You’ve never heard of Rodrigues island and have no clue where it is? Well neither did I. It’s not the furthest point you can get to from Montreal, but not by very much. Montreal to Rodrigues island is just over 15 000 km as the crow flies (one dedicated crow), while the antipodal point is roughly at 17500 km. It sits in the middle of water, 1500 km west of Australia. So you know, same oceanic ball park. A picture is worth a thousand words yes?
I am quite behind on my posts, there’s already a whole island experience between us and Mahé, so this will be brief and more picture driven.
We found a place on booking.com, that should have been pretty close to the dive shop and the beach, possibly with an okay view of at least greenery. Instead we got a major road with a bus stop and a crazy ATM trying to communicate in demonic morse code. The light blue pin is where the site said our place would be, the red X where it actually (or close enough) was. Big difference, big disapointment, but when life gives you lemons you make cocktails with the local rum, and we did.
So I told you how my GoPro is adrift somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and it is a real freakin’ bummer that I added plastic to the growing heap of junk floating around.
Also there’s some cool images I’ll never get to share.
Except…
A talented person (and diver), that was on board with us on the Emperor Voyager, graciously allowed me to share a video she made of our dives. So enjoy, and many many thanks Ms Sarah Wilke.
The Seychelles segment of our trip was off to a rough start. An impressive lack of organization at the Colombo airport meant that even showing up four hours in advance was just enough to make our flight without one of us becoming truly unpleasant. Our flight was at 0200, landing in the Seychelles at around 0500 local time. Which means not much sleep even in the best of cases, which was not my case as I’m still a nervous flier. The plane was filled with Sri Lankans going abroad for work, and they were intent on making the most of the free meals and beers on the plane. No doubt they were heading for extended austere/spartan conditions akin to indenturedness (not a word), so who could blame them?
Scuba diving the Red Sea had always seemed nearly impossible. It was faraway, expensive and, let’s be honest, seemed a little dicey. However, when opportunity knocks, you open the door, and when a friend called with a plan to charter an entire boat and dive the Red Sea, the D&C said yes. In the end we did not manage to fill up the whole boat, but it was close enough, and we got to meet some cool new people in the process. Win-win.