Seychelles - Day 11: Island Hopping to La Digue Island

Fingers crossed and 3,2,1... curtains up: Hooray, no rain!

Motivated for the island hopping today, we started the day earlier than usual. At 9 AM, we took the ferry to the small neighboring island of La Digue. La Digue, covering approximately 10 km² (about 5 km long and 3 km wide), is a small yet charming car-free island renowned for its breathtaking beaches like 'Anse Source d'Argent,' which we intended to explore today by bike.

Upon arriving at the harbor, we checked out orange bikes that have evidently seen quite a lot on the island's roads.
Fortunately, the brakes worked quite well, as they soon came into play when a native giant tortoise crossed the road. Just riding past it wasn't an option. Firstly, the tortoise blocked half the road, then the whole road when Tanja joined in, and secondly, it was far too adorable.
Tanja immediately jumped off her bike to ensure she didn’t miss the land tortoise famous for its insane speed.
After a few gentle strokes, the beautiful lady was even fed hibiscus flowers from the tree and coerced into posing as a model for selfies.

After cycling a few kilometers in one direction of the island, the rain caught up with us again.
Well, we couldn’t complain about a short stop to refresh our 'hydrated status' with freshly squeezed mango juice. However, we did mind the recurring rain after a few brief moments of sunshine.
Stubborn, thick rain clouds persisted above us all day.
Initially, we tried to keep cycling during the rain breaks while passing the remaining time idly, but as the rain breaks became shorter and eventually vanished altogether, we decided in pure Austrian style, 'screw it.'
We packed our backpacks to withstand the rain - Roli wrapped his like a baby in his beach towel, slipped into our swim shorts and bikini, and cycled through the pouring rain across the island. Whether we got wet from above or below no longer mattered, and we splashed through every puddle.

Upon arriving at the 'L'Union Estate' National Park, we were surrounded by colorful flowers, vanilla plantations, and the characteristic red rocks of the Seychelles.
However, our goal was the vibrant underwater world at the 'Anse Source d'Argent' beach.
The rain gave its best effort, and by that, I mean heavy rain, to make us wet while snorkeling, but we just showed it our tongues, no remorse.

After a short snorkeling session in the shallow waters, where we returned shortly after, not very excited, we briefly visited the tortoise enclosure with the giant tortoises and the Takamaka rum shop (unfortunately without tastings) before we soaked through in our swimwear boarded the ferry back to Praslin.

That after such a dreary rainy day, luck still visited us in the evening made Roli especially happy - a randomly discovered and incredibly delicious all-you-can-eat dinner buffet with live music.
And that this dinner was by far the most expensive of the vacation didn’t matter at all since the amount in our bellies was worth many times more than we had paid.