A week at Vilamendhoo Island Resort, Maldives

Upon departure from Conte Max we flew back to the Male Airport and transferred to a seaplane for a 25 minute flight to Vilamendhoo near the SouthEast corner of the Ari Atoll.  You know you are going to the right kind of place when you are in a 15 passenger twin engine seaplane with no door on the cockpit.  The pilot and copilot wear shorts and have bare feet.  If you like atolls - and we do - the flight is magical. 

I don’t think there is any other country on earth where there are so many atolls and thilas (upcroppings of coral that do not reach the surface – you could call them subsurface islands).  Maldives consists of 26 atolls which include 1190 islands.  290 are inhabited.  There are thousands of thilas within the atolls.  Elevation of the highest point of land in Maldives is 15 ft above sea level.  The country has no rock.  Its land consists entirely of coral.  It is about 500 miles long from South to North with the Southernmost island just South of the Equator.  The underwater world there is amazing.  Global warming will submerge the country if/when the sea level rises occur.

Our divemaster on Conte Max knows the manager of the Eurodive center on Vilamendhoo.  She corresponded with him to introduce us – so he and his team were expecting us when we arrived.  The dive center has an excellent array of dive trips each day.  We had three boat dives on one of the days including two at Manta Point where, as expected, we were able to watch mantas – and a whole lot more.  We both did one additional dive.  I also did a night dive.  We snorkeled around the island on the other days.  The house reef has a lot of sea life and it is within about 100 feet of the shore in most places.  We think it is one of the best resorts in Maldives for reef quality and accessibility – and it is much less expensive than many other resorts.  We hope to return.

I also had freediving training during which I improved my breathholding time (called static apnea) from 1 minute 42 seconds to 3 minutes 14 seconds.  I freedove to a depth of 55 feet.   That is deeper than I had ever dived on a single breath.  I intend to have more training.  I am confident I will be able to increase my static apnea and depth.

A sampling of what we saw there is downloaded onto YouTube at:   

 https://youtu.be/e-I_YHjNJ38

A week aboard a scuba liveaboard, MV Conte Max

We went a day early to Kooddoo island to meet the MV Conte Max boat for our week of scuba diving.  Kooddoo has a runway so we flew to the island in a Dash 8 from Male, the Maldives international connection point.  Our one-night stay was at the newly-opened Mercure resort.  We arrived in time to do one quick snorkeling excursion.  The reef was not close to the shore so we went to the reef on an excursion boat. 

Most of the rest of the Conte Max passengers arrived about noon the following day.  We met them and the boat crew at the airport terminal and walked to the boat.  We did an introductory dive that afternoon so the crew could assess our skills.  We started doing 3 dives per day the following morning.  Currents tended to range from 1 or 2 mph to 6 to 8 miles per hour.  In the stronger currents we “flew” by the reef until we were through the Kandus .  Kandus are channels at the outer rim of the atoll through which water had to flow to raise the water level inside the atoll when the tide was rising; to lower the water level in the atoll when the tide lowered.  Usually we reached calmer waters after the fly-bys and we were able to explore the reefs at a more relaxed pace.

Kandus tend to be where the large sharks and other animals of the open sea are usually found.  Finding sharks was the goal for all of the advanced divers.  That included all of the passengers except us.  We are not advanced divers.  So we had our own divemaster.  The currents were actually stronger than is appropriate for divers with our abilites and limitations. 

This was our second of three samplings of what Maldives has to offer.
To get an idea of what we saw look at the video below:  

g-Adventures snorkeling liveaboard in Maldives

When we arrived at the Male airport in Maldives we walked a short distance across the street to the dock where we were met by a skiff that took us to the dhoni (Maldivian style boat) named GAHAA where we would live for the next week.  The two Canadians and six Americans who were on the Sri Lanka tour continued on the Maldives portion of the trip.  All four cabins had limited space.  Three of the four had attached toilets, sinks, and showers.  Ours didn’t.  The toilet and sink in the hallway were usable but the shower wasn’t.  Fortunately other passengers allowed us to use their showers.  But the food was excellent and the snorkeling was better than any place we had been before.

During our week we had opportunities to snorkel at thilas in the North Male and Felidhoo Atolls and to visit two inhabited islands.  Thilas are subsurface coral reefs that are complete ecosystems that teem with life.  There are numerous thilas within all of the Maldives atolls. 

Look at Maldives in Google maps; choose satellite view; zoom in.  You will see an amazing archipelago consisting of thousands of islands and thilas.

I have uploaded a video to YouTube that provides a sampling of what we saw.  It includes photos and videos.  

SriLanka, February 2018

We visited Sri Lanka in February 2018 with a g-Adventures tour that included one week in Sri Lanka followed by one week aboard a dhoni boat in Maldives.  The boat trip featured snorkeling every day.

We started in Ngombo after landing in Colombo.  The Colombo airport is actually much closer to Ngombo than it is to Colombo, by the way.  We planned to arrive a day before our tour started to allow for any unforeseen issues that are possible with air travel.  Since we arrived on schedule we had a day to look around Ngombo.

We had a walk on the beach and explored near our hotel in the morning.  I spent a large part of the afternoon shopping  on foot - looking for paper towels since I neglected to bring any.  I became lost and walked about 8 miles before I returned back at the J Hotel where we were staying.  That evening we met our fellow travelers at a briefing at the hotel. Or group consisted of 2 Canadians, 4 British, 2 Germans, and 6 Americans.

I'd be remiss if I did not tell you that one of the high points of the Sri Lanka part of our trip was the outstanding food.  Our guide, Aruna, was amazing.  He made himself available to make sure he was with members of the tour that saw doctors whenever there were any aches and pain that needed attention.

Fortunately, all of our fellow travelers were very conscious of specified meeting times.  We actually assembled a few minutes early for each of the scheduled events and left early for all, or nearly all, of the next destinations.

I should point out that my interests are more in the wild side of our travel.  I have less interest in the things that man has added to the natural scene.  So in the video I did not include very much information about the industrial, civic, and religious things that we saw.

Since we are attempting not to collect souvenirs we did minimal shopping.

The video is a brief description of the rest of our time in Sri Lanka:

An additional video about our visit to the Kandy Botanical Garden is: