First off our hike began on Saturday 5th November at 9am with a short registration from 8.30am. Anyone could join the Ceres Clean Up Project by simply registering to our event on our website https://cerescleanupproject.apex.sc/
Trekking the Copolia trail provided us with fresh mountain air while we picked up trash along the trail. Our aim was to clean up the trail and enjoy the views as we go along. In total there were about 15 of us enthusiastic participants (10 volunteers and 5 Apex Staff), some were usual hikers while others were quite new.
This did not disparage us however as we wanted to connect with mother nature and have fun on the way up. The Copolia trail has quite a soft start then after becomes quite a trek and it took us about one hour to reach the peak with our trusted Seychelles Parks and Garden Authority (SPGA) ranger, Mr. Cliff Monthy. https://www.spga.gov.sc/
The park ranger pointed out a bunch of endemic and interesting flora and fauna however some of us was fully concentrated on breathing in the fresh air, LOL. But to be honest it is not a super hard trail, maybe medium to high in terms of difficulty if you are not active but note that it is an upward 1.2km hike and 180m high in altitude.
The trail mainly consisted of Cinnamon trees, ‘coco marons’ endemic palms and our team even came across two wolf snakes endemic to Seychelles, one brown and one green. To note wolf snakes are not particularly dangerous as it is not poisonous. As part of Copolia trail on our way up we could even hear the rivulets of water running beneath the rocks below even if we could not see it directly.
We managed to clean up 8kg of trash on our way up mainly consisting of 3kg glass, 1kg plastics, 1kg aluminum cans and 3kg general waste, from all our other Ceres hikes we can definitely say that Copolia trail is one of the cleanest trails with the least amount of trash collected.
We were ofcourse rewarded with the amazing views of Morne Seychellois the highest peak of Seychelles, Trois Freres mountain and quite a large part of the East Coast of Mahe. The glacis whereby we rested and took in the views was layered with a wide expanse of the famous pitcher plants.
Ofcourse enjoying the views came with sipping on cold ceres juices and munching on lays chips with our fellow Apex colleagues and new friends. The highlight of the hike was the surprise draw to give back to our consistent volunteers that helps us keep Seychelles clean and the winner was a young boy named Nathan who won a SCR 500 voucher to spend at Apex Pop Up Shop.
