05/08/2013 - Some Curieuse Senses
Out here on Curieuse
your senses are constantly bombarded- even when you’re sleeping, or trying to.
SIGHT – white sands
and turquoise waters….. blah blah. When I told everyone I was coming to the
Seychelles for a month I know the scene that everyone would have pictured. Well,
the water is a little choppier but it is just as turquoise and the sand is just
as white as I had imagined it would be. Not a bad location to spend a few weeks
I assure you. The ramshackle remains of a Victorian leper colony provide us all
with ample accommodation and previous volunteers have lovingly developed a camp
with as many of the luxuries of home as you would expect on an uninhabited
island – although there is at least 1 group member ready to book themselves
into a luxury resort on Praslin for the weekend after just one week!! Other
memorable sights would have to include: Hannah (who quickly established herself
as a disaster zone before GVI even picked us up on Day 1!) stuck in the mud
down in the Mangroves; most of us completely stacking it and falling on our
bums on our first Coco de Mer trek this morning; Sarah getting caught aeroplane
running on the beach by Digby and Reggie; the five surviving turtle hatchlings
rescued from their abandoned nest this week
by our group and Hawksbill turtles swimming away after we spotted them
on our latest Snurtle.
SOUNDS – this is the
sense that gets no rest. During the day the constant sea waves rolling up
against our camp wash away many other sounds and these waves lull you to sleep
at night – unless you are abruptly woken by a falling fruit or leaf smashing
onto the roof of your shack. I’m also lucky enough to be sharing with 2
snorers… J The residents of
Shark Shack’s ears have been given little rest thanks to Aly- with his boundless enthusiasm, endless
questions and scientific factoids (and his cuddly turtle Freddie or William),
he has kept us all laughing – with him, not at him- and his shack-mates have
been deprived of quite a lot of sleep. Other common things to be heard are Ana
talking about her hunger – ‘I’m so hungry’, ‘I’m still hungry’ or ‘Are you
going to eat that?!’ or Hannah telling us all about her bites, ‘I’ve got, like,
bites on top of my bites’ or ‘Do you think it gets to the point where you have
so many bites that you have too much poison in your blood?’ We’ve learnt a
massive lot this week – well, we’ll be tested soon, so I’m not sure how much
will have stuck – but Noel’s constant enthusiasm and excitement about turtles
and tortoises and trees and mangroves, which are all awesome and wonderful, is
enough to rub off on all of us!
TOUCH – We’ve already
sweat A LOT and what with the humidity here, things seem to stay endlessly damp
– with the exception of the amazing travel towel. On day 3 my bite-free legs
left me feeling smug and relieved – why did I bother bringing 2 bottles of
mozzie repellent?! Now, 3 days later, I am regretting not bringing 10 bottles
as well as 20 tubes of bite relief cream! Current count is 22 bites.. The
ridiculously soft white sand underfoot and hot sun on a sunbathing-break down
the beach makes up for the pesky bloodsuckers.
SMELL- The smell of
delicious granola cooking in the oven is a good one to wake up to in the
morning. The smell of reef sandals once they’ve been trodden through the
sulphury black goop around the mangroves then through the sea then on a Coco de
Mer trek is not so good. The smell of clean hair has already become a novelty
and the chocolate brownies that Aly and I made the other day smelt pretty
awesome too, which leads me nicely to…
TASTE – One of our
biggest fears when we all arrived was keeping up with the high standards of
food that came out of the most basic of kitchens! Each of us on base duty has
now tried our hands at making fresh bread (turned into yummy pizzas,
flatbreads, springy perfect loafs and rolls). There were a few concerned faces
around the camp knowing Clement and Aly were to be let loose in the kitchen at
some point – fortunately, under a watchful female eye there has been no
poisoning… yet. Aly has decided he likes the taste of burnt things as well as
Coconut – on everything – and just overheard whilst typing this, ‘Do you think
a snake would taste good?’ There were a sketchy couple of days without salt
which left both Hannah and myself concerned but thankfully that’s all fixed
now. And, of course, we have the luxurious taste of Seybrew at the end of a
hard day- they taste even better if won in a bet against Sarah!
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