Baie Sainte Anne - Part II
Even though the palm forest at Vallée de Mai had been shady and relatively cool, the crew was worn out and in need of food and hydration by the time we left. The minivan taxi dropped us back at the sandy boat launch where we’d come ashore in the morning. We all crowded into the little market to stock up on drinks, snacks, ice cream treats and other critical provisions, then boarded the dinghy with our loot and returned to Takamaka.
We had learned from Mr. Robert that there were bins near the boat launch where we could dispose of garbage. Taking every opportunity to remove garbage from a boat is critical, especially in the heat with a small population of cockroaches aboard, so Irina, Alisa and I decided to use the dinghy to make a garbage run as well as a visit to proper grocery store located a half-mile away via a narrow channel of water shown on modern maps as Anse L’Amour. While it had some charming houses along its shores, the water wasn’t exactly the sparkling turquoise found in most other places on the islands.
Looking inland along Anse L'Amour
Our visit to the supermarket was not as productive as we’d hoped, although we did find some Tabasco sauce and all the items necessary to eventually make a pizza. There wasn’t much breeze in the little harbor, and the boat felt as sweltering as ever when we got back on board. In spite of the heat, a gentleman spent the entire afternoon doing work on the boat that we’d rafted up to, grinding away at fiberglass repairs which sent dust into the open porthole of Mark’s cabin. He worked to a soundtrack that started out with mountain gospel music, then for some unknown reason switched abruptly to more modern praise-and-worship songs. He said that the boat had belonged to the second president of the Seychelles and that he was working on restoring it. In the long list of lost causes, this one had to be somewhere near the top, but he seemed at peace with the undertaking.
We had some late afternoon entertainment when a large vessel – more barge than boat – entered the undersized harbor and nearly hit a catamaran moored nearby when it attempted to swing into position to drop its bow onto the shore to act as a ramp for offloading its cargo of building materials. At first the catamaran tried to swing out of the way while staying tied to the mooring buoy, but when that failed, they had to move to a different spot in the harbor entirely. With the tourists out of the way, the work boat got itself positioned correctly and began the business of taking the materials it was carrying ashore.
Doing deck work in OSHA-approved flip-flops
Part of our arrangement with Mr. Robert was that he would provide dinner while we were in Baie Sainte Anne, which he would bring by the boat at approximately 6 p.m. He arrived right on time with large trays of baked fish in creole sauce, roasted beef and vegetables, a cabbage and tomato salad, and a huge bowl of basmati rice. We feasted sumptuously, and when the meal was nearly finished, Mr. Robert joined us at the table, had a bit of food himself along with a couple Seybrews. We asked him many questions about life on the island and he was happy to answer them – along with many details about his background – in a thick creole accent. It turned out that his grandmother was originally from Pennsylvania and met his grandfather in New Orleans before they moved to the Seychelles. He had 13 children, and seemed to have a connection with pretty much anyone who’d ever set foot on a boat in the Seychelles in the last 40 years.
It was almost 10:30 by the time the conversation was over and the dishes from the meal had been cleaned up, very late by our standards. We returned the trays to Mr. Robert and teased him by telling him to thank his wife for us, who’d done a good deal of the preparation of the meal he’d delivered. He bid us “bon voyage” and puttered off into the night in his dinghy.
When asked, Mr. Robert said the locals do NOT eat the fish heads