Seychelles

Brandon was in Seychelles a couple of weeks ago. Seychelles is a little island off the southern coast of Africa. It is supposed to be a very touristy, exotic place to visit. Brandon hasn't been able to get on the website to tell about his visit there so with his permission I copied his email to me about his experience onto our website.

"It's pretty kewl here, I like it a lot. It's fairly poor, but the people seem pretty nice and friendly. I stepped into a hair-cutting salon the other day to get my haircut... they did a good job, but it sure was different than the states... the chairs were just really cheap office chairs (the roller-chairs without arms), they didn't sweep up any of the hair off the floor in between cuts, they didn't seem to understand what a "tip" was so I just gave up on that, the guy dropped the comb 2 or 3 times on the floor, picked it right back up and started using it again... then I noticed they didn't even have one of those cups with disinfectant in it that they store all the combs in! (gross!) While cutting my hair he stopped one time, grabbed his cell phone, PLACED a call, and proceeded to talk on it for about 5 minutes and just sat there brushing my hair back and forth. It was waaaaaay different. On the sides and the back he used a shaver (as usual) but without a comb... he just free-handed it... which was pretty kewl b/c it turned out looking pretty good. Not the absolute best cut of my life, but it looked pretty sharp so I was happy with it, despite all of the other stuff I didn't want to be the "rude american" and not tip... but he kept giving the change back to me insisting it was only $10... when I said "tip", he just said "no, that is all, $10"... hehehehh....
Diving was super kewl. It was a very small shop at a hotel. We had to carry all of our gear out through the surf (not very far though) to theboat and load it up in the surf (also not as bad of surf as SD). Then we motored off to this little island of rocks... it was so small that in about 30 minutes we swam all the way around it. It was wierd b/c it was just a pile of rocks out in the middle of the water, no dirt, just rocks... and growing OUT OF THE ROCKS was a small cluster of palm trees! Very odd, pretty kewl. We went down around 60 ft. Saw all sorts of kewl stuff. The vis. wasn't as good as Hawaii or even Panama, but it was pretty good... somewhere around 40-50 ft. Fairly clear and pretty. Saw a couple of octopus, the largest I've seen so far (though not huge!).... it's weird to watch them sitting there breathing... they have these ventrical-thingies that open up to breath, it looks sort of like the ventricles of a heart as they switch back and forth... the octopus changed colors and moved around a little bit as we pushed water against them. Oh, we also saw a moray eel soooooo huge! This thing was probably 4-5 feet long if it had been totally expanded... it was totally exposed, you could see every part of him, but he was curled up a bit so the length I am guessing at a bit, but it was obvious he was very huge. I got a few pix of him. Do you remember what Sea Anenome's are??? Those long, worm-like things??? They had some here that were *HUGE*... big green ones that looked like they had a hard shell like an armadillo... I saw a couple of them pooping... it was very odd... also they have another type here that is black and has these long tubular limbs with big pads on the ends that I think they use to pick up small food particles off the rocks and eat with. Apparently the snorkelers that were with us saw a pretty big sea turtle, but we never saw him.
The second dive took us inland just a bit more... that was also kewl. Nothing to see that was too much different, but there was a lot less current there so it was a nice, bit more relaxing dive. That was at about 40 ft. and we were down for about 45min. I enjoyed it a bunch. Still not the coolest diving I've done, but it was very neat. I still think Panama and Hawaii were probably the 2 coolest spots I've been to so far.
After diving we went back, I bought a shirt that says something along the lines of "Dive More", shows two divers jumping off a boat and on the front it has a small logo that says "Seychelles". I got the Dive Master to sign my log and the had this kewl little stamp that she put in my log that says "I dove in Seychelles with Lipkin" (Lipkin is her name) and has these 3 little starfish on it that look like they are pressed against the glass of an aquarium looking out... it's pretty kewl. I also earlier had gotten some aspirin and dramamine b/c that's what the dive shop in Hawaii recommended to me... it seemed to work... the headache did set in but it wasn't until after both dives and we were already on shore... I shoulda probably taken more aspirin, but I was too lazy to find the bottle in my bag... but at least this time I didn't get a headache *AND* sea-sick at the end of the 2nd dive and end up riding the boat back to shore feeling all crappy. I also think I made better practice of breathing more properly underwater... the divers in Hawaii said they thought I was breathing in too quickly and then holding it a bit too long... they said I should focus on breathing in slowly, holding it just for a brief pause, and then exhaling slowly. So I focused on doing that, which probably helped me too.
Then we all packed up our gear and Lipkin took photos for us of our group on the beach. Then we all went back to town and ate at a nice restaraunt for about $20. Fish and chips. It wasn't New England style, but the fish was very very good. Then we went back to the boat, and you were right... I was sooooo exhausted, my head was just pounding, I grabbed a soda and candy bar and flopped down in the lounge... after the movie got over I went and crawled into my rack... that was around 7PM... I didn't get out of my rack until about 9AM!!! Hehehe, so yeah, I was really tired!!!"

A couple of days later...

"Went out with IS1 again yesterday... we had a pretty good time. Originally we left just wanting to go visit the market for a while and grab some Italian food. I bought these odd fruits at the market. They look sort of like a cross between an orange and a lemon. You smash them to open them up and inside are these really large black seeds with slimy white stuff all over them. You suck on the seeds, but you don't eat them. They were very sweet and sour at the same time. They were pretty good. Then we decided to catch a ride to the other side of the island and hang out at the Hotel pool there... no one seemed to notice or at least care that we weren't staying there. It was sooooo hot though. So finally we broke down and bought some swim trunks from the little shop there and went to the beach. The dive shop next door where we went diving a few days ago loaned us one of their lockers to keep our stuff in while we were out. It was really nice, got a pretty decent tan starting to kick in. There are these beach dogs there that just live there, one in particular seems to like me b/c the morning of our dive I fed him half of my Power Bar... now whenever he sees me he comes right up to me to play. Well, we started going out to the water and I could hear IS1 right behind me in the surf and he was really close so I turned around b/c it was annoying... it wasn't IS1, it was the dog!!! He followed me right into the water and just kept coming out... dog-paddling and all! It was awesome. I would holding his front paws to let him rest for a minute and wait for a big wave... and when one would come I would turn him towards the shore and push him at just the right time and he would sort of ride the wave in... it was great... when he was most of the way in, he would just turn around and come back out for more! Anyways, we were there for maybe about 2 hours or so, then we got our clothes, totally used the hotel shower to clean up, used the hotel bathroom to change and everything. Then we walked around the little jungle area and eventually ended up at the Italian place for dinner, and then back to the boat. It was pretty good food. The restaraunt was owned by a guy who came from Italy, and it was pretty authentic, but I guess some of the stuff wasn't too authentic b/c the guy said he had a hard time getting all the right stuff on the island so he had to substitute sometimes. It was yummy though."