The Coco de Mer

The Seychelles is home to the largest seed in the world.

It's called the Coco de Mer. In the picture Dillon is holding the fruit of the male tree, and Shea holds the fruit of the female. As you can imagine the distinct shapes of these fruit have been the source of more than a few stories. In the Seychelles the are referred to as the "Love Nut". Thankfully the one Shea is holding is hollow because the female seed can weigh as much a 30 kilos.

They only grow naturally on two small islands in the Seychelles. On the island of Praslin the Vallee de Mai, which is a small national forest of Coco de Mer trees, is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Christmas in the Seychelles

We took a 10 day trip to the Seychelles over Christmas. The Seychelles is a small country consisting of a few small islands in the Indian ocean north of Madagascar.
What an incredibly beautiful place. We took the kids fishing, snorkeling and island hopping, but for the most part they just enjoyed playing in the warm ocean waves.
Santa even managed to find us on Christmas.

Cape Town, South Africa

We went down to Cape Town with my Mom and Bill for a short holiday. Here I am sitting on Table Mountain overlooking the city.

Mozambique: Day 4

On our last day woke to find a beautiful sunny blue skies. We had breakfast and made arrangements to take a boat to a small deserted island not far away. The few hours we had on that island turned the trip from a potential flop to a wonderful lasting memory.

We got back just in time to catch our 2pm flight from the island to the Maputo airport. The flight from the island was on a 5 seat Cessna (that includes the Pilot). That has got to be the smallest plane I have ever been on. We got to see some great views of the Island, the Indian Ocean and Maputo from that little plane.

About 6 hours later we were home in Botswana to the kids, who's first question was "What did you bring us?".

Mozambique: Day 3

Saturday was to be our only full day on the Island. We woke up to find it was still raining, but it was not quite as relentless as the day before. After breakfast the rain had stopped, so I decided to go for a barefoot run on the beach. It was a great run. I had the quintessential overseas beach running experience. A group of young smiling and waving boys ran with me for a couple hundred yards down the beach. They soon got tired and one by one dropped away behind me. It wasn't long before I was completely alone. Just me, some strange sea birds and the Indian Ocean. After a couple of miles I turned around and headed back to the hotel. I wanted to run farther, but my feet were not accustomed to running barefoot in the sand and were beginning to hurt. Sure enough, when I got back to the hotel room I had big blisters on the tips of most of my toes from the constant friction of the sand.

Although the day was grey, Cassandra and I wanted to do some swimming in the ocean. We took a short boat trip to a reef to do a little snorkeling. The water was choppy and the visibility nearly zero, but we decided to give it a try anyway. I jumped in the water and not 2 minutes later was stung on my right arm by a jellyfish. It wasn't just a small sting either, it covered most of one side of my forearm. Shortly after that a woman on her honeymoon that was with us cut her leg on the coral of the reef. So only about 10 minutes after our boat trip began, we were headed back to the pier.

I nursed my sting for a good majority of the rest of the day. It felt as if I had been burnt by fire, and the pain did not subside for about 4 hours. I kept ice on it, and that seemed to help a bit.

That night the stars came out, and we had a wonderful meal of grilled fish and shrimp while the band played.

Maputo; Day 2

Friday morning we woke to find that the weather was still pretty horrible. It was raining and quite windy. We had booked passage on a ferry at 10am to take us to our next destination Inhaca Island. When we got to the ferry dock we found out that all the boats had been canceled due to the weather.

We went back to the hotel we had been in before to plan our next move. We were told that we could catch a flight over to the Island at 3pm if the weather permitted. So we sat around all day waiting for the weather to improve, and at about 2pm we went out to the airport to see if we could get on the plane. The weather had not improved , and I didn't feel as if there was any chance that our little plane was going to make the trip, but it wasn't long before we were up and off to Inhaca.

When we arrived at the hotel on Inhaca we just relaxed in our nice bungalow style room complete with mosquito net around the bed, and had a nice meal in the restaurant.

We had a bit of bad luck but in the end everything had worked out and we were optimistic about our next day.

Maputo; Day 1

As you may or may not know, Cassandra serves the Embassy HR need for not only Botswana, but Lesotho, and Mozambique as well. This means she needs to travel to these locations about 4 times per year. Cassandra was in Maputo Mozambique all last week , and we decided that I would meet her there for a mini-vacation on my birthday.

I arrived on Thursday to some pretty intense rain, and we went directly to an Embassy function celebrating 25 years of USAID in Mozambique. These traditional drummers and dancers preformed for the event. We were later told that they were not Mozambican, but South African Zulu's. Either way they put on a good show with lots of energy and intensity.

After that we went out to a restaurant for a wonderful dinner with some friends. I had the ostrich, and it was delicious. After that it was back to the hotel to relax and get ready for our trip to a resort on Inhaca Island, about 40 kilometers away.