Justin was up at 06:30, Crystal a little after 07:00.  Breakfast was fine, nothing noteworthy.  This is perhaps the lone spot where the hotel in La Digue had a slight advantage.  At 08:30 we met our driver Elvis and our guide Gemma.  We got off to a little bit of a cool start, as there was no real discussion in the car.  The only thing we heard Gemma say was that we were going to Valle de Mai and Fond Ferdinand, and Gemma recommended we go to Fond Ferdinand first.  We deferred to her, and we didn’t know what to expect anyway, as our local tour agency still hadn’t given us any detailed information (we’d given up trying to get anything out of them).

The ticket office wasn’t open when we got to Fond Ferdinand, and several people were starting to wait.  When it passed 09:00, Gemma got on the phone and next thing we knew, she was taking us past the gates and starting the tour anyway.  She said we’d just get our entrance tickets when we exited.  By definition, we had the place to ourselves.  She started talking a lot more.  A lot more.  All the information she was telling us was like drinking from a fire hose, and we (Justin) knew a decent amount of this information already.  

The Seychelles have six endemic palms - Lodoicea maldivica (Coco de Mer), Verschaffeltia splendida, Roscheria melanochaetes, Nephrosperma van-houtteanum, Phoenicophorium borsigianum, and Deckenia nobilis.  Of these, we have Verschaffeltia, Phoenicophorium, and Deckenia in our garden in Hawaii.  We assume not too many of her clients have the endemic Seychellois palms at their houses, but who knows.  Some of the other interesting facts she told us - that we remember - are:

• Geckos pollinate Coco de Mer, taking pollen from the male flowers to the female plants on their faces 
• Coco de Mer seeds grow for 7 years and are the largest in the plant kingdom (it’s kind of incredible the infructescence can hold that much weight for that long) 
• Germinated seeds feed young plants for another 7 years, at which point the 7-year old plant is on its own
• Coco de Mer seeds have almost a 100% germination rate (this gave Justin a slight interest in dragging one back to Hawaii, despite the exorbitant price)
• Tabebuia leaves won’t burn, just shrivel, and thus they make great fire break trees
• The red seeds from Red Sandalwood (Adenanthera pavonina) all weigh exactly the same, and because of this historically were used to measure and weigh gold
• Vanilla needs to be pruned to make it bloom (that explains why we haven’t had any blooms in Pahoa)

All of the explanations made the long uphill walk we were taking seem not nearly so long.  In what seemed like no time at all, we were at the top of the mountain, 300 meters (1000 feet) up, with panoramic views over eastern Praslin and La Digue.  Maybe we were sufficiently prepped from our week in Socotra, who knows.  On the walk down we saw a large group with a single guide.  After we passed them Gemma told us that’s why she walked in without waiting for the ticket office to open.  We found out Gemma normally won’t go to Fond Ferdinand any more; she’ll do it only when people go slow and take in all the sites.  Either Julian or the local tour operator pleaded with her to take us, saying she was the only one who could properly guide us.  We’re just guessing here, but maybe that explains why she seemed a bit cool to us at the beginning of the day, but warmed up a ton as soon as we started talking about all the plants and taking a million photos of the plants and animals.

We also found out that Gemma sometimes works for Zegrahm cruises as a naturalist guide.  We almost went on a Zegrahm cruise a couple years back (we booked but backed out to go to Iran and the Stans instead), and those cruises are highly specialized and employ the best of the best, so if we didn’t already know from talking to her all morning, we realized she knew her stuff [and we found out afterwards she has the recognition to prove it].  On the hillside slopes we saw 5 of the 6 palm species, and we saw some Verschaffeltia on the plateau at the bottom.  Crystal found an eel in a stream just before we left.  We had actually been there 3 hours, but it seemed like far less.  We drove on the southwest coast for a bit, then turned inland to go to Vallee de Mai.

Gemma told us that the scenery would be different in Vallee de Mai.  There were almost no trees at Vallee de Mai, unlike Fond Ferdinand - it was basically all palms (all six of them).  We saw some massive termite mounds on rocks, and Gemma explained this is so heavy rain won’t wash away the mounds, as it just runs off of the rocks.  The Coco de Mers look entirely different in sun and shade.  In the shade, they stretch for the sun and look incredibly impressive and graceful.  In the sun they look a bit stunted and compact.  The males and females look the same but for the flowers on the males and the seeds on the females.  We saw a gecko (and a massive one at that) feeding on one of the male flowers in Vallee de Mai.  We left Gemma, and continued on with Elvis, around 13:45.  In our 5+ hours together, she was one of the best guides we’ve had anywhere on the planet.

With Elvis, we headed across the island for lunch, near Les Lauriers at the Cafe des Arts Restaurant.  We each ordered a Mai Tai.  Crystal got a tuna wrap again, and Justin got a carne pizza.  Before we forgot, we tried to jot down even 1/10 of what Gemma told us.  After we finished lunch we continued northwest to Anse Lazio, the most famous beach on Praslin.  Along the way we passed Raffles and its 85 villas with private pools.  We told Elvis “some people just have too much money.”

We got to Anse Lazio at 15:30.  At the beach there was a lot of sand and pink granite.  Similar to our trip to Anse Source d’Argent, Crystal hung out on a rock in the shade with a great view and her Kindle, whilst Justin went exploring from end to end.  We both enjoyed in our own way.  We left around 16:20, and took a short drive back to the hotel.  We commented on the nice excursion today, and how we really lucked out with our guide.  We got cleaned up, unlaxed, and watched the sunset.  We skipped dinner (easy since lunch was both late and large), and read in bed until we fell asleep.