Advertisement
OK, so once I publish this I will finally be caught up on the travel blog. Sweet!
As many of you know, Vaughan and I went to the Maldives for our honeymoon in November. We arrived in Male after transferring through Singapore, and were feeling quite tired. Male is the city on the main island in the Maldives, where all the locals live. The airport is on another island, about 15 minutes boat ride away from the main island, so we got sorted out on the local dhoni boats over to Male, and off we went - it was pretty dark, but arriving on the main island was very exciting. We got a taxi to our hotel, and zoomed down narrow cobbled alleyways, competing with scooters, bikes and pedestrians. We arrived safely and crashed out in our room for the night, as we had to be up at 4:30am the next morning for our scenic flight transfer to our resort island (Angaga Island).
Waking up in the morning was hard after such little sleep, and we went back across the water to the airport, this time travelling around the other side in vans, to where the scenic flights left
from. Pretty soon we were up and away, just as dawn was breaking. Taking off in our sea place was really exciting, if a little scary! It was a spectacular view - hundreds of tiny islands (there's almost 1000 in total) with spectacular white sand, surrounded by miles and miles of aqua blue water. Some islands had resorts on them, some just a few tropical trees, and others were just wisps of white sand, that come high tide, would be fully covered by the ocean. There were reefs surrounding almost every island. It was stunning!
We arrived at our resort and had a quick look around. The island only took 10 minutes to walk around, and it was nice and quiet. We had purposely picked a small, intimate island where there weren't many families or activities. We just wanted to sit in the sun, swim in the ocean (and go snorkelling), and generally just laze around. Everyone was so friendly, and we soon settled in to our beach bungalow. It was so hot outside and we were grateful for the air conditioning. There were still quite a few things to do and experience - massages, table tennis, darts, windsurfing,
scuba diving. There was a restaurant, cafe, two bars and a tourist shop. It was all really relaxed and nice - just what we had been looking for!
The days all blended into one kind of dream. The weather was incredible, and we pretty much did the same thing every day - sleep in, get up and have a shower in the open air shower at our bungalow (it didn't have a roof, so you could hear all the birds and smell the tropical flowers - very nice), then we would walk to the main building for breakfast, come back and lie in the sun, and then go for a swim. Soon enough it would be lunch time, so we would have something else to eat, then go back and sit in the sun again until it was high tide, then go for a big swim and snorkel, come back and lie in the sun to dry off, have another shower, go to the Sundowner bar for cocktails as the sun set, and then off to dinner. Heaven! We both read heaps of books, and spent time chatting to the German people in the bungalow closest to ours.
One of the evenings we were there, dinner was out on the sand - the staff had dragged all the tables out onto the beach for a giant candlelit BBQ under the stars. It was really amazing. I also went for a massage one night before dinner, which was even more relaxing than just being on the island itself! Bliss! Vaughan and I both went for a half day snorkelling trip one afternoon - we went on a dhoni boat to a nearby uninhabited island, where the reef was undisturbed. The coral was an amazing neon purple colour, and we saw even more varieties of fish (and larger schools of them swimming together). Some of the fish there were just amazing! So many bright colours! I liked the yellow, black and white angel fish the best, as well as anything neon. The water was so clear, and the little island was so cute, with just a few trees on it. It really was just so beautiful there!
Sadly our time on the island had to come to an end. Instead of heading back to New Zealand immediately, we had an extra day in Male on the way back. Male
is only 1km x 1.5km in size, yet 100,000 people live on the island. It was just so incredibly hot - too hot really - and doing anything at all was pretty much out of the question. We stayed in the hotel (in the air conditioning) until it had cooled down a little. Although it was still unbearably hot, the heaves opened in a massive thunderstorm for a couple of hours, and we ran around in the rain. The tiny cobbled streets quickly filled up with giant puddles, but we didn’t care. We found a café that had been recommended to us as a good local place to eat. They sold cheap curries (the real thing), and we hid out there for a while, trying all kinds of things on the menu, and capturing heaps of interested looks from the locals. The food was excellent, and we ended up going there twice in a row. We wandered down to the waterfront and had a look at the hundreds of dhoni water taxis lined up there - they are the same boats that take you to/from the island with the airport on it. We also had a look around by the
Parliament Building and Hukuru Miskiiy (Old Friday Mosque - one of the largest mosques in existence, I believe), although you can’t actually go inside either of them. We didn’t get to the Fish Market, which is meant to be quite interesting, as it was still just far too hot, and we ended up going back to the hotel to hide in the air conditioning again. We got some supplies from a little store across the street and had a picnic in our room. Later that night it was time to leave, so we took one more journey in the dhoni boats over to the airport island, before flying out for home.
Phew - it was a long way to fly, but the Maldives were paradise. It’s sad to think that with global warming, they will all be completely underwater one day. If any of you have the chance to go to the Maldives, we really recommend you visit this little piece of heaven!
Thanks for reading - enjoy all the photos!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0577s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Nadir
non-member comment
Makldives- truly a paradise
Myself and wifey recently went to Maldives and its truly a paradise with green and blue waters. I would certainly recommend this Island to all before it gets submerged. We were at Paradise resort an hour from the airport and it was so peaceful surrounded with green lagoon bordering with blue ocean. The submarine ride wa short and good. Must visit place