Two weeks in paradise (March 2008)

After more than 18 months without a proper holiday together we decided to splash out and take ourselves off to the Maldives for a tropical island getaway. It really was picture postcard perfect - white sand, clear turquoise sea, swaying palm trees, etc.
Our resort, the imaginatively titled ''Sun Island", is the largest in the Maldives. Our bungalow was on the same side of the island as the water bungalows, visible on the right side of this photo.








Like all the bungalows on the island, ours faced the beach and was surrounded by trees to keep our room shaded and cool.

This is the view from our front porch.

We bought an underwater housing for our camera, and boy was it fun to use!

There were lots of clumps of coral just off-shore from our bungalow. Each clump had a resident population of small colourful fish. These little stripey guys must have thought I was a piece of coral because they kept swimming up to nibble me! Luckily it was more ticklish than painful.

The fish in the deeper water on the other side of the island were bigger and some, like these, swam around in large schools.

There were plenty of interesting creatures out of the water as well, such as lizards like this one. We also saw lots of fruit bats flying around and hanging upside down in the trees, but they were very difficult to photograph.

Relaxing in the shallow waters of the Indian Ocean. The storm on the horizon was unfortunately a common sight and it rained almost every day. Everyone said it was very unusual weather for this time of year - just our luck! But at least it never got cold.

Sting rays were another common sight, although we only saw rays this big at the nightly feeding time by the jetty. We had two resident juvenile rays who would patrol up and down our bit of the beach every day. We quickly got used to their presence, and even though they liked being in the shallowest water close to the beach, they were very shy. They would swim away if they saw you looking at them from the beach.
We also saw lot of reef sharks. Even though these sharks are quite small and are harmless to humans, they still move in that unmistakable shark-like way. They never ceased to be thrilling to watch.

If you looked down when walking along the beach at low tide, you would see lots of tiny crabs scuttling around. Once a week there was a crab race in the bar, involving little hermit crabs collected from the beach, each with a numbered sticky label attached to their shell. A bit cruel, but very amusing for us silly humans (the crabs were returned to the beach afterwards).




A sunset fishing trip was included in our package. As soon as the sun had gone down, the fish started biting, and we each caught a lovely red snapper.
The food was excellent- fresh fish every day, wonderful spicy Sri Lankan curries, stir-fries cooked to order, and loads of fresh fruit at every meal time which the chefs would cut up for you.

We transferred to and from the main Maldives airport in a seaplane, which was a wonderful experience in itself. Landing and take-off was so smooth on the water! The plane trips provided great views of other atolls and deserted islands.
Sadly the holiday was over all too soon. We went from 30 degrees to -2 degrees in one day! The snow started falling while we were on the train from Gatwick Airport. Very unusual for the end of March!