Maldives

(by Tim Hunt and Inger Jonrup)

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Bored with Stoney and Guildy? Fancy a change from Sharm? Let’s go live on a boat in the Indian Ocean for a week. 12 of us thought this a good idea. Emirates were really accommodating and flew Bob and Freda from Manchester, Richard, Danni, Ian, Diana and Graham from Heathrow and Vikki, Jim, Greba, Inger and Tim from Gatwick. We met-up in the Irish bar in Dubai airport at about midnight and then we all took the same flight to Male in the Maldives: ‘twas a very long day! Nick from Maldives Scuba Tours met us at the airport, we loaded the gear onto the dhoni Nuimath, and then on to our home for a week, Sea Spirit. Nick’s partner Demelza greeted us with breakfast and a very brief briefing, We sorted our cabins, shifted our dive gear onto the dhoni and zonked-out for 3 hours. I think we then had lunch, a more extensive briefing and an orientation dive, but in all the excitement I ain’t that sure. The crew was all local guys, apart from the Chef, who is from Sri Lanka: That’s pretty local too I know. Dinner was on deck (the first and only time that was possible) and was a selection of the most fabulous Sri Lankan curries with all the trimmings: we’ve landed lucky if the food for the rest of the week is as good as this…oh yes. The dhoni is the dive-boat with its own compressor, so all the gear stayed on board all week. The 2 crew did everything for us except the diving of course. The captain, chef and 2 other crew ran the Live-Aboard and they looked after everything else we may need. Nick, Demelza and Hassan were our dive guides. The normal daily schedule was; up at 6.30, briefing at 7 followed by first dive by about 7.45. breakfast, second briefing at 11, dive, back for lunch. third briefing at about 3, dive and afternoon tea, dinner at 7.30; we all hit the bunks by about 9.30. Most of the dives were fairly currenty: some places we hooked on with reef hooks and watched the passing scene: others were a quick drift with occasional ducks into caves to rest.

Lankan Finalhu was fabulous: we swam against the current to reach a cleaning station, hooked-on in a semicircle about 10m. from the rock outcrop, and waited. After 10 minutes one manta appeared, scoped the area and seemed cool and over the next 10minutes another 6 mantas arrived. They circled, swooped, hung in the current for a clean, and generally gave us a breathtaking view of underwater ballet. Just as we were about to leave a flight of 15 eagle rays passed overhead: must have heard that there was a bunch of enthralled divers in the area and wanted to get their photograph taken as well. Another 10 minutes and air was getting low: because we all wanted to stay as long as possible I think we all surfaced a bit low on the breathing stuff but we all wanted to prolong such a magical experience. We tried the same dive the next morning but no mantas. As small compensation a shoal of 2 or 3 thousand fusiliers swam along the reef straight through us. I think we all realised how lucky we had been first time. On one particularly currenty dive we had all hooked on to rocks to watch the passing action, when someone who shall remain nameless (lets’ call her Danni) thought that Jim and Greeba were having trouble moving, so she decided to help by unhooking them; oh the fun when flying divers were trying to regain control to prevent themselves from bumping into those still hooked-on. Deploying a DSMB was fun: the blobby and all of your 50 metres of line disappearing horizontally at speed from a 10 metre depth. Sometimes the weather was terrible; to such an extent that we had to stay around North Male Atoll; it was too windy to venture to other atolls because with wind and sea conditions travelling would have been too rough. We surfaced after one dive; the sky had gone black and the rain was so hard I thought it was hail! In the Maldives!! The diving was fabulous anyway; stunning coloured soft corals; one could easily become blasé, but the quantity and variety of fish and other life was tremendous. Giant and honeycomb morays, leaf fish banded cleaner shrimp, white tip and nurse sharks, jacks and the occasional tuna…so many ticks in the identification books. The whole population of Nemo’s reef was there. Ian was buzzing around like he had powered fins; chasing turtles; grabbing sharks by the tail; he was even seen helping a titan trigger fish excavate its nest hollow; Diana generally tacked on to another pair; nuff said. Kunda Giri is a thila (an atoll that has sunk more so you can drive a boat over it) just the right size to circumnavigate in a 45 minute dive; including a nice wreck which most people investigated; Inger and I missed the wreck but we had a great dive anyway.

We had permission from the village elders to stop at the “local” island of Guraidhoo for some shopping; fags, sweets, T-shirts, saris and other souvenirs; lovely friendly people who are rebuilding after tsunami damage. Another highlight (so many) was a night dive on Heart thila. We watched a giant moray hunt and catch fish in the open; quick, agile and awesome. Towards the end of the week the weather was so rough we couldn’t get out of the shallow mooring lagoon; 8 to 9 metres deep and a bit milky; a few of us did it just to get in the water; there should be some shots on the website of Richard and Danni doing gymnastics on a mooring rope. 2 mantas played around the boat for half an hour which gave us some wonderful snorkelling. Hundreds of photos were taken. On our penultimate evening we viewed most of them on the telly to select the overall winner; it’s on the website; a novel way to configure an octopus! Congratulations Richard and Danni. Briefing on the last day; “At the end of the dive DO NOT go past the reef-end even though the current is strong…….that’s where the waves rise for the surfing beach”…on a scale of 1 to 5 for roughness it’s a 10! Throughout the week none of us got caught in strong down currents, which can be a feature of some Maldives dives, generally there was a moderate to quick drift but it was always accompanied by tremendous underwater life. The diving was fab! The weather was a surprise even to the locals; they hadn’t ever experienced such windy weather over a prolonged period, but it’s the tropics, so it can lash down for 20 minutes and 10 minutes later the sun-lovers were out on deck roasting again. A trip to the capital, Male, was an interesting diversion; hustle, bustle and people!! If you ever get there, check out the ice-cream parlour! The people who run the boat are English, and what do the English like for dinner on a Sunday? well, roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, of course. That’s what we had for our final meal, and wonderful it was too, washed down with some Australian red wine; excellent, as was all the food.

The boat crew, both Brits and locals, looked after us in wonderful style; highly recommended. The dhoni dropped us back at the airport jetty where we got the speedboat transfer to our tiny island. Big twin Yamahas hummed for 75 minutes, not at full throttle ‘cause it was a bit choppy, but it was still an exhilarating trip. Eriyadhu is 100 by 300 yards, fringed by a reef which we snorkelled around in just over an hour. 50 something cabins around the edge, in amongst the palm trees, with a bar, a restaurant and a few other things…and…oh  yes….a dive centre run by the Werner Lau group. There are 6 or 7 entry and exit points around the reef, all marked underwater as well; a 60 minute dive would cover 2 points; if you started at the dive centre and exited at chalet 10 you would leave your bottle on the bench, walk back to the dive centre with the rest of your kit, and tell the man with a cart where you left the bottle. 12 of us clocked up a total of 5 house-reef dives in the 5 days we were there; that’s serious under-exertion, The coral was not wonderful; drab compared to where we had been, but what we really wanted was to chill out, sleep late and relax. Graham did one boat-dive, which was a bit currenty, Jim, Greeba and Ian did shallow dives with their little ponies but mostly it was snorkelling and slobbing on the beach. We saw turtles, morays, octopuses, lobsters and most of the usual brightly coloured occupants of the reef while we were snorkelling, so it wasn’t all bad! We even went night- snorkelling,; 12 torches bobbing about; I hear tell there was a white-tipped reef shark spotted, but I’m sure vision was impaired by sun-stroke and cocktails. All too soon it was over; 7 of us had an extra 2 nights in Dubai to break the journey home: we went desert dune-bashing in a Landcruiser, had sumptuous afternoon tea in Burj al Arab and marvelled at the gold market, where Vikki went for a bargain 22 carat gold bracelet and bartered the socks off the locals, but that’s not diving so…………………………….