A tale of two thilas

---

Dawn breaks as the alarm goes off and another day beckons.

It's dive time again and I've got an hour to get ready including breakfast before I have to meet the dive boat.

On board today we have 5 divers, 2 instructors and 3 crew. Normally at this time of year it would be double the amount of divers & instructors but the hotel is unusually quiet (political unrest in Male and the general world recession has seen occupancy slip to 50% whereas it would normally be 85+ at this time of year).

From a selfish point of view I don't mind as the dive sites have all been quiet as well, we've not seen another dive boat anywhere near us.

The first site is called 'Ali Thila' and we dived on the site for nearly an hour. I took loads more photos including Tuna and Grouper (both of which we ate later that night!) We also saw several sharks both white tip and grey reef but they always stayed just out of reach of the camera lense .

Once we surfaced we set sail for the next dive site -Madhuu thila - but before we could dive we had to wait an hour for the residual nitrogen to clear from our blood so the crew served fresh fruit and coffee whilst we swapped stories of previous diving exploits.

We dived again for an hour then made our way back to the islands. The afternoon was spent lazily recovering from the mornings exhertions. Tonight we dine by the full moon! (cue howling!)

---