Seychelle's - Praslin

Being our honeymoon and all, we decided to stay at a fancy resort on Praslin, which normally isn’t our style, but it’s nice to spoil yourself once in a while.  I was tempted to go all out and book a resort where each room had its own swimming pool and your rooms were practically mansions, but since we haven’t won the lottery yet we decided to not spend a mini fortune and go to a place that still had amazing views of the ocean and tortoises on their grounds!

Look how cute our room is.

Our first day there we decided to hit Vallée de Mai, a nature reserve and UNESCO World Heritage site.  Some believe that this spot is actually where the Garden of Eden was.  Vallée de Mai is known for the coco de mer, which happens to be the largest seed in the plant kingdom and can weigh up to 42 kilograms (92.6 pounds).

At the Vallée de Mai.

A really cool bird.

The leaves are so big!

The coco de mer.

One of the deciding factors for staying at the resort we chose (Le Domaine de LaRéserve) was that they included a complimentary excursion to Curieuse Island and a snorkeling trip.  We lucked out and had just one other couple with us for the trip.  We set out after breakfast and were soon in the water snorkeling.  Unfortunately, during our entire Seychelles visit there were apparently storms off from the islands that caused a lot of waves, which made snorkeling difficult near the shore, but being far out from shore it was much better and we got to see tons of fish.  We kept ending up in this big school of fish where they kept nipping at us as we swam around, something that’s never happened before.  After the fish had enough of us, we headed to Curieuse Island and to my surprise it is the home of more than 300 Aldabra giant tortoises!  We got to see them from tiny babies all the way up to grandparent aged.  It was pretty cool to see so many walking around and we were even allowed to pet them.  We got a tour of the island and got to take in the many beautiful sights before having to head back to the hotel.

It was gorgeous where we went snorkeling.

Greg with his turtle buddy.

On Curieuse Island.

Our time on Praslin was up and we needed to head back to the main island of Mahé.  Before we left our resort though, we made sure to take some extra fruits from the breakfast buffet and feed the tortoises one last time.  For more pictures from our entire trip to the Seychelles, check out our SmugMug page.

Beautiful views of the sunset from our room.