Microlight Trip (with Videos!)

Best. Day. Ever. I spent 2 hours up in the microlight cruising around Mahe looking for whale sharks with one of the pilots from MCSS (Marine Conservation Society Seychelles). The microlight is basically a hanglider with a lawn mower motor attached to it. A pilot goes up in the microlight everyday (weather permitting) during whale shark season to search for whale sharks in the area.  The seats are not much more than a car seat and your feet dangle off the sides. It was definitely one of the most amazing things I have ever done, in fact it probably even tops sky diving. We flew anywhere from a few meters above the ocean to over 4000 feet above the island, went through the clouds (which don't taste like marshmallows unfortunately, they just taste moist), did a low flyover through one of the marine parks and I got to steer it for a bit - which is quite fun and terrifying at the same time. Oh, and we saw two whale sharks - the first ones I've seen since being here. One was deeper in the water and just a dark shadow and the other one was feeding on the surface, so I got a good look at it and some video - pretty amazing!


Checking out the first whale shark - the deeper one - looks like a dark shadow




Cruising above the water looking for whale sharks




Fly by over the whale shark at the surface

Regatta

Here are some select shots from the Regatta Weekend here in Beau Vallon from a few weekends back. Regatta does involve some boats and sailing, but it was mostly a three day long block party with lots of food tents selling everything from creole curries (kari) to French style crepes filled with nutella and bananas to fried chicken and chips. There were also tons of souvenir stands with tacky little things to buy, along with some really nice local art and handmade bags and shirts. No, I didn't buy you anything, sorry. There were also games for the kids and and for adults, lots of cheap drinks - Seybrew and Takama to be exact. It was a fun weekend for locals and tourists - below are some of my favorite scenes from the weekend. 

Fire at the Dive Shop

Things have been a wee bit nuts here over the past week to say the least. In the early morning hours last Wednesday, the dive shop burned to the ground. It shared a building with the hotel pizzeria restaurant and apparently something in the kitchen caught fire in the middle of the night, spread to the Underwater Centre and it went up in flames. When we walked up to work around 8am on Wednesday, there was a fire truck outside and they were hammering plywood up into place around the buildings to prevent anyone from going inside. All we could see were the tops of the burn timbers and what used to be the roof, but was now a black messy hole.  Most everything in the dive shop was destroyed – all the equipment, tanks, paperwork, and tools collected over the years, everything is gone. Thankfully there were no injuries as since it happened in the middle of the night when no one was around. A few random things survived – various tank bangers made of stainless steel, a few random pieces of equipment that happened to be tucked away in the right spot, and some of the big metal shelves are warped, but usable  I don’t have any photos, as it just didn't feel right to go around snapped pics of the devastation, but it is pretty bad. The roof is gone, 3 of 4 walls are gone, the entire interior that used to be 3 rooms is one big burned mess, most of the tanks are half or completely melted – it was literally a hot mess and still steaming during the day on Wednesday. We spent Wednesday talking to clients who had booked dives for that day, telling them about the fire and that the plan was to have dives up and running by Friday, since the boats were fine as they are stored in the water, away from the shop. However, by Thursday the owner had managed to set up a new temporary shop on the other side of the hotel, brought in new gear from storage and from other dive shops and had dives going out a mere 24 hours after the fire.  She seriously might be the most resilient woman I’ve ever met.  She could beat any film production crew’s ability to get an incredible amount of work done in a very short time and with very limited resources. By Friday, the boats were full again and we were back to diving 3 times a day, as usual.  One of the positive things to come out of this is seeing how everyone at the shop has come together to rebuild  – sharing their gear, working extra days, laughing and continuing to dive and have a great time with the clients and each other in the aftermath of the fire, especially since the  Seychellois instructors, divemasters and skippers lost most of their own personal gear in the fire as well.  I felt fortunate to be working at the shop and doing my divemaster with these guys before the fire, and now I appreciate them even more.  Each day, the owner brings in more gear for everyone to use until they can get proper replacements. As for me, I had limited gear of my own, so I didn’t lose much – only my wetsuit, mask, fins and a few small random items – things that are totally replaceable. There are plans to have the dive shop rebuilt in the next few weeks so it should be back to business as usual soon with new and improved facilities. In the meantime, we are still working and diving most every day, with the only limitations on diving being based on the number of tanks available and proper gear to outfit everyone.  The temporary shop looks as good as any other dive shop – if you’d never seen the Underwater Centre before the fire, you’d never know that this is only the temporary shop.  On top of the fire, the internet was down last week as well, so that is another reason I’ve been a bit out of touch (or totally silent and completely unreachable). Apparently a ship dropped its anchor on the fiber optic cable that connects us with the rest of the world, but obviously that too has been fixed and I’m back to being kind of reachable and online every few days (hopefully).

 That is pretty much all I have to report at the moment  - everyone is safe, the dive shop is getting rebuilt and I am still diving almost every day. Oh, and I still get to see this every night from my flat...

and sometimes I even get to wake up to this....

Tough life. 

First Week at the Shop

This past week has been a whirlwind of settling into the new place, working, learning, reading, diving, studying, cooking and sleeping. We started work at the dive shop last Monday. Our first day involved meeting everyone - the owner Glennis and her husband David (who runs the MCSS program), the instructors Tony and Sabrina, the other divemasters (DMs) Michael and Yannick, the skippers Andrew and Mervin and the two assistants Hera and Jeaneve (pretty sure I just butchered the spelling of both of their names. Sorry guys). Glennis and David are originally from the UK but have lived here in Seychelles for over 30 years running the dive shop. Everyone else that works at the shop is Seychellois.
The first couple days were spent learning the ins and outs at the shop - cleaning and sweeping up in the morning, setting all the tanks and gear out for the clients, going over the knowledge reviews in our DM books and going out on dives to observe how the DMs run their dives and learning the sites, since a handful of them are new to us. By day 3 we were leading small groups on our own, usually following one of the instructors or other DMs and their small groups. But by the end of the week we were sent off on our own leading small groups of no more than 4 people. Pretty awesome! I've had some pretty incredible dives - at Grouper Point we had the best visibility I've ever seen here (over 20 meters, at least) and saw a 2 meter long white tip reef shark, a group of eagle rays, a group of squid, and the usual gorgeous fish swimming around. The visibility dropped later in the week, but still had really nice dives and I even saw two octopus and two hawksbill turtles at that same sight yesterday. The shop has 3 dives per day and on busy days I've been on all 3, other days I spent most of the day in the shop helping out and talking to clients, which is quite fun since they come in from all over the world. I had my 100th dive this week - which is pretty exciting considering I came here 3 months ago with only 4 dives under my weight belt (dive joke, har har.). I didn't have any photos to document it though, as I was out with a client and taking photos just ain't appropriate (yet). Instead I've created these handy maps that show the bay from our balcony and the approximately location of some of the dive sites (in red) and our shop and other stuff (in black). Also below is a map of Mahe to show where the GVI base is and where I am now. Nerd alert, I know. What can I say, I like maps - clearly an inherited trait from my mom.

The New Flat (That's Apartment for you Americans)

Last weekend started the second phase of my time here in Seychelles - three months living in Beau Vallon and interning at the Seychelles Underwater Centre working towards my divemaster certification (DM, if you will).  When we arrived at our new place, the flat was a bit of a mess with broken beer bottles on the balcony, a few weeks worth of trash in the kitchen, and my personal favorite - the neighbor's cat wandering around aimlessly inside. Now that we've done a camp clean or two and scrubbed the place down, it sparkles and shines and is quite nice - especially the washing machine and hot showers. Oh and there is that balcony with the INCREDIBLE view of the Beau Vallon Bay, where I spend 90% of my waking hours when I'm at home. The balcony faces north and looks out to the Bay where we dive almost every day. You can also see North Island, the smaller island on the right hand side, which is the private resort island where William and Kate famously spent their honeymoon. Silhouette Island is the larger island on the left that is home to a fancy schmancy ($$$$$$) Hilton resort that I will probably never see. I've taken photos of the sunset almost every night because it seems to get better every night. The new place is amazing, except for a few annoying animal neighbors that wake me up at night. There are wandering roosters that crow at all hours and approximately 496 dogs that bark all night long at each other. Pretty sure I can actually hear every single dog in Beau Vallon barking since the sound tends to travel uphill.   Oh well, if that is what I have to put up with to live here - I think I can learn to sleep with ear plugs. Sacrifices. Here is a tour of the new place....

Entry way - with my new sweet shoes

Living room and diving room. Look, a TV with a DVD player! 

The balcony

Kitchen

 

Fancy electronics in our kitchen!

Damn straight. Texan Sizzling Steak seasoning that Dan found at the grocery store down the hill from the flat

HOT SHOWER. YES!!

My room

Two closets! This is far too luxurious for me

Washing machine!  (And many clothes lines)

North Island

Silhouette Island

Fruit bat flying over at sunset

"red-headed crazy birds"

Silhouette Island, again

Morning rainbow

Yes, that is me - turns out 3 months in the sea and sun does in fact turn your hair blonde.

Panorama view from the balcony at sunset.