"beautiful place" in seselwa, according to my dictionary!

Well, no, we are not in Mallorca, in spite of the goods in the souvenir shops.  I mean, it's easy to get confused when one port follows another, but we are - were - most certainly in Victoria, on the island of Mahe in the Seychelles.

We enjoyed looking around the city and spending some time in the Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke Market      - lovely name, isn't it?

Regular readers will know that I love colour like this and what was interesting to me here, is that these are not the usual "asian" colours of red, blue and green but a rather more modern, updated version.  Maybe these are "african" colours?  We will see!

Plenty of colour everywhere we looked here, though.

Very tempting, but did I need another bag?  (Don't answer that question, will you?) 

The light was magical, making the most ordinary of produce look like a still life.

In one corner, this morning's catch was on sale, attracting many buyers.

But though it seemed as though the men were doing the buying

they were taking their purchases to a woman to clean and prepare them.   (Again, that magical light!)

We had no need of spices having not opened our Mumbai purchases yet, so we looked, admired and moved on.  The gorgeous aroma of vanilla was never far away in this corner of the market, though - welcome relief after the fishy department!

Saving the best till last - or at least, the aspect of the Seychelles that was uppermost in our minds, required a journey to the north of Mahe, where our driver pulled over for a photo stop which made us all gasp.  Just fifteen minutes or so from here, we found this...

Now, as you can see, we weren't the only ones to find this beautiful place, but hey, having it to ourselves would be just plain selfish, wouldn't it?

Driving along this beautiful coastline, we looked forward to the promised swim and beach time.  Not long, but enough to get a feel of the place and to whet our appetite for more?

We were not the only ones at this hotel beach either, but that didn't spoil our enjoyment.

So I'll just leave you to imagine wandering along this white, sandy beach and into the clear, beautifully clean water for a lovely swim to cool off from the midday heat.

Bliss.