Towards the end of 2011, a friend of my wife’s proposed that we go on a combined vacation, just us two couples, and suggested the Seychelles as a destination. We were a little hesitant, because we had heard it was expensive, but its reputation as a tropical island paradise was tempting enough for us to start doing some research. A few weeks later, our friends backed out, much to our chagrin, so we decided we would go alone. Through our research, we found out that, even though our vacation would be expensive, we could save a bit if we didn’t do too much island-hopping, and stayed on Mahé island most of the time instead. So it happened that we split our eight-day vacation between Mahé and Bird Island (more on this one later), and made six amazing discoveries along the way.