Seychelles - Day 3: Island Mahé South

'Aaahhhhhhh!!' The people in the southernmost village of Mahe in Quatre Bornes all jumped at once. A girl had screamed loudly... but from the very beginning.

Highly motivated for the planned hike today, we woke up a bit earlier than usual and enjoyed the always very good breakfast.
Just before departure, a heavy downpour hit us from above. Rain, quite heavy rain.
Tanja took this opportunity to take a nap while Roli kept an eye out for the next patch of blue sky.
An hour later we set off, always heading south.
Destination: the southernmost point and beach of the island.

The hike - mind you, an official trail - resembled a jungle expedition straight out of Indiana Jones. We climbed steeply on barely recognizable and densely overgrown paths. We had to avoid the thorns on the palm trunks, overcome fallen palms with their huge leaves, and maneuver through vines. The sun was peeking out from the sky, and every steam bath would wish for such humidity.

Whoever came up with the idea to use white dots on rocks and trees as trail markers, which of course are almost indistinguishable from white lichens or similar, is invited to contact Roli for an exclusive, free trail marking course!

Suddenly, a loud scream startled even the folks in the southernmost village of Mahe in Quatre Bornes, about 3km away in a straight line.

'Aaahhhhhhh!!'
Tanja ran and stomped back, wildly waving her hands in front of her face.
She had walked into a spider web that was painstakingly created by a palm spider through laborious teamwork.
Admittedly, the hand-sized spider is truly not a 'I-definitely-want-to-pet-that' creature, and walking into a 1m² sticky web is not exactly fun. This also happened to Roli, who from now on had to lead the way, though he could not hide his shock and disgust after laughing at Tanja, but at least a major operation involving a search dog team from Seychelles was not triggered.
Basically, the spider is harmless; much 'more dangerous' were the hungry killer mosquitoes that drained us from head to toe, leaving so many prominent memories on our bodies that we had to use our toes to count them, as it was impossible to manage with four hands alone (over 20 bites per leg).

We shortened the hike significantly as, like I said, navigating + heat + humidity contributed their share to it.

In the end, however, we were rewarded with a dream-like, picture-perfect Adam and Eve beach that, although not particularly inviting for swimming due to the waves, was beautiful to look at. No idea why, but it was completely deserted.
The coconut found in the jungle was then laboriously cracked open and consumed with full-body effort on the beach.

Delicious.

The return journey was shorter but similarly adventurous.

To satisfy our daily craving for fish, we snorkeled at the hotel beach for a while before enjoying the tuna on a plate at a genuinely nice restaurant not far away called 'Pineapple Cabana'.