THE
MALDIVES
December
9 - 19, 2000 Written by Aaron
Getting out of India took two hours at the airport and we held our breath when the government agent asked us for the receipt for the money we paid to get our Visa extension, who knew we needed to keep this! Silly us, we thought the visa extention stamped in our passport would be sufficient. Would we get out of India without it? Yes, we did. An hour later we arrived at the Maldive capital, Male, where our Paradise Holidays Representative picked us up and escorted us to our seaplane. After India, we thought we were back on Mars. There was no garbage or human excrement littering the sidewalks! Can you imagine that? We were stunned! And for the first time in five weeks, we felt safe. People weren't appraising us and our luggage and wondering how much they would get if they either robbed or killed us. Okay, I'm being dramatic, India wasn't that unsafe, but it was unsafe enough to make the Maldives look like heaven, though that's not hard to do.
The Maldives are the flattest country in the world. They are a collection of sandy reefs, barely sticking up out of the crytalline blue waters of the India ocean, just south of Sri Lanka. The sand collects on the reefs and makes tiny little islands. In fact, we didn't fly into Male, we flew into the Male Airport which has its own reef. We were then whisked off on a seaplane, and as we left the water for the air, we could see all the different atolls. Each atoll is only allowed one resort each, and we were on our way to Ellaidhoo on the Ari Atoll, the place for Germans, hardcore divers, and the best housereef in the Maldives, or at least the Ari Atolls, the collection of islands in the center of the archipelago. How did we hear of this truly amazing place? Laura had stumbled upon a diving magazine in Thailand, in Koh Phi Phi. She read about the Maldives, and so we went and asked our dive shop about these exotic Islands. Ed, our Dutch guy, hadn't been there, but he then pointed to a customer who had spent eight years living and diving in the Maldives. What a coincidence! He filled us in and since then, knowing we'd want a break from India, decided to book the trip, though getting the money out of India to pre-pay the trip took weeks and weeks.
We took pictures of the green and brown lines under the blue water out of the window of the sea plane, but you'd need a better camera than we had to do it justice. Our 999 rupee camera, which we bought with three rolls of film, was probably not up to the task. We landed on the water, and the plane took us to a dock, in the middle of the ocean. From there, a dhoni, a Maldivian boat, took us to Ellaidhoo. A couple of things had changed on the island. The company which owned the resort decided divers don't drink enough, and in 1997 El Nino had destoryed a lot of the soft coral, and with global warming, the Maldives themselves might be underwater in the next fifty years. So, what does one do? One gets Italians to come to their island and begins a mad construction plan to build as much as possible to make as much money as possible before the oceans reclaim the islands, oceans swollen with melted ice caps. Most of the Island information was Italian, most of the people were Italian, and we were in the minority. We were introduced to our "room boy", a Maldivian named Ali, who turned out to be priceless. We tipped him far better than Chuckles. And we were lead to our room, right off the beach, away from much of the constuction, though cement walls had been put up to keep the sand on the reef, and that, in itself, was disappointing. However, we donned our snorkels, swam out to the edge of the reef, where the seafloor disappeared into blue, and there we saw tons of fish, red-toothed triggerfish were like birds around us. But wait, what's that? From the depths, something emerged, flying through the water with wings four feet wide. A manta ray swam up, looked at us for awhile, and then swam away. Amazing, but then we turned around and a sea turtle swam by us and surfaced for air before dipping back down into the quiet of this amazing ocean world. And that was our first day of snorkeling. Later we ate delicious Italian food replete with olives, until we burst. We also befriended an Israeli couple, avid travelers and divers, who were on Ellaidhoo for a holiday. We enjoyed many a delightful conversations with them.
And so began our ten days. Most of the
time, we got up early to go diving, then we would come back,
eat lunch, and then read or nap, and we would finish off the
day with an evening snorkel around the island. After that, we
would watch the sunset, then get ready for dinner. Meals were
odd at that time, because of Ramadan. The Maldives are an Islamic
country, and most of our staff were not eating or drinking during
the daylight hours. Speaking of daylight, each resort has it's
own time zone so that guests can make the most of the daylight.
Because of Ramadan, we ate dinner at 8:30, which was late, but
our waiter had to eat too! And the waiters and room boys were
also constuction workers, and they worked until 2:00 AM, building
up the island. All of the constuction was hard on the aquatic
life, and though in 1998 the Maldives had won numerous envrionmental
awards for trying to conserve their fragile enviroment while
still making a profit from tourism, I think the almighty dollar
had come in and put all of that forward thinking aside. And speaking
of dollars, everything was unspeakably expensive! A bottle of
water, less than a quarter in India, went for three dollars a
bottle, and it was the only drinkable water on the island! Cokes
were two dollars, mixed drinks were seven dollars, and you know
its a bad sign when things are not in lyra, but in US dollars.
So, we had to conserve water, something that even Robinson Crusoe
didn't have to do. We read about his adventures while on the
island; we thought it was appropriate.
After dinner and chatting with our Israeli
friends, Nimrod and Nogah, we went to sleep. Later we met some
Americans from San Francisco who had an underwater video/digital
camera, and we were given demos. We began, at that time, to think
about a Hong Kong trip to purchase some gadgets that we didn't
need, but wanted. Those guys should have gotten a cut from Sony
because Sony was about to get a lot of our money. The time flew
by, well, except for the two nights we were stranded on what
Laura called "Prisoner Island". Maaga Island was a
boat ride away, and on two nights we were all ferried over for
a party on the beach there. Getting us there wasn't the problem.
The problem was, we couldn't get back. There was some miscommunication,
and so many of us early rising diving guests sat on the dock,
with Elliadhoo's lights glimmering in the distance, unable to
get back. I thought about swimming, but no one would go with
me. Not even our Italian diving guides, Marco and Steffy, or
the Swiss diving guides, Katrina or Annie, and not even the British
diving guide, Dave. So, we had to wait, both times, an hour for
a boat to pick us up. Oh well. The people were so nice, the diving
was so amazing, and it went by fast. On Decmeber 19, we boarded
the sea plane and was whisked back to Male. The Paradise Holiday
guy had gotten us a visa back to India (even he was amazed at
how difficult it was), and so our holiday ended. Back into India
we went. Here are snippets from Laura's dive logs:
DIVE NO.18
December 12, 2000 Fishhead, Maldives, lead by Steffy
Dive time 50 minutes
Maximum depth 21m
Description: Saw many, many fish. Had to descend immediately
due to strong curent. Here live large Napolean fish - they are
curious about divers. One approached me 2 times and got very
close to me. They are the size of a person's abdomen, huge! Huge
schools of Fusili fish swam around us. Saw a turtle eating plants
on the upper part of the rock. Came very close to him, he continued
to eat, was not scared of us at all. I will never forget being
so closely studied by such a large fish. I felt very lucky to
be so singled out by him.
DIVE NO.19
December 13, 2000 Maya Tila, Maldives, lead by Steffy
Dive time 50 minutes
Maximum depth 25m
Description: boat dive: started w/ 210 bar, ended with 40. Spent
some time at 25 m and had to come up to 10m for rest of dive.
Current was strong, so we didn't go all around to the other side.
Visability was not as good as usual but the amount of wildlife
made up for that. Saw 2 large gray reef sharks, one in the open
ocean side and the other between us and the reef. Saw one turtle
descending to the depths. Saw 2 baby white tip sharks sleeping
under a rock. They looked like catfish. Saw a beautiful brown
spotted eagle ray which circled around all the divers many times,
very graceful and pretty. Saw a large manta ray sitting on the
bottom, very large! A large school of sucker sharks came up to
us and loved us! They loved me especially! They would swim right
up to my mask, tap and bang it with their mouths. They swim right
next to my body, arms, and legs. Fascinating. Their tips of their
heads are flat, as if smashed in. They followed us for most of
the dive. Also saw a white frog fish which looked exactly like
coral. Also, the sucker sharks pulled on my hair!
DIVE NO.24
December 16, 200 Fishhead, Maldives lead by Dave
Dive time 46 minutes
Maximum depth 23m
Description: boat dive: saw at least 2 gray reef sharks, 1 was
2 meters long, swam right under us and then right over us. The
closest we've gotten, and we saw a white tip shark sleeping.
HIGHLIGHT! Saw spotted eagle ray, blue giant Travelli (they scare
and eat the other schools of fish and so they spook the other
fish and send them running) Oriental sweetlips (the modern fish),
titan giant triggerfish, clown triggersfish, thousands of red
tooth triggerfish (they fly like birds through the water), correct
turtles, huge masled porcupine fish, surgeon fish (with the moon
tail and squigglies) big huge emperor angel fish,fluke mouths
and very big Napoleon fish. Got quiet close to a correct turtle,
watched him eat, walk around, and go up for air, how very special.
This we called THE CLOSE ENOUNTERS DIVE!
DIVE NO.25
December 16, 2000 Night Dive on Elliahdoo House Reef, lead by
Steffy
Dive Time 53 minutes
Maximum depth 18m
Description: Our first night dive ever! We entered and exited
from the shore. I was very scared in the beginning - had to learn
new signals using the lamp. At first the current wasn't bad and
we drifted along the wall. Amazing. All the coral had sprouted
orange polyps and they were eating all the plankton. Also the
hard green tree branch coral was out - all the others. Like nothing
I've ever seen - like a PBS special. Very, very large Red Snappers
& Trevally were using our lights as hunting aids, eating
up the small fish in the holes and crevices. There was not one
small or medium sized fish to be seen-they were all hiding in
the rocks. These large fish were quite aggressive - in our way
the whole time. Then we sat in a cave overhang and watched the
rays, either sitting the cave too or swimming outside of it.
They were quite close, about 12" away. There we were exiting
the cave, the one moved even closer to me, started swimming towards
me, 4" away, like he was going on my lap, and I freaked!
I jumped as fast as I could. We drifed more and the current really
picked up. When we did stop all we could do is hang on during
the safety stop; it really was a very strong current. I had a
hard time, felt difficult, uncomfortable and scared, just like
when I first learned how to dive, very awkward. Glad we waited
until we had dove a while before attempting it. The ocean is
a totally different world at night, one of predators. Also saw
many, many eels.
Arial view of one of the islands. Its hard to see where the coral ends and the island begins.
One of the Americans, David, took this shot with his very cool Sony underwater video camera
Check out all the fish, its like being in an aquarium
'Main street on the island. Its so small, a bike is overkill!
Our own private beach for the sunset. Our beach bungalow looked out onto this.
If you're traveling with us chronologically, take me back to Goa, India!