Seychelles - Day 13: Turtle Island, last snorkeling trip and return journey

As if ordered, the sun was already teasing our skin at breakfast on our last day in the Seychelles. 

Our suitcases, packed with our best packing skills, could stay a few hours longer in our accommodation 'Villa Anse la Blague', while we ventured once more into the underwater world. 

Before slipping into our fins one last time, we took a trip to the small neighboring island 'Curieuse', better known as Turtle Island.

As we were dropped off there by motorboat, the first giant tortoises greeted us on the beach. There was quite a lot happening on a large lawn with English grass, palm trees, and many delicious leafy trees. From the diligent lawn-mowing tortoise to the banana-eating tortoise, to love-making tortoises and the lazy tortoise lying in the shade, everything was present.
One thing all the beautiful giants had in common was that they were very curious and all hungry. Luckily, we were well stocked with mango and freshly picked leaves, making us quite popular.
But it wasn’t just the armored creatures that were hungry, the mosquitoes were also feeling pretty thirsty in the heat. The feeding of these was not so voluntary.

The Aldabra tortoises are at home on the island and are raised and well cared for there. They are used to people and gladly accepted our food donations + petting.

The time spent with the giant tortoises went by way too fast and our wish to take one of the tortoises home could not come true due to their weight of 150-250kg and our 23kg luggage limit.

From the beautiful bay, we took a walking excursion through the mangrove forests along wooden paths, past hundreds of crabs of all sizes, further to the other side of the island to Anse St. José.

In the kitschy turquoise-blue and clear water, we briefly cooled off along with our newly acquired mosquito bites before our taxi boat picked us up and we jumped from the boat into the underwater world near St. Pierre Island.
This part of the world showed itself again in all its best colors and diversity today. Many colorful schools of fish, a few larger loners, as well as a stingray and a black tip reef shark crossed our snorkeling path, and we even got to pet a sea turtle and accompany it with a few fin kicks.
After a good hour in the water, we said goodbye to the fish and the vacation catalog scenery and took the motorboat back to Praslin.

After washing off the seawater for the last time and finalizing our luggage and rather heavy hand luggage backpacks, we got some takeaway food before returning our car and took the ferry back to the main island Mahé. We could hardly believe that our arrival there was already two weeks ago.

The uneasy feeling in our stomach this time didn’t come from the waves on the ferry, but from the luggage scale at check-in. 
With 1 x over 26.4kg and 1 x 24.3kg, we speculated more than calculated, but our suitcases were accepted.
The heavy one even received its own warning sign, probably so that no one ends up with an injury.

Our flight to Istanbul went smoothly, and since it was already the middle of the night for us, we tried not to sleep through the meal on the flight despite our tired eyes, because we preferred dark circles under our eyes to a growling stomach.
The flight from Istanbul to Vienna literally flew by since due to the time difference of 2 hours, we left Istanbul at 08:30 and arrived in Vienna at 08:45.

In Vienna, after 1x dinner and 2x breakfast on the plane, we had a third breakfast before taking the train home.

We will fondly remember this unforgettable vacation filled with many great experiences and some funny mishaps for a long time.