Travels with Lois and Jason

Maldives

January 4 - 12, 2009




airGiven that we were half way around the world, we figured we may as well end our India adventure with a week of R&R at a Club Med, and the one we picked was in the Maldives, a chain of atolls in the middle of the Indian ocean, about 500 miles south of the tip of India, and with good snorkeling.   The picture at right was taken from our plane as we flew over Club Med with it's palm tree like arrangement of the island and huts over the water.

We stayed in a hut/suite over the ocean.  We were truly in paradise.  We had a living room, bedroom with a four-poster bed complete with mosquito netting surrounding the bed.  Our bathroom had a stall shower, free standing bathtub overlooking the ocean and a double sink, a long walk-in closet complete with life jackets for wading in the ocean from our balcony that led down stairs to a private platform (with a shower) with a ladder going into the ocean.

hut tub
ladder

We wanted to spend the week doing the things we like the most:  snorkeling, sailing, and eating.  After the first day, we decided that the snorkeling was too good to miss, so in six days, we went on 11 snorkeling trips.  The morning trip the first day, and then the morning AND the afternoon trip each day thereafter.  And, each time we went we were in for something new and surprising.  We loved the scenery, beauty, variety of fish and corals and all around splendor.  On each snorkeling trip we saw fish we had never seen before, or coral formations that were new and different, or seascapes that were exciting and dynamic.  The variety of fish was astounding, dozens of varieties. The fish differed in size from very small to the largest which were one to two feet long.  We saw eagle rays, flying (we mean swimming) in formation.  When they flapped their "wings" it looked like flying, not swimming, and was scary and beautiful at the same time.  We were so sorry we didn't have an underwater camera.  At least we were able to capture the dolphins that we saw on one trip.  There was a pod of about 20 that swam with us for several minutes.
snork1
snorkle 2
dolphin

As for the other things we enjoy doing, the sailing turned out to be not so good, and the fish was serverd at every lunch and dinner and we're not fish eaters.  This meant that after all the heavy Indian food, we returned home pretty much the same weight as when we left.



 

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February 12, 2009