here's a church. They'd just had a funeral and we saw the procession. People weren't dressed darkly but in their sunday best with hats and flower prints.

We spend our last day on Mahé at our beach.




The water was at a very low point and we could walk away from the beach a long way. There were a number of deeper pools. 


a sea-cucumber

Picking up a coral often brought surprises. Do you see something hiding here?

It's a seastar with little spikes, like a hedgehog.



We went up the road at our house a little way.


There are a few more houses behind ours. They are head to see by daylight because the rule is that a building may only be as high as the vegetation around it. By night one can see all the lights and see how many houses there are all along the side of the mountains. To stop the building of more houses there, there's the Eden project. The made an island close to the shore not far from Victoria. It's called Eden island and will be comploetely covered with villas, small appartment buildings with big appartments, parks and sports facilities. We saw the advertisements and the on going work.




After packing our bags we could relax in the garden one last time.