If I had paid what the typical tourist pays for a trip to the Seychelles, I'd be a bit ticked off by now. This is supposed to be the dry season with beautiful skies and rich blue water. Instead, what we have found is a cloud and rain socked, blustery island. No Sun, no beautiful water just rotten weather! The forecast for the entire next week is the same-- more rain and wind. What the heck is Mother Nature up to? Now in talking to the locals, they seem happy with the rain,we had over 5, yes, that's right 5 inches of rain on Sunday! The locals are happy about it and you can't really blame them as the rain allows them to have full cisterns and plenty of water to bathe and wash clothes instead of having to cut back and conserve but for a tourist that is paying many hundreds of dollars for a vacation here, it's got to really hurt.

Yesterday, we took Puff over to a local warehouse store called ISPC. It's a French owned company that was reputed to have the best food on the island as they are the main supplier for all the resorts and hotels in the Seychelles. We took Puff up a channel and tied off to some rocks and Tracy walked over while I stayed in the boat. We were each going to take turns going. It really is an amazing store with shipments flown in from France five days a week. The selections was decent but the quality was outstanding. The fruits and veggies was so fresh, it brought back memories of shopping in the US. The only problem was the price. Being flown in some often, the prices reflect it. I bought three oranges. Not Naval but just regular Valencia Oranges. Each orange ran $1.38US!!!! Now they were the best oranges I've had since I gorged on them back in Palau but boy they sure weren't cheap. I found a bag, not a big "party" size bag of tortilla chips. They ran almost $8.00 and that was without the VAT sales tax of 15% that gets added to just about all purchases. That brought the price up to $9.13US!!! It's like I said, it's not cheap!

We found one of the local laundry services. Most places we have found in the past in Malaysia or the Philippines did it by the kilo. Never really expensive but never really cheap like doing it yourself at one of the self serve laundromats. Here, they have raised it to a new level. It's done by the piece with each having its own price. A pair of pants-$2.64. A shirt-$2.26. Underwear-$1.13!!!! Now if its women's clothes, well a blouse runs $1.88. No idea why it's cheaper than men's. And these are the prices in US dollars! A dress goes for $2.64 and a simple handkerchief costs $.60! Sure am glad we do ours on board as there is no way to afford having them done in town. Yeow!!!!