Paying the bills, island style

There's something deliciously queer about paying my bills while lounging in the hotel bar a mere nine metres from the beach. The trenches (grossly understated as potholes), litter (more like garbage) and sewage running down the streets of my little town back home are a far wail from the gobsmackingly beautiful wonder that is the Seychelles coastline.

Yesterday's drive along (almost) the entire circumference of Mahe Island had my companion and I marveling at God's awesomeness. "God is just showing off," I kept telling my companion. "He's showing off."

Our little Hyndai Getz (Nadia - how she got her name is a story for another day) performed superbly up and down (and up again and down again) [and up again and down again] {and up again and down again} the very windy bends that make up these skinny roads. The fact that Nadia is a right-hand-drive automatic endears me to her even more. With hairpin bends every few hundred metres and the local buses going at rather high speeds, I often wondered which would be preferrable: going under the wheels of a bus, or into the sea (there is no barrier between the skinny roads, the ridge and the ocean). The jury is still out on that one.

As the designated driver (teetotaler that I am, I have gracefully accepted this as my lot in life), I had to keep reminding myself to keep (both) eyes on the road. Sadly the roads were generally not designed to pull over on the sides to take snaps. Like I said earlier, there is no embankment, just road, ridge and ocean.

The two Stop/Go sections where road works were being done reminded me of home. I was half expecting a driver to overtake all the cars in the queue so that he could proceed first when our turn to go came.

I sympathised with the mini-lorry driver who drove into a pothole and got stuck. His passengers all just sat there instead of trying to get the lorry out of the ditch. Others came to spectate. I asked the dreadlocked young man taking photos with his cellphone why the men were just standing around (some INSIDE the back of the lorry) instead of trying to lift it out of the pothole. He said they were too tired and lazy from all the food they had just eaten.
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. That's all I have to say about that.