Oh it's lovely to be home! We got home late Friday night from our 2 week holiday - 10 days in the Seychelles and 3 nights in Dubai (2 full days).
Both countries were so fascinating and so different from each other. My aunt, her husband and their 2 kids are living there so we stayed with them, which is the main reason we went. It was so good to see them, my cousins are 10 and 12 and such nice kids. They're both boys and play well together, are polite, intelligent, and just enough rascal in them to make them fun.
***** This next few paragraphs is about the history, and about the country itself, so if you don't care, skip to the next lot of asterisks!
The Seychelles was interesting. The government is incredibly corrupt, and their economy makes the US economy look awesome. There's only 85,000 or so people there, and natives don't leave the country, so everyone knows everyone, and the Police don't like to arrest anyone because they're probably related to them. The Seychellois are black, and there's a lot of white Australian, New Zealand, British and South African ex-pats there. It's the sort of place where the black work for the white, but they are treated well, and the private maids/gardeners etc get paid better than most other jobs on the island. Generally the women work, and the men sit around all day drinking and playing dominoes.
It all stems from a badly run government, who give pensions to pretty much anyone who wants one, and never bothers putting money into industry, or other important facilities, although they are finally getting better schools, and most Seychellois under 25 have a reasonable education, but I think it will take a couple more generations before they start questioning how things are being run, wanting better jobs and more opportunities.
As well as that, there have been a few attempted coups in the 70s and 80s - one of which overthrew the government, so I get the impression the government is trying to make sure it doesn't happen to them by suppressing the people. Apparently people are not allowed to wear camoflauge gear (army type shirts, shorts etc) as fashion because they see that as a threat. Seychelles has a high GDP but also is the worlds most indebted nation. The government can't mange their finances, so they borrow from all over the world and can't pay it back. When they get short of money, they just print more (but they can only use that within the country since it's not listed on the world exchange, so it just devalues the currency even more).
So it was very interesting being in a country that is considered an island paradise, but so badly run. They don't really care about tourists, and don't seem to realise how much money tourism brings in - people steal from the tourists at every opportunity, and we couldn't get cash out from any of the banks, so it was lucky that we had relatives who could change USD for us.
*****
Apart from that though, the beaches were gorgeous, the water the most amazing blue, very clear, so great snorkelling, and a perfect temperature. We had a fabulous time, and went out one day swimming with the whale sharks. We did it with the Marine Conservation Society of Seychelles who are researching primarily whale sharks. Whale sharks are a shark, but they are filter feeders like whales, and the largest of the fish species. Nobody knows a lot about them, so it was fascinating being part of a research group - they were telling us what they're doing and what they know, and the guy running it has done National Geographic shows on whale sharks, so he was pretty knowledgeable. Apparently they only really get juvenile males at the Seychelles, and most other countries that get whale sharks are the same, so they have no idea where the females hang out, and what the older males do. They've fitted tracking devices to 4 sharks in the area, including 2 sharks that were feeding in the same area at the same time - one device fell off almost immediately, one shark went north, one went east and one went south, so they seem to have no pattern.
So with the whale sharks, with the research group, they have 2 guys go up in an ultralight spotting the whale sharks from the sky, so we hang out in the boat until they find one - they called down saying they couldn't see any, and we got quite disappointed, so they started doing their other research stuff (testing the water temperature and krill levels at difference depths), then the ultralight radioed down saying they spotted one, so they guided us to the area, and we were all searching the water looking for it, and finally found it, so jumped in with our snorkelling gear and followed it. It was amazing. It was about 6m (20ft) long, and just moving slowly and gracefully. DH and I were the first to it, and they'd told us to stay behind it's dorsal fin so as not to scare it, so we moved back a bit, and it started turning and following us! They like swimming in the bubbles of fins apparently, so it turned about 90 degrees while it followed us. It was absolutely wild. He dove down again for a bit, and we lost him, but he came back up a bit later, and we swam with him again - this time he stayed up for longer, and we got to follow him for a while.
Anyway, enough blabbing
Here's the whale shark we swam with:
And some fish from our favourite snorkelling spot
A batfish - this guy was about 20cm (8 inches) from top to bottom
If you look closely you can see what I think is a pufferfish
The fish really weren't bothered by us!
And above water:
This is one of my favourite photos, shows the beauty of the place. This is on a hike we did to a beach called Anse Major.
Anse Major beach
View form the deck at my aunts friends place
This is their private swimming area - we could see fish swimming from the deck!
Random beaches
A random person at a roadside stall
The moon coming up over the tuna boats that had come to port in protest over all the pirate attacks off Somalia
An oil rig turned up as well!
More to come...
Both countries were so fascinating and so different from each other. My aunt, her husband and their 2 kids are living there so we stayed with them, which is the main reason we went. It was so good to see them, my cousins are 10 and 12 and such nice kids. They're both boys and play well together, are polite, intelligent, and just enough rascal in them to make them fun.
***** This next few paragraphs is about the history, and about the country itself, so if you don't care, skip to the next lot of asterisks!
The Seychelles was interesting. The government is incredibly corrupt, and their economy makes the US economy look awesome. There's only 85,000 or so people there, and natives don't leave the country, so everyone knows everyone, and the Police don't like to arrest anyone because they're probably related to them. The Seychellois are black, and there's a lot of white Australian, New Zealand, British and South African ex-pats there. It's the sort of place where the black work for the white, but they are treated well, and the private maids/gardeners etc get paid better than most other jobs on the island. Generally the women work, and the men sit around all day drinking and playing dominoes.
It all stems from a badly run government, who give pensions to pretty much anyone who wants one, and never bothers putting money into industry, or other important facilities, although they are finally getting better schools, and most Seychellois under 25 have a reasonable education, but I think it will take a couple more generations before they start questioning how things are being run, wanting better jobs and more opportunities.
As well as that, there have been a few attempted coups in the 70s and 80s - one of which overthrew the government, so I get the impression the government is trying to make sure it doesn't happen to them by suppressing the people. Apparently people are not allowed to wear camoflauge gear (army type shirts, shorts etc) as fashion because they see that as a threat. Seychelles has a high GDP but also is the worlds most indebted nation. The government can't mange their finances, so they borrow from all over the world and can't pay it back. When they get short of money, they just print more (but they can only use that within the country since it's not listed on the world exchange, so it just devalues the currency even more).
So it was very interesting being in a country that is considered an island paradise, but so badly run. They don't really care about tourists, and don't seem to realise how much money tourism brings in - people steal from the tourists at every opportunity, and we couldn't get cash out from any of the banks, so it was lucky that we had relatives who could change USD for us.
*****
Apart from that though, the beaches were gorgeous, the water the most amazing blue, very clear, so great snorkelling, and a perfect temperature. We had a fabulous time, and went out one day swimming with the whale sharks. We did it with the Marine Conservation Society of Seychelles who are researching primarily whale sharks. Whale sharks are a shark, but they are filter feeders like whales, and the largest of the fish species. Nobody knows a lot about them, so it was fascinating being part of a research group - they were telling us what they're doing and what they know, and the guy running it has done National Geographic shows on whale sharks, so he was pretty knowledgeable. Apparently they only really get juvenile males at the Seychelles, and most other countries that get whale sharks are the same, so they have no idea where the females hang out, and what the older males do. They've fitted tracking devices to 4 sharks in the area, including 2 sharks that were feeding in the same area at the same time - one device fell off almost immediately, one shark went north, one went east and one went south, so they seem to have no pattern.
So with the whale sharks, with the research group, they have 2 guys go up in an ultralight spotting the whale sharks from the sky, so we hang out in the boat until they find one - they called down saying they couldn't see any, and we got quite disappointed, so they started doing their other research stuff (testing the water temperature and krill levels at difference depths), then the ultralight radioed down saying they spotted one, so they guided us to the area, and we were all searching the water looking for it, and finally found it, so jumped in with our snorkelling gear and followed it. It was amazing. It was about 6m (20ft) long, and just moving slowly and gracefully. DH and I were the first to it, and they'd told us to stay behind it's dorsal fin so as not to scare it, so we moved back a bit, and it started turning and following us! They like swimming in the bubbles of fins apparently, so it turned about 90 degrees while it followed us. It was absolutely wild. He dove down again for a bit, and we lost him, but he came back up a bit later, and we swam with him again - this time he stayed up for longer, and we got to follow him for a while.
Anyway, enough blabbing
And some fish from our favourite snorkelling spot
A batfish - this guy was about 20cm (8 inches) from top to bottom
If you look closely you can see what I think is a pufferfish
The fish really weren't bothered by us!
And above water:
This is one of my favourite photos, shows the beauty of the place. This is on a hike we did to a beach called Anse Major.
Anse Major beach
View form the deck at my aunts friends place
This is their private swimming area - we could see fish swimming from the deck!
Random beaches
A random person at a roadside stall
The moon coming up over the tuna boats that had come to port in protest over all the pirate attacks off Somalia
An oil rig turned up as well!
More to come...