Unexpected Trip to a Tropical Garden at Seychelles
On the 6th day of our holiday, we woke up to a typical day in the tropical Seychelles with high humidity and 28 degrees Celsius, the average daily temperature for a country so close to the Equator. Our accommodation in Anse Boileau was surrounded by rain forests on the side of the hills bordered by the mangrove swamps where freshwater tributaries reached the Indian Ocean. Millions of birds and insects sung in crescendo, red crabs peeked out of their homes built in the lateritic soil in the garden of our chalet. After breakfast we were ready to visit the “Ambassador’s botanical garden” in Anse Royale. We knew nothing of the gardens, as it was not on our selected destinations` list. We found it accidentally on a smartphone application. One of our excursions had been cancelled, so we decided to go to plan B to make good use of our time.
We took the road to the mountains across a residential area to get to the village. The entrance of the garden was very easy to find, we parked in the small carpark, it was very quiet with nobody else at the entrance, the whole area had a feeling of calmness with lush vegetation all around, we really enjoyed the vibe of this place. A few minutes later the old little gardener dressed in dirty clothes came to see us, leaving behind his work and he showed us around. There were no one inside, just two of us and the old creole gardener and a wide range of plants bursting into flower: orchids, palms, breadfruit trees, lipstick trees, crotons and many more, most of them were local plants and some of them were brought from Asia. Our lovely, well-informed guide told us interesting facts about every single flower and plant in the garden. We later saw the giant tortoises` home with a pool which was a lovely place in the garden, where you can feed these animals with exotic plants’ leaves and other plant parts. The compost produced by these tortoises is perfect for the garden.
It took over an hour to get to the house making our way through the exotic and beautiful garden. We were about to pay the entrance fee (it was time to do so…) and hoped to meet the ambassador finally, when something quite unexpected happened. The old gardener invited us to the lounge which was full of rare and prized artefacts such as some 100-year-old tortoise bones, shells, coco-de-mer nuts, local handmade craft items. The wall was covered by unique pictures of lovely memories from the past: the biggest pic was showing a local creole woman, the beloved mother of the old little man. There were photos of UN delegations, international meetings, photos of a smiling little creole man together with George Bush and Bill Clinton.
We have not realised for hours that we had met the former ambassador, Marc Marengo, who we thought was this old “gardener”. He had served his country for over 31 years as a diplomat, served under four US presidents between 1987-2000 and did a lot to develop ecotourism in the Seychelles. The locals are so proud of him.
Meeting him and his beautiful garden was our most impressive experience of our trip to the Seychelles.
