here are the pictures... read more

We started the day early 7:00am with a bike ride around the island. The bikes today were much better than yesterday. The countryside here is just so beautiful and the people are so nice. Everyone in India (where we have been) dresses so colorful. I just love the colors. We bike to an old temple built about 500 years ago. Everyone says hello and waves. We start stopping along the route and take pictures with locals. They seemed thrilled that we want their pictures. We even saw this older gentleman with this pole we thought he was using to knock down coconuts. Instead, he climbed it like a ladder and then climbed the rest of the tree and cut down the coconuts. It was cool. We bike for about 2 hours, then head back for breakfast. ... read more

We wake up this morning and pack up all our stuff. No matter what happens we are going to move from the hotel. $400+ a night is just too much. But, we are keeping our fingers crossed. We head out towards breakfast but stop at the SpiceJet office. I was sure nothing could be done to get on that flight but Shelly wanted to try anyway. We showed them we had a ticket for yesterday’s flight and had tried to cancel it online. They said we had succeeded and that the credit card had been credited. They said today’s flight was full though. But Shelly to the rescue. “isn’t there anything? Can’t we go standby?” Then they finally said if anything did become available they said “it will cost too much”. Shelly asks “How much?”. Oh ... read more

Our sailing trip ended Sunday morning. We were deposited at the airport where our Hotel picked us up. We're staying in the same hotel we stayed at before the sail trip. We were allowed to check in early and got to the room. we then immediately went over to the Indian Consulate. The door opened at 9 and we were the first ones in only to find out the counters inside don't open until 9:30. we wait. At 9:30, we are first in line and try to talk with the lady. she is very hard to understand and just keeps saying no, no, no, don't come back. We do see a sign that says you can only pick up visas between 4 and 5. So Shelly takes off to surf and I chill in the room ... read more

Another lazy day in the Maldives. We started out at a sandbar and snorkeled for a while. We saw another sea turtle. The captain and first mate went octopus fishing and caught 3 of them. They also got several more fish off the back of the ship while we were traveling. We have fresh fish every night that has been caught during the day. After snorkeling, we had a 4 hour boat ride across the sea back to the atoll just below Male. We get to an island. the other 2 couples take off in the kayaks and Shelly takes off in the dingy with the first mate. They are in search of a surf board as there is a nice surf break that we can see. Shelly is not successful in her search. we have ... read more