Friday, March 29, 2013

29/03/2013 A Curieuse Paradise


 
Another joyful week has passed on the pristine and idyllic isle of Curieuse. On Friday night the theme for the night was ‘music festival’. As the sun started to rise over the beautiful skyline of Praslin, all of the volunteers took the newly painted boat Dexter to Praslin. During the day we all enjoyed the luxuries of the Paradise Sun hotel. Following this we walked to our second paradise, Acajou hotel. When the night came half of the volunteers went to explore the Seychelles local club. The other half of us enjoyed a relaxing night in our hotel rooms after a long week of working in the field.

At the start of the week; several volunteers powered through a ‘long wurtle’, no sink holes or tracks were found throughout the three beaches, but the views are reward enough. We did however dig a Green Turtle nest which stretched down to 1.5 meters, and Alex D fell inside it. At dusk our two Seychellois’ girls, Vicki and Uvicka treated the camp to a Creole lesson which was very much appreciated.

On Tuesday four volunteers had to wake up at 5:30 to take part in a Coco de Mer. It was Amy’s first one and she was delighted to have been able to do it in the end. Whilst this was happening, a team of volunteers went to check salinity in the mangroves; which ended up with Alex R breaking the trowel that is used to dig the holes around the poles. On Tuesday several volunteers walked the beautifully mesmerizing walk to Grand Anse in search of sink holes and turtle tracks. A number of volunteers went on a snorkel on the beaches of Mandarin and Badamier; 3 white tip reef sharks and a black tip reef shark were sighted.

On Thursday all of the volunteers went for a picnic on the stunning beach of Badamier. Everyone had a lovely relaxing day as peaceful music was played as we looked out onto the tranquil horizon. Last Friday a leading expert in Coco De Mer trees, Chris Kaiser Bunbury came to the camp and taught us both the ecology and biology of the Coco De Mer trees, everyone found it incredibly insightful and all of us learnt a lot. After his lecture, he took us all into the field and showed us in person the methodology to obtaining leaf samples from the giant Coco De Mer trees.

The leaving volunteers are looking forward to their final week in the Seychelles and are making the most of there last week on the camp of Curieuse.



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