Maldives Summary

 Some photos from Aman's GoPro.

Our boat and shuttle.

Summary

The native language in the Maldives is Dhivehi, which according to our guide, Aman, is a mish mash of languages in the area.

The country is composed of a large number of small islands. Male, the capital, is jammed in on one of them. The rest are spread around a number of atolls, which are areas of land that rise from the sea floor. Some are above the water and support life, trees and people, others are just sandbars and the rest don’t break the surface and are surrounded by reefs. Many of the more appealing islands have been bought up either by rich people, or by resorts. Tour boats like ours are not welcome at either of those type and are relegated to lesser islands where they can land to have picnics or visit local villages that have tourist shops or dive centres. Not sure where the locals have access to beaches and the like. The tsunami of 2004 hit here, but was not a rolling wall of water, but rather a great sudden drop in water levels followed by a rapid rising that overwhelmed the country. Many of the islands were damaged and have been abandoned. Some of them are the ones where boat tours are allowed. It is really easy to see how the whole country could be totally submerged by the rising waters of global warming.

From the map above, you can see the make up of the islands, the ring of small islands in each atoll around a shallow sea.

There was political unrest in the news from Male before we arrived, but it seems to be isolated to the capital. Aman referred to it a few times and said that the people are fed up with the corrupt government. The supreme court of the land ordered the president, Abdulla Yameen to release from prison his political opponent, Mohamed Nasheed, who is in jail following his conviction earlier this year under anit-terror laws. Nasheed has organized from prsion a large anti-government rally for next week, so Yameen declared a 30 day state of emergency. Aman recommended that we not visit the capital on the way out. So we stayed at the airport which is on a different island. Aman also told us there is a big drug problem in the Maldives, which leads to lots of crime in Male.

We had a GAdventures CEO, a captain, an assistant captain, a chef, a waiter, and two cabin boys. The first three are native Maldivians, the other four are from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Apparently, it is hard to find local people willing to work on tourist boats. Some are people who come from the more remote islands and stay on the boats or the resorts for months at a time and don’t get home to see family and friends. But, tourism is a major employer here and jobs in the industry are sought after and usually well paid, especially if there are tips to be had. We saw resorts with stilt cabins over the shallow seas on a lot of the islands. There are many types of boats plying these waters and we saw lots of seaplanes as well.

Our guide, Aman, was 22 and an avid surfer. He is quite short and impossibly thing. He is well educated, soft spoken and has a high pitch laugh. He was quite personable and interacted well with all. His job didn’t seem particularly taxing. Mainly he took us snorkelling and told us about the daily itinerary which was eat, snorkel, sleep and repeat.

The boat we were on was not the one we were supposed to be on. It was not a traditional Dhoni boat as advertised. I asked Aman why, and he didn’t really have an answer and wasn’t sure where our boat was or what happened to it.

Our cruise of the Maldives was very relaxing and enjoyable, and John and I settled into a comfortable routine of talking, snorkelling, reading, napping, listening to music and just chilling. The weather was perfect, we had no rain and mostly sunny hot weather with just enough clouds to keep us from frying. We joined a group of six young people, in their 30’s, who had been traveling together in Sri Lanka the previous week (on a Yolo tour). They were a pretty close group and didn’t demonstrate much of an interest in us. They weren’t necessarily unfriendly, just distant. We tried to strike up conversations with them, but generally they went nowhere. There was a doctor, a dentist and a nurse, so I thought that they might be interested in the ‘I Contain Multitudes’ book, but not really.

We had better luck when there was only one of them, then they would talk to us. Even when I suggested a group photo, only one of them had the photo taken on their camera, they just weren’t interested. No hard feelings just disappointing, their loss. The boat was comfortable and quite spacious (even if our room was not). We claimed the top of the boat for ourselves as the other six stayed at the front of the boat and hung out.

The islands themselves were also disappointing. The atolls we saw were just small islands, or sandbars or a reef around a shallow area in the sea. We landed at two islands, the picnic one, where we had our night dinner, and the village where they went scuba diving. Both were disappointing and littered or under construction. The sea was beautiful and not too rough. I have already discussed the reef which like all the others around the world, is in trouble. I wish I had been here twenty years earlier, and I wouldn’t want to be here twenty years from now.

Next time I want to go to crystal clear waters and tropical temperatures, I’ll go to the Caribbean. Really enjoyed a week without shoes.