Day eleven for me in the Seychelles today and a very strange start. For the first time in eleven days I donned jeans and….socks. Yes every other day since I arrived here it has been shorts and crocs or flip-flops as the de rigueur apparel each day and night.
The reason? We had heavy rain last night and this morning and the temperature dropped considerably along with the humidity which I must admit I enjoyed…Sandra of course was moaning about the cold ( a chilly low 80 degrees I think ) and had to put extra clothes on, bless her.
We had to visit Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles for a hospital appointment and I was interested to see the inside of the only Seychelles hospital at first hand. Actually if I had been expecting ‘third world’ I would have been sadly disappointed and it was indeed reminiscent of a small NHS hospital in the UK. A lack of hi tech computers etc but all seemed to run with the usual inefficient efficiency I know and ‘love’ from back home.
After that it was breakfast in the Pirates Arms, being tea and toast, and another enjoyment now sadly missing in the UK. Yes, we sat back and read papers with our breakfast….and smoked….yes smoked cigarettes. How bloody civilized and sadly impossible back home now due to the intervention of the health politzei.
After that we strolled around Victoria
- English: The Clock Tower, a landmark in Victoria, Seychelles. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
enjoying the rain, well Sandra was not so keen but I found the feeling quite pleasant, akin to taking a warm shower back home whilst still wearing my clothes. We visited the National Library which was as oasis of cool with the air con and a quite impressive building of fairly recent construction; also you could read English newspapers there.
This afternoon and the clouds parted and the sun finally appeared and oh it felt so good now that we have lost the hot stickiness of the last two days, even the air was clearer and I seemed to be able to see twice as far today picking out so much detail across the bay. Sandra took a nap in the hammock of fear ( I named it this after falling out a couple of nights ago bruising my butt along with my dignity ) and I decided to visit the garden below to pick up paper planes we had been flying off the balcony over the last week. This was a mistake as Sandra’s garden is very steep and the grass was still wet from the rain. And so I travelled quite a few yards after slipping over, sliding on my ass much to Sam’s amusement. We did leave the paper planes also as the earlier rain had made them incapable of further relaunches.
And here I sit now on the veranda typing this after enjoying another glorious but very speedy sunset, beer in hand, reading of snow back in England. Seychelles? I love them.
Stan M Rogers 