GLORIEUSES  The great thing about cruising is that you can change your mind whenever you want - and once we left Madagascar our original plan was to visit Mayotte. Given the state of our finances, we decided that this was not a good idea, and decided to head for Aldabra. Of course, we changed our minds again a couple of days into the passage as the increasing swell was hitting us beam on and driving the first mate insane!!!! So, we quickly consulted the chart and decided to head for Glorieuses. This is a small, French island only occupied 6 months of the year by a French policeman, 2 military men and a met officer!!! They actually boarded the boat and asked to see our passports - which suprised us somewhat!!!! We soon had them enjoying the Khulula spirit (well Madagascan actually) and they invited us ashore for a tour of the island.

The island is extremely beautiful, with dense palm trees, white sand beaches and not a lot else!!! They had a tractor waiting to take us across to the other side of the island, where there was a clearing with the met building and the officers mess (and cold beers!!!!!!). We had the grand tour of the met building - quite fascinating to discover that they transmitted weather reports to London twice a day, and that so much technology was housed on such a small island. A quick tour of the officers accommodation, and that was basically all that was there - apart from a really beautifully kept grave-yard of the original inhabitants. Each grave was bordered by clean white pebbles, and the same pebbles were used to represent the cross, in the centre of the grave. A small gravel path led to each grave, again with a border of clean white pebbles. I guess this is what the policemen and military men did all day. 

When they returned us to the boat, and we thanked them for their hospitality, they said we were much nicer than the last people that visited them who demanded a tour of the Island and then had an argument with the policeman because they were not given permission to go ashore. This then escalated into an even larger argument when they demanded to know how much the Island would cost to buy!  When the policeman demanded to know who this person thought they were, trying to buy French land, he announced that his name was  Michael Douglas. Neither the policeman, military gents or met officer had ever heard of any of his films, or recognised that he was famous, so he was promptly asked to pull up the anchor (of his super-yacht) and leave French territory!!!!!!!