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RacingSnake · 01-07-2012, 08:50 PM

I meant to get these up earlier, but have been so busy!

Anyway, following our 3 week holiday (and wedding and Honeymoon!!) in the Seychelles, I thought I'd share some of the local Aldabras that are roaming around.

Now, I say roaming, as it did very much depend on where you are, so we'll start on Mahe, the main and capital island of the Seychelles.
We hired a car to go around the island, and whilst on one of our random 'turn left here' moments we headed up the mountain and came across this pen on the corner of the road.... completely random!
I can't say I was impressed really, there were about 30 or so tortoises in there, and it was probably only maybe 10m2 in total. We started feeding them with some of the greenery we picked from the woods next to it, but then a chap came down the hill, we asked him what they were doing here, and his broken 1-word english said "Tourists". ah man, was really quite sad.

Anyway, they all seemed healthy enough to my untrained eye, but we'd much rather have seen these in the wild.

We moved on from Mahe to "Praslin", which is the next biggest, and marginally more rural island.
This next picture was taken at the "famous" Anse Lazio beach, I say famous, but only because it claims to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world... I think the dozens of tourists there kind of remove some of the beauty from it!!
Anyway, just by the car park, was a small 5m2 pen with half a dozen tortoises in it, these guys looked quite happy, but there was loads of land that they could have opened up for them (I know they don't look at it like perhaps I (we) do!).

One of our trips out was to 'Cousin Island', which is infact a bird sanctuary and research base, but happily enough, any tortoises that were there were roaming wild!, so we'd be walking through the forest and all of a sudden a tortoise would materialise from the bushes, or the mud or just hiding in the shade behind the huts etc Was certainly refreshing to see after all the penned tortoises.

We strangely felt like being rather adventurous one day, so jumped on the local bus (life in your own hands!), down to the local jetty, and caught the bus over to "La Digue", another island where the predominant mode of transport is the bike!, So we hired our bikes and set off, the island revolves around the (history of the) coconut oil industry, so in the main park (L'Union) was quite a substantial pen, with loads of branches down for you to feed the tortoises.
I've got loads of pics from here, so I won't post them all! lol, but one of the sights was watching (with morbid curiosity) some tortoise "action"

All the torts were quite friendly though and as soon as you picked up the branches they'd all swarm to the edge to see you

01-07-2012, 08:50 PM	#1
RacingSnake Member Hatchling Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Reading Posts: 582	Seychelles tortoises... I meant to get these up earlier, but have been so busy! Anyway, following our 3 week holiday (and wedding and Honeymoon!!) in the Seychelles, I thought I'd share some of the local Aldabras that are roaming around. Now, I say roaming, as it did very much depend on where you are, so we'll start on Mahe, the main and capital island of the Seychelles. We hired a car to go around the island, and whilst on one of our random 'turn left here' moments we headed up the mountain and came across this pen on the corner of the road.... completely random! I can't say I was impressed really, there were about 30 or so tortoises in there, and it was probably only maybe 10m2 in total. We started feeding them with some of the greenery we picked from the woods next to it, but then a chap came down the hill, we asked him what they were doing here, and his broken 1-word english said "Tourists". ah man, was really quite sad. Anyway, they all seemed healthy enough to my untrained eye, but we'd much rather have seen these in the wild. We moved on from Mahe to "Praslin", which is the next biggest, and marginally more rural island. This next picture was taken at the "famous" Anse Lazio beach, I say famous, but only because it claims to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world... I think the dozens of tourists there kind of remove some of the beauty from it!! Anyway, just by the car park, was a small 5m2 pen with half a dozen tortoises in it, these guys looked quite happy, but there was loads of land that they could have opened up for them (I know they don't look at it like perhaps I (we) do!). One of our trips out was to 'Cousin Island', which is infact a bird sanctuary and research base, but happily enough, any tortoises that were there were roaming wild!, so we'd be walking through the forest and all of a sudden a tortoise would materialise from the bushes, or the mud or just hiding in the shade behind the huts etc Was certainly refreshing to see after all the penned tortoises. We strangely felt like being rather adventurous one day, so jumped on the local bus (life in your own hands!), down to the local jetty, and caught the bus over to "La Digue", another island where the predominant mode of transport is the bike!, So we hired our bikes and set off, the island revolves around the (history of the) coconut oil industry, so in the main park (L'Union) was quite a substantial pen, with loads of branches down for you to feed the tortoises. I've got loads of pics from here, so I won't post them all! lol, but one of the sights was watching (with morbid curiosity) some tortoise "action" All the torts were quite friendly though and as soon as you picked up the branches they'd all swarm to the edge to see you __________________ Code: .~~~. _ .~~~. _ ./____/'_) ./____/'_) {_}-{_} {_}-{_}