Kerala might be God's own country, but He lives in Seychelles: Day 6: Car search, Berjaya Beau Vallon Hotel & Casino, Swimming pool and beach

Woke up early to pen some thoughts on Seychelles. Came down to the restaurant, picked up a cuppa and went to sit on the desolate dawn beach with only the soothing sound of the waves to help me with the thinking and writing. The air is very fresh and a bit salty, a gentle but cold breeze blowing. Dawn was just breaking, I decided to, at least, get my feet wet. The water is cooooold. Sent a chill down my spine. Beauty never affected me as much as it had done on this particular trip. I don’t know if it is the effect of Seychelles or of the Neuro Lingustic Programming (NLP) course I had just attended with Sue Knight where I was told to open up my senses. Probably was both. I could hear the birds chirping, the wind blowing softly as it seemed to have caressed my very soul! I spent close to half an hour just staring at the hypnotic and mesmerising ocean in the serenity that surrounded me while the leaves of the trees, under which I was sitting, were being gently ruffled by the wind.

Anyway, as it was the end of year and the tourism traffic, I guess, peaked and so we did not get a car to hire here at Mahe. M was disappointed and I wasn’t! We decided that we will spend time on the beach right outside and chill in the pool and see where tomorrow takes us. We took some towels, went to the beach and there were these 2 touts that we struck a deal with. One of them was to take us on a glass bottomed boat and the other for a tour on the 31^st December of the Mahe island on the 1^st January 2012. Since we had decided, we thought we would as well enjoy the rest of the day.

We had bought a CD from Sue Knight called :The Discover your Excellence Coach” and Meera asked me to listen to it. We spent the next couple of hours talking about the excellence that we see in all the people that are closest to us. I had said things that I had never even thought of before and it amazed me. M did the same too and, I think, it got us closer. We got to hear each other’s perspectives and made me realize that there are so many things that I don’t know about M and it was a great learning experience.

Had lunch at Le Canton, the Chinese joint at Berjaya Beau Vallon and had fried rice. They gave us a green chilli chutney (maybe a sauce), that M and me ate with gusto as the two of us really wanted to eat something spicy and both of us overate. It was really funny to see M pack food! How the two of us were laughing, we asked for the green chilly thingy at least 4 times and by the the 5^th time, the waitress just got the bowl of the substance, that they seemed to have prepared for the whole day, and dump it on the table. We were just laughing at ourselves. It was quite silly.

After the copious amount of food we ate, the only thing that we could do was to get a siesta. We went up to sleep and fell asleep watching the TV (thankfully had more channels on than the one at Praslin: that had 1 channel, for God’s sake!), when I was just about to fall asleep and then someone knocked on the door like the goddamn heaven was falling on us. It was the housekeeping for changing something and that killed my sleep.

Aida, the talkative mermaid, from Northern England,
living in Abu Dabhi

We decided to have coffee and went to the glorious pool. I never knew that a pool could make me feel the way I did. Made me feel liberated, free. M tried to teach me swimming and she got me to hold my breath underwater and to float with my stomach in the water, without holding anything. That felt like being weightless. I was floating! Can you believe that? I mean, with my weight? It felt so good, so relaxing, so powerful, like I could do anything! I am so scared of water, and I don’t know why. I mean, I tried to learn swimming when I was like 10 or so but never did and somehow ended up having a mortal fear of water. So to be able to float in the water was priceless! Thank you M for teaching me to do that.

Aida, remember her, she came over again and made me feel miserable. She is all of 6 years old and can swim like a mermaid in the water. She is the one of the most adorable kids I have ever met, but she made me feel really inadequate. So I made a promise to myself: learn swimming in 2012. I hope that I live up to that promise!

Phew! What a day!!!

Kerala might be God's own country, but He lives in Seychelles: Day5: Cataraman ride, Mahe island, Berjaya Beau Vallon Hotel & Casino

We said ourgoodbyes to the staff at Chalet Côte Mer and hopped onto the Catamaran at 8:15 AMsharp and started the ride back to the largest island in Seychelles, Mahé.The ride back was far calmer than earlier even as the ocean was just asundulating as earlier. There were fewer people falling prey to sea sickness onthe boat. We were quiet for the duration of the ride and the 45 minutes wasspent in peace. I was contemplating on how small we human beings were in the vastness of things (the ocean, in this case, it scared the bejeezus out ofme!).

Took a taxi fromthe pier to the Berjaya Beau Vallon Hotel & Casino (http://www.berjayahotel.com/mahe).It is situated on the other side of the island from the pier and we had afabulous taxi ride. The ride took us through the smallest capital in the worldVictoria. It is a quaint little town with small shops and even one temple thatwe saw while driving to the hotel. The island of Mahéis small and to cross over from one side of the coast to another, one has tocross pone of the many hills that are on the island. Once we reach the top ofthe hill, the view of the pier is just fantastic. The view on one side is thatat of the pier and the other side is lush greenery that is on the hillside. Asthe cab driver told us, Seychelles has about 90000 people. He also told us thatSeychelles is an expensive destination and that fuel is very expensive on theisland. They have to import everything from outside. There are a lot ofrestaurants as we pass by and for some reason pizzerias seem to be very popularand not the corporate kinds, small restaurants that offer pizzas. We arrived atthe hotel at 10AM.

My entry for the cover of the Sports Illustrated,
Swimsuit edition

Aida, the talkative kid

The Berjaya,where we were staying at, is a large hotel with over 200 rooms, 3 restaurants(a Chinese, an Indian & Creole and a Pizzeria), a superb pool, and ofcourse, a casino as the name implies and is situated on a beach. The view fromthe room is that of hillocks on one side, while it is that of a beach and theocean from the restaurant. The hotel is surrounded by lush greenery. However,the hotel has the most ridiculous policy of giving out the rooms only at 12PM!So if you arrive before 12 (as I saw the next couple of days, people arrivingat 7AM had to sit in the restaurant), the hotel just refuses to give you aroom. As we had 2 hours to kill, before we could get a room, we had breakfastat the restaurant, a buffet spread consisting of a variety of breads, jams andmarmalades, different fruits and they look so colorful when together (apples,oranges, peaches, plums, kiwis), choice of eggs made for you, bacon, ham,sausages, mixed fried rice, cold cuts, variety of cheeses, coffee, tea and juices.We then proceeded to see the pool. The pool is large and is filled withchildren, with their parents lounging on the comfortable wooden pool chairs. Wewalked over, took a couple of towels and went to see the beach which is rightoutside. We requested for some lounge chairs right under a large tree, which ison the beach, which is wonderful as one can sleep on the lounge chair withoutthe fear of getting sunburnt. There were quite a lot of people loungingcomfortably, either listening to their own music or reading. We also saw a lotof people sun bathing and looking extremely happy, while others were out for aswim in the, once again, lovely colored ocean.

Finally, theroom was ready, we changed and hit the pool. Spent the whole day at the pool aswe decided that today was the day when we do nothing and stay in at the hotel. Oh, and we met the most adorable little 6 year old from Norther England, Aida, who would speak so much that it amazed me! She would ask a question, not wait for a response, move to teh next until she got tired!

Had dinner at the Pizzeria and retired for the night.

M at the Pizzeria at Berjaya Beau Vallon