The Adventures of Maddie and Sarah: Part One
We’re now coming up to the end of our first week and it has
been an eventful week to say the least! Unlike the usual big groups of
volunteers there are only two of us here this month.
Pat and Kate picked us up on Dexter (the family boat) after
our extremely bumpy but awesome ferry ride over to Praslin from Mahe. As we
came closer to the island it became aware that it was a lot bigger than we thought
it would be and we couldn’t believe that we had it all to ourselves for the
month. We were already wishing we’d signed up for longer! Already we have
learned how to bake bread from scratch, how to use an axe and cut down palm
leaves with a machete, kind of badass. There has been so much that has happened
we are going to try and highlight our favourite/ ridiculous moments… enjoy!
THE GIANT TORTISES WERE AWESOME!! Noel took us down to the
rangers station where we met the tortoises for the first time...although on the
walk to the rangers we stumbled upon a lovely little tortoise sitting in the
middle of the path (or more like a giant boulder which we definitely thought
was a rock at first). We’d never realised that tortoises could all have such
different personalities. Noel taught us how to track and tag tortoises and gave
a presentation on them that was pretty cool. 
Our fist hike (bear in mind we had never hiked before)
turned into an eight hour hike through the amazing but sometimes pretty intense
jungle to see the amazing Coco de Mer (a tree which we are lucky enough to see
as it only grows in the Seychelles). Making it down the mountain consisted of
many different approaches...from riding down the mountain on a giant palm leaf,
to Kate taking one for the team and falling backwards into the shrubbery to
forge some sort of a path for us to walk through, to Sarahs just generally falling
over and bumsliding down while still maintaining an extremely giggly attitude.
When we came we were slightly sceptical about the food,
assuming it would be rice and beans for a month, we went for a weekly grocery
shop where we bought meat and vegetables. We tried our hand at cooking… it
started well… but we constantly were late leaving the rest of the group
starving and waiting for their much deserved meals. But it seemed to
miraculously always taste alright...dare we say GOOD.
Overall it has been an interesting and exciting week where
we have learnt and enjoyed many different things.
Stay tuned for next week!
0 comments:
Post a Comment