Visiting in Style

I know it may sound obvious, but 95% of the visitors coming to Aride arrive by boat, with the remaining 5% by helicopter – the rich few!! But greeting visitors arriving by the crest of a wave and believe me it can be by a crashing wave, is a very new concept for Melv and I. There is no jetty on the island, partly because of the rough seas that we experience, but it is also a good precaution against an unwanted species such as rats, and cats coming onto the island uninvited. On this latter point, only Aride boats are allowed to land on Aride itself this helps us prevent the introduction of such unwanted guests, which is crucial to maintaining the bird populations here.
Landing on the island is a real art, and fortunately for us at the moment, we have some excellent boatmen.

There are 2 ways: either a beach landing, which is not advisable for the young or elderly, as it suggests it is a case of driving the boat at speed onto the beach – making sure the engine is raised in the nick of time; or there is a graceful glide to the shore backwards – which is fine and dandy for all. So why not use the latter technique all the time I hear you say – well the other side to the boat work is that everything is done manually round here, so there is no winch to pull the boat up the beach – it has to be done by hand on rubber rollers– so the higher up it can be driven up to start with – the better. Many hands make light work but it is still a heavy task, especially after shopping days, when the boat is full of beer, I mean food, complete with a 40hp engine on, or of course after fishing trips when the lads have got a good haul!

There are 2 main monsoons which affect Aride – the NW, which we are currently in, that can bring calm seas, rain and scorching days or the SE monsoon, which brings rough seas, driving wind and salt spray from the south and cooler days – something to look forward to eh!
The calm seas this time of year mean that it is the most popular time for tourists and they arrive in all shapes and sizes of vessels. Last week we entertained a cruise ship – Island Sky, which was full of 90 Brits spending Christmas & New Year on the water. This was a large number of people for us to transport to and fro – but it went very smoothly using two shuttle boats going back and to. It was an excellent day, enjoyed by staff & guests – and a very important source of income for the island. Cruise ships visit about once a month at this time of year, however on a daily basis we entertain private yachts, and self sail catamarans. We often have to pinch ourselves as we have a little swim in the glorious sunshine between meeting and greeting the boats, that this is now our job – it is quite bazaar.

Launching and landing is always a wet affair – whatever – so shopping trips, going to meetings, or greeting guests, usually means that you arrive at your destination with a wet bum and covered in sand. I s’pose it is just the way of life around here, no one ever seems to mind as you wander round in sandy bare feet, and of course the wet patches soon dry out!

A Skinks tale

We share our home with many wildlife species, but Skinks must be the most common (apart from the ants) and comical. In all the literature about Aride it says that there is a skink per every square metre of island, this I found hard to believe – but now I know it’s true. Aride has got the highest density of skinks anywhere in the world.
There two main species on the island: Seychelles skink, which is the smaller, cheekier of the two and the Wright’s skink which is almost twice the size (290mm long) and rather bulkier. They like the warmth of the sun and predominately come out during the day. However, cockroaches during the evening can make a tasty meal and there are often one or two Wright’s skinks feeding as we finish our supper.

So what is it like living with skinks? Well its quite entertaining really, they skuttle around the floor in every room, which means that you just need to ensure that you don’t move too fast, otherwise they tend to get under feet resulting in a few tale less ones. They live in our luggage, which is good, as they keep all the other beasties out. We share the shower with them, the Seychelles skink seems to like the wet floor and they have taken up residence in all the open cupboards, using our books and fishing gear as a play ground. Then as for the dinner table – they are pretty athletic and will use any means to be able to reach where there is food. They like to cuddle up to the tea pot – which they seem to enjoy the warmth from, lying on the lid where we would burn our hands, they are prepared to try any food on offer – but can struggle a bit with grated carrot – they like to drink Seychelles tea and are particularly partial to Khong Guan’s butter creams!

Just after 3 weeks life with skinks seems quite normal – and if they help keep the cockroaches at bay I wouldn’t want to be without them.

Our Crate has arrived!

Well after spending 5 weeks on the ocean waves, a week in customs and several days travelling across the Seychelles, our crate finally made the last part of it’s journey and arrived on the island yesterday. Not quite intact, but nothing missing (the storage yard had had a break in – but fortunately they weren’t looking for a ukulele or a years supply of razors), the rangers loving brought our possessions across from Praslin in the Aride boat. In true ranger style – no messing, they carried the much awaited crate up the beach and smiled as Melv & I took trips down memory lane as we unpacked it.

Both looking forward to slightly different things – for me, the hammocks, art materials and a speaker to play our music, for Melv the hammocks and of course - his fishing gear – all those shinny lures and sharp hooks – must admit I have been secretly looking forward to eating whatever they enable us to catch though. We were pleased to see the stronger sun cream, and insect bite repellant, not to mention and probably most of all, our new pillows and bedding! Just these few small items will make life a little easier – just wish we’d packed some cheese – still good old multi-vits will help with the lack of calcium.

Today I gave a hermit crab a home!

A rare site passed by our house today – a hermit crab without a shell, looking very vulnerable and like a juicy morsel for the many predators here on Aride, like skinks, birds, not to mention other crabs. However we were able to rescue the situation from our small collection of newly acquired shells. Not that well blessed with large specimens, all we could offer was a medium sized turban shell – but within a flash the little shell less hermit made it its new home!! After a quick inspection the manoeuvre was done and hermit was safe inside.

The hermit crabs were not something I had thought much about before coming over to Aride – but they are everywhere and are real characters - the island is home to a 3 types.
Purple, Orange and Pale hermits – the first 2 largely nocturnal and the Pale, active day and night - the beach becomes a live early evening as hermits off all sizes roam around. They do vary in their size, but the Purple can be at least 10 times the size of the ones we used to find back home as kids – about the size of a large grapefruit! Luckily as the name suggests, the Seychelles has a ready supply of homes all different sizes and types and Aride’s beach washes up a good assortment.

Although they are not tempted inside the house - which is quite an exception, everything else is – they do scavenge outside and will readily compete with all the other wildlife for any scraps and biodegradable material. It was quite amusing to watch a purple hermit wrestle with a coconut shell – we made our own coconut milk from fresh coconuts yesterday – the funny thing was the coconut shell turned poor hermit over – not the brightest of creatures, but great entertainment – beats television!!

Week 1 on the island

And what a week it’s been!


After a days frantic induction from a brilliant, inspiring, eccentric, American turtle professor, who through her enthusiasm we nearly missed the flight here – we were thrown in the deep end with live turtle specimens! It has been beyond our wildest dreams and certainly exceeded all expectations – as this week the turtles have been a bit like buses – they knew the freshers were due in town!


It all started Monday morning, Sal and the existing wardens just boarding the boat to attend a meeting on one of the main islands and turtle tracks were spotted on the beach – Melv was left on the case, with Sal having to depart – green with envy, (but compensated with a few flying fish on the boat journey). After practising his school boy French on 5 poor unsuspecting French visitors, Melv returned to the nest site, but unfortunately our lady turtle had finished laying and he was unable to count the eggs.


Since then turtle monitoring life has been a little more timely, surveys of the beach for evidence are done 5 times a day, looking for tracks and turtle activity. If either is found then tracks are measured and details of nesting recorded. In one week alone we have managed to witness and record 3 nesting successes – with an average of 180 eggs laid per nest.


All turtles need to be tagged for scientific purposes – (much like rare birds are ringed), their shell measured and condition recorded – what a job eh – somebody has got to do it! Fortunately all our individuals have so far been tagged – otherwise we were going to need Melv’s cattle tagging skills, but unlike with cows there isn’t a crush, and once on route to the sea they are like bulldozers -extremely difficult to stop!


There are two types here on Aride, the Hawksbill, which is the one we are currently monitoring and the Green – no where near as common and more of a night time visitor. Both are critically endangered – so what a privilege it is to be able to be part of this work. Once egg laying has taken place we mark the nest and then follow its progress, looking to see if we can get an idea about how many youngsters hatch, this will be over the next month or so – taking up to 70 days – so watch out for a follow up blog entry.


To date on the beach there are 34 turtle nests on the go, (which is more than the total recorded for last season) we are only half way through as they continue to lay until the end of Feb –so we are going to be busy – any volunteers!!

We've Arrived!!

As I sit and write this, we will have been on the island for exactly 2 days, it is now 9.30pm and still in the high 20’s. I am sitting outside our hut, just on the edge of the beach and around my bare feet are skinks, hermit crabs and and numerous insects. The sound of the sea is fantastic, is as it crashes on to the beach, almost drowning out the noise of the shearwaters. The whole island is alive and almost impossible to describe – it’s fantastic.

Our journey here has been intense and busy, flying into Mahe, the main island, where we spent the first two nights, dealing with all the paper work, getting residency cards, having a medical, and opening bank accounts. Then we flew to Praslin, our closest main island, (approximately 6,000 people), where we were greeted by the existing wardens and shown the ropes for dealing with money, shopping, getting supplies etc. It has been quite tortuous, and we have had to patiently wait for out first view of the island, we have been slowly getting closer and finally we made the 40 minute boat trip across to our new home last Saturday.

So what is the Seychelles like? Just a few first impressions:

Bloody hot! And humid most of the time.
Stunning – just like all the brochures
Everyone we’ve come across has been smiley and friendly
Great food, limited but fresh particularly fish & vegetables
Beautiful beaches and azure blue seas – just like the stereotypical images we all imagine
Layed back, as the tropical climate demands
And as for Aride island, it is better than we had ever imagined... it’s fantastic!

So where is Aride, and why is it so important?

The Seychelles’ islands of which there are 115, were created many millennia ago, when India broke away from Africa somewhere close to Madagascar, and drifted across the Indian Ocean, leaving the granite fragments of the Seychelles in its wake.

Aride is the northernmost island of the granitic Seychelles, roughly 68 hectares in area, approximately 1.6km long by 0.6km wide. However despite its small size, it is home to one of the most important seabirds populations in the Indian Ocean. It is the finest nature reserve of the granitic Seychelles and a conservationists’ paradise. Eighteen species of native birds (including five only found in Seychelles) breed on Aride, this is far more than on any other granitic island.

The island is leased and managed as a nature reserve by the Island conservation Society (ICS) of Seychelles, but owned by the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, a UK based charity since 1973. The whole island is been protected by Seychelles law as a nature reserve. Nature is the top priority, and the only human inhabitants are the reserve’s staff, currently four Seychellois rangers and two island wardens.

The Wildlife
Over 1.25 million seabirds regularly breed on Aride, including the world’s largest colony of lesser noddies, the worlds only hilltop colony of sooty terns and the Indian Oceans largest colony of roseate terns. The island hosts the world’s largest colony of Audubon’s shearwaters and what is thought to be the world’s largest colony of white-tailed tropic birds. There are also very large breeding numbers of brown noddies, fairy terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters and a few pairs of red-tailed tropic birds.

There has been several successful translocations of endangered or restricted-range endemic bird species onto Aride, these include the Seychelles warbler, Seychelles Fody and the Seychelles magpie robin. The Seychelles blue pigeon and the Seychelles sunbird have re-colonised Aride naturally.

Aride has the world’s highest density of lizards, with other reptiles such as skinks, geckos and harmless snakes. Two species of marine turtles regularly nest on the beaches, the green and hawksbill turtles.

The reserve boundary includes 200m of surrounding seas, including a beautiful coral reef, with over 450 species of fish, from whale sharks to flying fish!!

A first time for everything!

Well there is no doubt that preparing for this trip is opening up a heap of new experiences. This crossed our minds more than once as we collected all the possessions we may need for the next 2 years and packaged them up together in a crate. Melv, always one for never doing anything by halves, made a crate that we ourselves could've travelled in, but looking back it was a good job he did, especially with the amount of fishing gear and art materials we are taking along! As we produced the manifest for customs it made us smile: from 2 years supply of razors and tampons to a ukulele and enough fishing gear to provide food for the whole of Mahe (the main island), never mind the 6 people on Aride!

All packaged and labelled up, we took it to an industrial estate in Rainham, Essex, ready to make the long journey to the other side of the world. We left it in the yard all set to be loaded, neither of us too sure whether we would ever re-connect with it or not.

Well we've had a progress report the crate is on its way and will reach Mahe, on the 1st December, only slightly after our arrival, on the 27th November - so we've no need to worry, we won't go hungry and Melv won't have to grow a beard, as for the tampons and ukulele - well...

Godney - a great place to live

Godney as a village is quite unique, certainly high up the list as one of the best places we have ever lived. The only necessity is that you are a little excentric, with a desire to socialise and a taste for alcohol - which can't be bad! We will be sad to leave at the end of Nov, but 2 years in the sun, on a tropical island (without running water and electricity - I knew the caravan was in preparation for something!) is an opportunity we can't refuse - but we will be back, the village doesn't get rid of us that easily!!

Our preparations continue - with our possessions going out next week, which will hopefully be waiting for us when we arrive - we may go hungry if not, with Melv's fishing gear one of the main items on the manifest!

Work on Preyway Cottage is progressing well and it will soon be water tight and safe - a little project we will return to complete.

Seychelles here we come!!

Getting ready to make the most of our new way of life, has been quite entertaining. With the Seychelles as one of the best places to snorkel, we thought we had better get the right tools for job!!

Preparing for our new challenge in the Seychelles

Well time is ticking away fast, Melv has already finished work and today was his first day a free man, providing time to finish projects at home before we depart. Sal has got just 4 weeks left at Ham Wall, so alot of time is now devoted to tying up all those loose ends.

However, there is still a bit of time to develop new ideas, we are looking to undertake a project with Meare Primary School, so that we can set up a link and communicate with the children about life on a small island in the Seychelles.This kind of project will help broaden the children's outlook and give them the opportunitiy to learn about a different culture and way of life. The aim will be to twin the class with a local school in Praslin, the nearest largest island to Aride. The wonder of technology.