We made it to Africa. More specifically, we made it to Seychelles, the smallest of all the African countries, off the east coast of the continent. The Seychelles is comprised of 73 coral islands and 42 inner islands that are formed by granite. These 42 granite islands are the only islands in the world that have no coral or volcanic elements. We were on Mahé island (a granite island), which is home to the capital city of Victoria.  In a word, Seychelles is stunning. I had no clue it would be as much of a paradise as it is.

After five days at sea, I was ready to be out and about, regardless of where we were. So I was thankful to have an excursion – and pleasantly surprised at what I saw with respect to Mahé’s marvelous scenery. Ryan opted against this tour after reading its description, though in hindsight he definitely made a poor choice in skipping this one. The excursion kicked off with a short drive around Victoria while the tour guide pointed out the various buildings. The town was cute and the churches were bustling. We made our way to the first stop -the Seychelles National Botanical Gardens. While botanical gardens may not sound too exciting, there were actually two cool things about the stop: the coco de mer and the giant Aldabra land tortoises.

I’ll start with the coco de mer, one of the more than 200 species of indigenous flora that were in the gardens. The coco de mer is a rare species of palm tree endemic to the Seychelles islands of Praslin and Curieuse. It is endangered and so although you can certainly eat the fruit (like other coconuts) you can’t unless it’s from a tree on your own property. We saw several coco de mer trees at the botanical gardens, including one that was planted by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1956.

The cool thing about the coco de mer palm is the fruit though. The coco de mer has separate male and female trees, unlike the coconut palm. The (female) nut of the coco de mer is very large (the largest seed in the plant kingdom) and is oddly shaped, being the shape and size of a woman’s butt. The tour guide also showed us the male catkin and pointed out how it is phallic in nature. According to Wikipedia, there is a unique legend around the erotic-looking fruit. Namely, “Because of these unusual, erotic shapes, some people believed that the trees made passionate love on stormy nights. According to the legend, male trees uproot themselves, and approach female trees. Apparently the love-making trees are rather shy, and the legend has it that whoever sees the trees mating will die or go blind. The fact that even now the pollination of the coco de mer is not fully understood, is one of the factors behind the legend.” As for the pollination, our tour guide told us that geckos help with that. No clue if that’s true or not. Check out the photo of the coco de mer nut. You can also see a little of the male catkin as well. They really are naughty looking, huh?

The other cool thing about the botanical gardens were the giant Aldabra land tortoises. Oh my gosh they were so cool! Native to Aldabra atoll (the second-largest atoll in the world where visitors must receive permission from the Seychelles Islands Foundation to visit), the Aldabra land tortoises is one of the largest tortoises in the world.

Okay, they aren’t as huge as the fake one I’m standing next to above, but one person on the excursion did ask if that was a real turtle as we were nearing the tortoise enclosure. Yeah… In actuality, these tortoises are similar in size to the famous Galápagos giant tortoise, with its carapace (shell) being approximately 48 inches in length and males having an average weight of 550 lbs (females are smaller at ~36 inch carapaces and 351 lbs).

We were able to feed the tortoises, which was fun.

There was one tortoise who got frisky and tried to mate with another tortoise while we were there. It was quite slow motion, and shortly after the male tortoise mounted her, the female seemed to lose interest and (slowly) moved away. My guess is that it was quite embarrassing for the male since we were all watching the whole encounter. I mean, check out that guy’s judging face in the pic below…

The next stop on our tour was to the Mission Ruins of Venn’s Town in the southwest of Morne Seychellois National Park. This was the site of some schools and dormitories for the children of liberated slaves. This site serves as a testimony to the slavery period, more precisely the aftermath of the abolition of slavery, where freed men were given work and their children educated

We walked around the area, marveling at the trees. We saw many trees with exposed roots and smelled the bark of cinnamon trees.

We also made our way to an overlook that had spectacular views.

We made our way to our final stop, which was to a tea factory where we had a brief refreshment break. I tasted a vanilla tea that was more vanilla than tea, meaning it was tasty – but they only sold the tea in large boxes so I didn’t get any. Again, there were amazing views.

On our way back to the ship, we made another photo stop, which looked out over the water onto some villas and wind turbines on artificial islands. It was, yet again, a splendid view.

The last things I’ll share were two additional things I learned. First, a large fruit called the breadfruit is common here. We sadly didn’t get to try any, and I say sadly because the legend goes that if you eat breadfruit while here you’ll return to the Seychelles. I’ll just have to return despite not eating the fruit. The last fact is another fruit fact: they have red bananas in Seychelles. The tour guide pointed out a tree and noted that the bananas are quite popular here. You can see them in the photo below.

And that’s Seychelles, in a coco de mer nutshell. 😊