An unexpected plant cataclysm holds us back. We were on our way to the Port Glaud Falls when we came across a line of traffic that stretched along the road.
Danny, brother of driver Teddy who was supposed to drive us curse. “What the hell is this? Traffic jam in the middle of the Seychelles jungle? This is new. Well, I'll see what happens."
Danny replaced Teddy. At the last minute, Teddy found himself assigned to serve in the entourage of a football match between Seychelles and Ethiopia.
The works were to take time. A few hundred meters further on, young workers were carving a tree that the dawn wind had caused to collapse.
The chainsaw man was cutting it where a thick coating of moss gave way to what looked like a new trunk. Other workers placed logs under the section that obstructed the asphalt.
Basic, yet ecological and functional, the solution allowed them to push the obstacle to the curb in less than half an hour.
Danny praises the efficiency of his fellow countrymen. In just a few minutes, we reach the trail to the Ribeira de L'Isletta.
In others, we come across the lagoon, lost in a dense tropical forest dotted with low palm trees and supplied by the stream that crashes into it by a sequence of ramps and rocky terraces.
A group of expatriates ventured in fearless leaps. At that time, already aware that Mahé was much bigger than we had supposed, we abdicated the right to our bath.
Venns Town: The Mission that seeded the Freedom and Identity of the Seychelles
Instead, we checked into Morne Seychelles.
This vast national park occupies a fifth of the island, including the eponymous peak which, at 905 meters, forms the zenith of Mahé and generates much of the rainfall that makes the island lush.
Before long, we reach the southern foot of the hill.
It is there, at an altitude of 450m, that we find the ruins of Venn's Town, one of the unavoidable points in the colonial history of the Seychelles, which only gained its independence from Great Britain in 1976.
The walls and other structures that survive there are a solid testimony of the times of the Mission.
Thus became known a boarding school founded by a reverend of the Church Missionary Society of London.
Its purpose was to care for and educate the children of slaves who served the plantations of the archipelago to whom, in a phase of abolitionism, the British Navy granted freedom.
In its heyday, between 1876 and 1889, Venn's Town occupied 50 acres of the Sans Souci hillside. Of these, a good part was dedicated to the cultivation of vanilla and cocoa.
They welcomed and served the children, their tutors and workers, two large dormitories, washrooms, kitchens, a workshop, a warehouse, a house inhabited by the director of the Mission and his family. Still everyone's final home, the local cemetery.
Over the years, the jungle engulfed the complex and the structures collapsed. Still, in 1984, the Seychelles government recognized the importance of the place and declared it a National Monument.
After all, after centuries of oppression of enslaved Africans, their descendants were the protagonists of a new phase of freedom and human rights. They also formed the social fabric and economic matrix of the Seychellen nation.
Danny isn't sure if his family's history happened there. In any case, he overcomes his shyness and allows us to photograph him there in his t-shirt with a camouflage pattern.
It lands, a little awkwardly, half hidden in the surrounding prodigious forest, full of plants and animals that are more than endemic, unique, such as Sooglosus, the smallest frog in the world measuring 10 to 40 millimeters.
Morne Seychelles: Vast National Park and the Mahé Ceiling
From the Mission viewpoint, we admire the domain of the frog and the PN Morne Seychelles, extended by successive leafy hills, overlooking a peninsula that furrows the surrounding cyan Indian Ocean.
From the Mission and the province of Port Glaud, we moved to Bel Air. Then to São Luís and finally to Beau Vallon. The latter is bordered by the large bay and homonymous beach, one of the widest in Mahé, popular to match.
When we toured it, Beau Vallon attracted, above all, families from the Victoria capital. It hosted dozens of picnics, barbecues and distinct Seychellois evasion moments and events.
It aroused in us the suspicion that other coasts of the island would prove more fascinating. So we continue our discovery, along the Bel Ombre coastal road.
Nearby, Danny reveals to us a muddy and rocky seaside. We start by wrinkling our nose.
The Cruise-Wilkins Clan and the Treasure of the Pirate Olivier Levasseur, La Buse
Until the guide explains to us that there were concentrated excavations conducted for twenty-seven years by Reginald Herbert Cruise-Wilkins, until his death in 1977, and then by his son, John.
Reginald conquered – and bequeathed to his son – the name of Treasure Man in the Seychelles. As is often the case, with regard to the era of discoveries, of navigators and of pirates, the demand to which both gave themselves, has a Portuguese origin.
In 1721, the famous French privateer Olivier Levasseur, best known for La buse (vulture), due to the sense of smell he had to find and tear apart other vessels and crews, he detected the Portuguese galleon “Our Lady of the Cape” in the port of Bourbon Island (today, Reunion), disguised with a union flag.
La Buse attacked him with 250 men and murdered the crew. When he examined the cellar, he found an unquantifiable wealth in bars of gold and silver, precious stones, coins, argent and other religious artifacts.
Once the loot had been accomplished, the corsairs withdrew. The British Navy followed them. Once in their lair in Madagascar, they divided the lot. La Buse kept the main portion and left for the uncertain part.
The Cruise-Wilkins' Intense but Unsuccessful Excavations
Reginald Cruise-Wilkins was almost certain that the Gallic corsair buried his treasure in a cave there, however, collapsed by the sea. After his men closed the hole, he executed them.
For this reason, the whereabouts of the treasure remained unknown.
The Cruise-Wilkins family continues to try to find him. Until today, in vain. We only saw mud, rubble and small walls half sunk by the tide.
The Marine Sanctuary of Port Launay
With the sun about to enter its western hiding place, we returned to the northwest corner of Port Glaud where we were staying, along the same path we had come.
At the bottom of the endless “thoses” that lead to the west coast, we take the Port Launay road.
Eventually, this path reveals the zigzag of the Riviére Cascade.
And the Marine Park Port Launay, another protected area on the island, filled with tidal mangroves and pristine coral reefs, like the one on Therese Island off the coast.
To the west stretched a jagged peninsula, home to some of the best beaches in the archipelago, the Anse des Anglais, Lans Trusalo and others.
On islands like the Seychelles, pressure from resort chains on idyllic areas is inevitable. In those parts of Port Launay, one of them had taken over the Anse des Anglais and the beach at Lans Trusalo.
Also tried the exclusivity of the great inlet of Port Launay.
But the indignation of the Seychellois population, who had been bathing there for a long time, made the authorities leave her safe.
Port Launay and the Exuberant Sunset to the West
When we get there, with sunset imminent, we find an exuberant bathing celebration. There was music from bars and cars parked among the coconut trees.
Children played on ropes and swings hanging from trees.
Groups of natives drank beer and danced, some even out to sea. In the sea of the inlet, others chattered, massaged by the coming and going of the tepid water.
Finally, sunset settled and set the skies on fire over the mouth.
It generated dramatic silhouettes of the boats anchored there and the marine cross that blesses them.
The West Coast, the Jardin du Roi and the Seychelles Giant Tortoises
The next morning, as early as we could, we dedicated ourselves to descending the west coast, with strategic stops for bathing in the bays that invited us the most.
We only detour inland to an embassy to the Jardin du Roi, inspired by the original XNUMXth century site, which the French royalty installed and expanded there with the aim of promoting the spice trade between their colonies.
Today, more than the spices, it is the giant and centennial turtles from the Seychelles that attract outsiders there.
The Secular Attraction of the Seychelles Giant Tortoises
Almost all arrive determined to live with the creatures, too many, eager to photograph themselves and mount them, as did, in 1995, the then Portuguese president Mário Soares, with the same ease with which, on the neighboring island of La Digue, sat back in the chair of the erotic “Emanuelle”.
Without waiting, in the Jardin du Roi, we witness a scene worthy of another famous saga.
A Russian visitor, with Leia's hair but dressed in denim outfits much smaller than the princess's, seduces a turtle with some freshly picked fruit.
As soon as he sees us leaving the room, he shouts at his companion. As planned, this one photographs it installed on the animal's centuries-old carapace.
The island's giant tortoises have been through much worse. As Mahé passed, Praslin, La Digue and the other Seychelles that host them.
are the smallest nation of Africa and one of the most desirable on the continent.