Seychelles

Mahe Island

Travel:

Approximately 4 hours and 30 minutes flight from Johannesburg (not the most comfortable flight). The airport is unique and beautiful like everything else on the island, but from safety perspective, hmmm...can be quite challenging place for landing, in my humble opinion.

 












Accommodation:

The hotels are generally well maintained, and managed (hello... for these prices, they better be). The food was exquisite and after we made friends with the chef, who cooked for us all the fish we managed to catch, we were one of the most popular guests of the hotel and  made some interesting friends.

    The garden in front of our room.

The swimming pool - very popular place amongst the European and predominantly French tourists. Why? - I don't know.

View of the restaurant and the bar.

View of restaurant No 2 Coco... something.











The fishing:
Coming from South Africa we were well prepared for rock and surf fishing carrying good and different tackle with us.

On the first day we checked the beach in front of the hotel, we also brought with us flippers, underwater masks and snorkels, I will say the most useful items we took with us. One can hire equipment, but ... I prefer to have my own snorkel, for exclusive use. Swimming with the angel fish, found massive King Fish and the resident Giant Barracuda, inhabiting a hole just in front of the rocks on the photographs. We did not bring with us underwater camera and could not take any photos of the amazing coral reef inhabitants. I promised myself that I will not catch the resident Giant Barracuda, majestic fish and obviously a mother of plenty smaller size barracuda we observed in the area.

I could not even think of harming the big majestic fish. So, the rock and surf fishing part (as we know it in South Africa) turned out to be sorry affair.  I managed to catch plenty of Eels, but nothing else. I found that this guys have some kick in them (electricity) the hard way. One of them knocked out of me the living daylights and send me on my backside on the sand, while trying to unhook the "ESCOM" creature. I purchased mackerel from the fish market for bait and had to tag it along with me through the town in a plastic bag.

National Cultural Centre and me with a plastic bag full of mackerel bait.











Not big on fly fishing and bone fish, I will say that the conventional rock and surf fishing in the Seychelles is very different from what one is used to in South Africa.

The boat fishing though is something else. We manged to catch plenty of fish in no time (no sail fish), I kept some which we took to our friend chef in the hotel for cooking and the rest was given to the crew to sell.

Bonito...  
   

and another one...












The flying fish were plentiful and every time we noticed them gliding past the boat we came close to the rods, sure sign that Dorado is chasing them, and every time we had a reel screaming:

The captain of the boat (right on the photo) was blissfully unaware of the ever present danger of Somali pirates, lurking at all time just off the coast of Seychelles. She was informed about their presence only after we managed to catch plenty of fish. But on a serious note, the Somali pirates are becoming real problem for the Seychelles Government.  On the same day we were fishing they kidnapped entire Seychelouis  fishing boat with the crew. 

Captain courageous with some of the catch.












"Some people" had enough fish to eat for the entire week, every day, lunch and dinner - bonito sushini and  dorado prepared in the most amazing Seychelles traditional way:

 

And of course, we spend plenty of time with a bottle or two of nice french champagne ..... on the beach.

Beautiful islands, beautiful friendly and proud people, one hopes that they will manage to preserve the current way of life for as long as possible... but speaking with the locals one can see that political instability due to corruption, drug abuse amongst young people are starting to appear like a dark clouds on the horizon of this truly idyllic islands.