Seychelles La Digue island mobilizes for practice run of carnival float

The island of La Digue, often regarded as the tourist Mecca of the Seychelles, is mobilizing itself for a practice run of its carnival float procession this coming weekend. Tourists on La Digue are being invited to join the inhabitants to line the main street of La Digue to see the Diguois dressed in their carnival attire, as they will be in a week’s time in Victoria for the 2011 Seychelles “Carnaval International de Victoria.”

La Digue is the only tourist-dependent island of the Seychelles promoting itself in the carnival. La Digue is taking one of its traditional oxcarts to the main island of Mahe as their main icon. This will be accompanied by two people dressed as their unique “Paradise Flycatcher” Birds, the Madilo dance and music group, which will make up a total delegation of some 70 participants. This practice run will help energize the Seychelles population and give an “avant gout” of what Seychelles can expect from March 4-6 in Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles.

The CEO of the Seychelles Tourism Board, Alain St.Ange, congratulated the La Digue island administration and its business community for having rallied together to consolidate La Digue island’s presence on the tourism map. “It is pleasing to see such positive feelings of togetherness for the one cause – moving La Digue forward,” Alain St.Ange said at the last meeting for all participants of the 2011 Seychelles “Carnaval International de Victoria.”

The La Digue delegation will also be distributing promotional leaflets to the visitors lining the streets of Victoria in a bid to get them to think La Digue as their next holiday stop. The La Digue oxcart, their traditional means of transport, will be boarding a schooner from La Digue during the middle of next week.

The Seychelles Tourism Board has also now confirmed that its own float will be leading the carnival procession on Saturday, March 5. They will be followed by a float promoting Seychelles’ October Creole Festival and the UK’s Notting Hill Carnival Float coming in as the third float. The La Digue island float with its oxcart will be the sweeping float of the carnival procession, as they have requested that they be the final float of the line up.

The carnival procession is set to have over 60 floats from Seychelles and from the community of nations. The 2011 Seychelles “Carnival International de Victoria” will be officially on March 4 in Victoria in the presence of many international dignitaries representing different regional governments.