The sun rose in Mahé, welcoming us to our final day on the island. It was with a heavy heart that I had to say goodbye to this beautiful island which I had come to call my home for the past 2 weeks. To make matters worse, an activity which we had planned for our last day, had to be cancelled at the last minute. I was pretty bummed out as I had been waiting for this for the entire holiday. But, that’s just part of life; not everything goes to plan. Despite this, I can safely say that I have had a fantastic holiday and will only look back on it with fond memories, like swimming with stingrays at Anse Royale beach and getting totally lost in Port Glaud. Due to the cancellation, we didn’t have anything planned for the day, so thought we would take it easy. If only we could! I would have loved to have spent another day at the luxurious Four Seasons Resort but life had other plans for us.
The first thing we decided to do was go to the butchers to see if it was open. The shopkeeper was making us some special squid and we were keen to try it. As seemed to be our luck that day, the butchers was unfortunately closed again. We visited the previous day and day before but it was closed on all those days. I can only assume that something came up and having only one person working at a store means that it’s inevitably closed when they have to have time off.
On the way back from the butchers, we stopped off at a beautiful beach – I say beautiful beach but in reality all the beaches in Mahé are stunning! It wasn’t quite as spectacular as Anse Royale but it was still amazing. We took the drone up and captured these images.
When we returned to the cabin we realised that we had got out a fair bit of Seychelles Rupees in order to pay for the now-cancelled activity. We figured that we wouldn’t be able to exchange them back in the UK as they are such a strange currency, so we had to drive all the way to Victoria in order to exchange them back to GBP. It was getting on a bit and we were starting to worry if the banks would be open. However, we had no other option. We had to go! Things only got worse. The traffic going into Victoria was the worst it had ever been – and it was bad the previous times we came. It was practically not moving! Oh, shit. I thought. Not only because we might not get to exchange our money back but also because the last thing I wanted to be doing on my last day was sitting in a scorching hot car in a never-ending line of traffic.
We finally arrived in Victoria but unfortunately after 5pm. As we suspected, many banks were shut and we were starting to panic. OK – that’s not entirely true; we’d been panicking for hours now! After frantically searching through the city, we found a place that was still open that did exchanges. Unfortunately, they could only convert it to Euros which wasn’t ideal. Still, at least I could actually exchange Euros back home, unlike the Seychelles Rupees.
We arrived back at the cabin evening and realised that we had another problem at hand, again as a result of the cancelled activity. We had charged up both of our drone batteries in order to use them for the activity. We were due to fly home the very next day and you’re not allowed to fly with full drone batteries. It damages the battery and can be dangerous. So, we had to use up both 30 minute batteries before we flew home the next day. Suddenly, 30 minutes per battery felt like an incredibly long time.
We fumbled for ideas as to what to take videos of. The sun would be setting soon which meant we couldn’t film after dark. We raced out to one of the local beaches in order to grab some photos of the sunset. I realised that throughout the entire trip, I hadn’t taken any sunset photos! It’s also only fitting to take a photo of the sunset as the sunsets on our time in the Seychelles. We were fortunate enough to be situated on the West of the island, so we were in full view of the sunset.
We almost missed it! We arrived with moments to spare before the sun went down. We quickly set up the drone and it was a relief to actually catch it. We also took the photos on the first beach we visited on our trip, Anse Takamaka. Again, how fitting! Unfortunately, we only managed to use up 1 drone battert whilst filming the sunset. We still had another to run down!
When we arrived back at our cabin it was dark and we still had 1 more full drone battery to use up! Our flight was at 8am the next day so it wasn’t an option to wait until the next day to use it. You’re not meant to use the drone in the dark as it’s hard to see it but what other choice did we have? We started hovering it beside our cabin, very low so that it wasn’t going to crash into anything or get lost. After about 5 minutes, the dog which belongs to the owners of the cabins had come to investigate and started barking profusely in anger. We decided to take it down, worried about startling everyone. The dog wouldn’t take its suspicious eyes off us as we went into our cabin.
Next, we tried hovering it in the cabin. Terrible idea! Without the GPS, the poor drone flew into a table and crashed. It wasn’t damaged, fortunately, and neither was the table. We resulted to leaving it on the ground whilst on with its propellers going. It wasn’t ideal as the battery just wasn’t draining! After half an hour, it had only gone down by half a bar. It was going to be a long night.
We left the drone on as we went out for our evening meal. We went to the ZEZ Sushi lounge in the Four Seasons resort and had a fantastic meal. I even forgot about the drone situation. Fortunately, when we returned back, Droney’s battery had drained almost the full way so we turned him off and packed him up.
The next morning we were up at 4am. It was rough! We’d packed everything the day before so it was at least relaxing. I felt a tug in my heart as we left the cabin keys on the table and shut the door for the last time. It was pitch back outside. I turned my head to the sky and stared in awe at the vibrant stars above us. Due to the lack of light pollution, each star was clearly visible. It was one of the best views of the sky I had seen – after Namibia and Zambia.
I’m terrible at leaving places. Even though I felt it was time to go and I’d made the most of Mahé, it was still hard. I’d come to see the cabin as my home! The next goodbye was to our trusty car, Creta. In some ways that was even harder than the cabin as it had been fantastic using Creta to take us round the entire island. We left the car in the airport car-pack. We had to leave the key inside and press the lock button on the door. Imagine if you’d left something inside? There’d be no getting it back! There was a rental car parked next to ours which still had its lights on. My heart went out to the people who had left it, completely unaware that the battery was going to be drained.
We took our last fresh breath of Seychelles air before entering the airport and going home.
