Part three of our trip through the Seychelles is by far the best! After our three days on Mahé, we took a 90 minute ferry ride over to La Digue and explored the quaint, welcoming town for three glorious days.Well, happy 2020, everyone! It's the last week of January and we are finally getting around to our first blog post of the year. If you're wondering why we've had such a long hiatus, we briefly explained in a past post (here). Chase and I have had some changes in our lives, 2019 was a huge transition year for us but we're slowly settling into a new routine and free time has presented itself again... So, we're back! Despite the crazy delay we created in the middle of posting about this trip, Africa was amazing and we cannot wait to get the rest of these pictures and stories on the blog. Before we can move on to Kenya and the safari part of our vacation, we have to spend just a bit more time sharing about La Digue. We talked about our first full morning in our Source d'Argent post. After that morning, we went on a beach tour of the southeast side of the island. Our stops were Grand Anse, Petite Anse, and Anse Cocos. Grand AnseWe rode our bikes down to Loutier Coco and parked next to the hoards of bicycles clustered around the trees and sandy path down to the beach. They stayed put the whole time we did our afternoon hike. We walked over to the far east side of the beach to try and get some shade. We took some pictures and explored a bit. After a dip in the ocean and getting stung by something that flew into my hair... I thought my life was coming to an end, you guys! Stung by some unknown African bug but Chase had packed our first-aid kit so we had supplies. Needless to say, I survived and we (I) recovered with a snack! Sometimes, locals will do pop-up snack shacks and we got lucky that morning. After some coconut and drying out, we packed up and hiked to Petite Anse. Petite AnseThe rocks we were sitting by (on Grand Anse) hid a small path that snaked over to Petite Anse. It was humid and about 85 degrees out that day so it was a treat to find the clearing and the beach. The rocks in the second picture, below, divide Grand Anse from Petite Anse. We dropped our stuff by a tree and went straight for the water. We walked through the waves but didn't go swimming here. The tide was worse at this beach than any other spot we visited that day. We walked through the rocks and checked out as much of the bay as we could. Anse CocosWe were told by many that Anse Cocos was worth the hype so we only spent about an hour on Petite Anse before making our way over to the last beach of the afternoon. Anse Cocos had the most vivid water. Not sure if it was just the sun getting higher in the sky but once we arrived it was like, "well, hello teal water"! A fast moving storm rolled in while we were at Anse Cocos so we tucked away all of our camera equipment and stuck to the GoPro and our iPhones for most of the photos. There was a natural pool inside that rock formation, shown in the last photo, so we went for a swim there. We floated for about 40 minutes before realizing we were burning our skin so we got out, dried off on the beach and then made our way back to the bikes (we also got another snack on the way back). On our second full day on La Digue, we covered the northwest side of the island. Anse SevereAfter breakfast, we rode through town to get over to our first stop, Anse Severe. Right as we were pulling up to the beach entrance, we saw this sweet lady! Chase had been waiting the whole week to see an Aldabra Giant Tortoise. They only exist in two parts of the world, the Galápagos islands and here in the Seychelles, specifically the Aldabra Atoll. Locals told us that pirates were the reason the other Seychellois islands also have them. Regardless, La Digue is a sure bet for spotting them in the wild. Once we found some shade, we took some pictures and then went snorkeling! We hauled our snorkel stuff all over La Digue and finally got to use it. The tide was incredibly low so it wasn't the most relaxed experience but the sea life was active. Their coral, like most in the world, was dealing with bleaching but the Seychelles are a part of a new restoration project where they will be planting mature coral to see if it can help build back the community. If you're interested, the BBC News article is here. Our next beach was Anse Patates but we made a stop at Bikini Bottom for some juice. The owner is half American and grew up in California before moving to La Digue with his mom and sister. He was so sweet and kind. And the juice was awesome! Anse PatatesThis was a tiny little stretch of beach down a bit from the main road. There were several hotels and rentals right next to it so Anse Patates was probably the most crowded beach we visited at but it was so beautiful. My favorite beach of the whole island! This was our favorite place to swim because the water got deep quickly but the tide was still rather calm. We spent a couple hours here swimming, lounging on the beach and reading our books. By mid-afternoon, our breakfast and juice snack had worn off so we continued our ride around the north part of the island and grabbed lunch at Chez Jules Restaurant. It was already on our list but everyone told us we could not miss getting lunch there. Great views, local rum, local octopus, friendly people... Seriously, the best meal we had during the entire two weeks in Africa. That roasted octopus was possibly the best of my life. Bold statement and I'm sticking to it. Anse FourmisWe knew we wanted to get to Anse Fourmis before that storm hit so we pedaled up the hill and shared the beach with one other couple. They were willing to swap cameras for a few quick pics before we parted ways. If you look at a map of La Digue, you will see a road that runs from Anse Fourmis to Loutier Coco... we biked the entire roadway of La Digue. Unfortunately for us, it is not a loop and we wanted to get back into town before we got soaking wet. We only stayed on Anse Fourmis for about 30 minutes before we started our return trip. Our time on La Digue was incredible. Compared to Mahé which is a bustling city, La Digue is more of what you'd imagine when it comes to an island getaway. We had some hiccups on Mahé and we're going to touch on that in a travel tips article (there's not much on the Seychelles and we want to share as much as we can for future travelers) but La Digue was just the most beautiful, enjoyable island we've been to in a long time.
Until Next Time, C + D
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