I Love Seychelles

Beau Vallon police station, Mahé island

Snorkeling at Beau Vallon

Tuesday September 23rd, our 2nd day on Mahé. Good start of our honeymoon. In the morning we decided to go snorkeling just around the corner of the beach. Surrounded by huge granite rocks we found the perfect place. Quickly we changed into our swimming suits and plunged into the warm water. Soon we found the first yellow, tropical fishes, and as we swam further we saw more and more beautiful fishes in all sorts of colours and the recovering coral (tsunami).

Backpack gone!

When we got back we discovered that one of our backpacks (with mobile phone) was gone. The other one with some money in it was still there. Also missing were some shorts and flip-flops. How annoying that was! Here we were in paradise, and the first snorkeling occassion leads to a stolen backpack

Without 2 pair of flip-flops, 1 backpack with sunglasses (Chanel, ouch!) and mobile phone in it, shorts and shirt we walked back to our little beach house. There the owners noticed something had happened and after we explained it all, Marquise offered to drive us the Beau Vallon police station, because we needed to report it for our insurance. After a 5 minute drive we arrived at the local police station. After Marquise had explained what happened in Creole (extremely handy to have a local help you out), we officially reported the theft of our things.

Hello again

At the time we only reported it in order to get insurance money and had no hope on ever getting our belongings back. However during our lunch at the Baobab pizza place Marquise came to tell us that she had received a phone call from a police officer saying they might have discovered our backpack with contents again. So, there we went again to the police station. We were guided through a corridor, up the stairs (where are we going???) to a little room. And there in the middle of the room was… our backpack with everything still in it!

We learned that after our report the entire Beau Vallon police force went out to search the bushes around our snorkeling place. And there they found our things. The police officer told us proudly that he was actually the one who found the backpack. After writing a new statement that the Beau Vallon police found our things, we drove back with our reclaimed belongings.

A very interesting day with both disappointment and pleasant surprise.

Seychelles police

Of course this was only one single experience, but we found the local police to be very helpful and friendly. Tourism is extremely important for the Seychelles and when tourists are confronted with crime, they do everything they can to solve it.

In retrospect I think the backpack theft may actually have been a joke by someone (local or tourist), because everything in it was still there. Including a mobile phone and some very expensive sun glasses.

Anyway, we got it all back and had a very good experience with the local police and of course the owners of our accommodation who really helped us out a lot.

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