Advertisement
Published: March 16th 2008
Edit Blog Post
March 11 - 15, 2008
MALDIVES
Arrived early in Male, The Maldives and were picked up at the airport by a motor launch from our Resort Hotel for the 20 minute ride out to the Full Moon Resort. WOW !! This is a nice place. Our room is on posts over the lagoon and we literally have snorkeling out the door as we have a short access pool ladder to the lagoon from our patio and from there it is a short swim to a small reef.
This is a few days of recharging our personal batteries and we plan to do a lot of just hanging out.
As Alice is happy to lounge and relax at the pool, I took the opportunity to do some scuba diving and upgraded my Padi diving certification. We had 2 very good dives at some local reefs and saw sharks, sea turtles, barracudas, stingrays, very large napoleon fish ( 1.5 meters ), and a few million other very colorful fish that make the reefs their home. There are lots and lots of fish here. The short walk to the main resort from our room is on a boardwalk over a
lagoon with many fish and a drink at the bar includes feeding a bunch of local fish that hang out at the lagoon at the bar.
The reefs we saw, quite frankly, are a mess. The fairly recent El Nino system changed the water temperature and most of the coral died and the over fishing in the oceans has disrupted the food chain and the reefs are suffering from this as well. There is some new coral growing but not a lot. The water here is almost perfect here for diving and is the visibility is very, very good. In spite of the reef problems they have an amazing variety and quantity of fish.
The Maldives are a group of many islands, south and west of India, and are all they are made out to be. White sand beaches, palm trees, flowers and amazing bue / green seas and lagoons. This really is a topical paradise. We will spend 4 days here before returning to Mumbai for our connection to Dubai.
The Full Moon Resort is a very good 5 star resort and we have nothing but compliments for the people, the service, the facilities and the
location in the beautiful Maldives. But !!!
B C ( bring cash ) Be prepared to pay for services here. We ( and many others we spoke to ) felt that some of the prices are a little outrageous here. You are captive at the resort ( and nearly all of the resorts in The Maldives) and we felt they took advantage of that situation. I can completely understand that there are extra costs associated with running this kind of a remote, island, operation and we expect to pay five star prices at a five star resort, but some things are just plain unreasonable. Ex: $ 11.00 U.S. for 30 minutes of WiFi; $58.00 U.S. each for an very average buffet dinner; $54.00 the next day for a slightly better buffet; over $ 100.00 for a one tank scuba dive and equipment rental: and generally high prices for drinks and other food. You are provided 1 bottle of drinking water per room on arrival and from there you pay bar prices for replacements. (Almost all of the hotels on this long trip have provided daily drinking water.) All in all a very nice place but be prepared to shell out
for everything.
We enjoyed very good weather for the first 3 days with hot weather and lots of sun (Rain showers the last day) and had a very relaxing time at this very nice resort before continuing our adventures.
Off tomorrow for our flights to Mumbai, India via Colombo.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 10; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0304s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb