Maldives: Bandos island (North Male atoll), Royal island (Baa atoll)
This trip we are off to the Maldives, Jorunn had never been to the Maldives and I had only been on a short visit in the early 80's when I worked on a cruise ship and travelled the world by sea. Also, it's a very romantic place, and great for diving as well. Perfect for us. Normally I do not take time to write about the plane ride but this needs to be said. We flew with Quatar airways (heavily advertised as a so called 5 star airline) via London Heathrow, where first the plane was delayed an hour waiting for one passenger and this made things very stressful as transfer time was only about 35 minutes (do not forget they also move luggage from one plane to another). We got off the plane 11:30 at night and it was 36 degrees with 100 percent humidity and the race was on and we were not alone as we headed for the bus, we raced through the terminal in search of the gate and made it to the fight (hopefully the luggage too!). We made it and everything was great until we sat down and found there was not much luxury on this plane it was like being on a charter with your knees almost to the seat in front of you, this was bad and got worst, we were very tired and wanted some sleep but this was made difficult by the fact that our seats could not be tilted back so we had to try to sleep sitting straight up. This was very stressful and we were not too happy with this socalled 5 star airline.
The landing was very interesting, you first began to see small white dots in a sea of blue, then you start to make out the islands themselves with lot's of green in the middle ringed by a white outer ring, then a ring of light blue water then ringed by a much darker blue. As the runway was built a bit out in the water it really looked like a water landing to us, we were met by a gentleman who was a Representative from Manta Reiser (a very good company) and with minimal waiting we walked a short distance to a waiting boat that would take us on a short 20 minute ride to Bandos Island.
Video from diving in the Maldives:
After a refreshing boat ride we arrive at Bandos island, we were escorted to the reception and served a welcome drink, this was very nice and the video about being careful with coral reef was good but this took way too long and we were very tired. Finally we got into a little golf cart and drove to the other side of the island where our room was, the room was great, 15 meters from the beach, close enough to the restaurant and dive centre and it had a nice breeze all day long. In fact, the temperature was great for our entire stay, the tropics with a breeze is our favorite.
After some rest we relaxed in the sun and went for a bit of snorkeling, Bandos has a really good house reef with lot's to see like: 10 to 15 baby black tip reef sharks, eagle ray, turtles, sharks, and a whole lot of fish. We also did our check dive on the house reef and soon found out that house reef was a really good drive, we saw things like: 2x frog fish, cowtail ray, black tip sharks, spider crab and lots more. We had breakfast included and chose to eat lunch and dinner at one of the two restaurants, one pretty close and the other a little bit of a walk but this was nice for us as we did need to move around a bit, however we read on trip adviser about people who had complained about having to walk to the restaurant, poor babies!
As it was Ramadan the staff did look a bit a tired in the early evening but on the whole we got good service and only rarely had slow service, the restaurant by the reception had a great view out over the sea towards the capital Male and some of the other islands, also the Bandos white sandy beach and the waves that rolled over the reef. The other restaurant was built out over the reef with a beautiful view over the ocean and this area was a cocktail bar where we sat and watched the sunsets.
There was not a lot to do other than diving, swimming, snorkeling and walking around the island both day and night, this is a real vacation, no stress at all, also at night it was great to just sit and watch the stars (how romantic) with our friends (wait a minute what friends?), well we found out that we were not alone there were a lot of shelled crabs out and about in search of food, oh well the more the merrier.
We did a fair bit of diving also, so we spent some time on the boats going from dive site to dive site, we had some good diving but there were lots of particles in the water and a lot of currents, but we still saw a lot, but to our disappointment not very many nudibranch. We dived the following sites: Bandos house reef, Paradise rock, Devil's tila, 2x Manta point, Maagiri east, Banana reef, and Baracuda giri. We also took the time to do a enriched air course which was interesting and did not take long (after this we only used nitrox 32%). Now for what we saw: 10 to 12 manta rays at a cleaning station, turtles, sharks, frogfish, spider crabs, giant moray eel, leopard moray eal, black blotched stingray, Napoleon wrasse, a pod of dolphins swimming that we saw from the boat and much much more. Ten day seems like a long time but in reality it goes very quickly so we packed our bags and hopped in the the Bandos island speed boat for a trip back to the airport.
At the boat dock we were quickly brought up to the Royal island / waiting area where we received cool towels and drinks while we waited for others to arrive, this would be our first sea plane ride and I was really looking forward to it. After a while we were escorted out to the aircraft which holds about 12 to 18 people plus luggage and we were taxing along the water for take off. While this was happening we were having a safety briefing given by the co-pilot nicely dressed in shorts, a white shirt and slaps, after take off I also noticed that they flew the plane barefooted (cool). The flight was amazing as we flew fairly low we had a great view for the most part, throughout the flight we saw islands scattered over the ocean, some white surrounded by blue, others with a green centre with coral sands and surrounded with different shades of the ocean.
We soon arrived at the Baa Atoll where we made our first landing which was interesting as it happened pretty quickly, one minute we are fairly high up and the next we are flying low over the coral reefs for a landing. After dropping off some of the passengers at their hotel we quickly took off again for a short flight, we landed and taxied over to a small floating platform where we disembarked and we were shortly picked up by the transfer boat.
After registration we walked to the other side of the island to our bungalow, the room was fantastic with polished wooden floors, a large bed and and view out over the ocean. There was also a small veranda leading out to the beach with sun chairs just for us, the restaurant was on the other side of the island but the dive shop was not far away. We had full board which is good and bad, first you have a tendency too eat too much (especially desserts), second you can not eat when you want to and we like to eat early (dinner and lunch), and also the food gets a bit repetitive after a while (if you stay over a week). But the food at Royal was really good, with a mix of Asian and European dishes.
I will just say a few words about the dining room, in the centre was a very large salt water pond with corals and fish from the sea, another thing to mention is that it seems like sitting next to the pond is a bit of a status thing too and returning customers got to sit there, the rest get scattered around here and there. Another funny thing, we have a fair bit of luggage as we have dive gear and camera equipment and still only about 20 kg each. When we got off the plane we saw that some people had up to 2 large suitcases each, well we soon found out what that was about, some people thought it was necessary to have a different set of clothing for each meal (for me this is a bit extreme).
Our time on Royal island was spent diving, snorkelling (which was not that good at all), laying in the sun, walking around the island, watching some amazing sunsets, and eating. Well we did a little bit more than that but we can't tell you about everything. Now for the diving, we dived the following dive sites: Nelivaru Thila, Dhonfanu Thila, Maadho Giri, Dhigali Giri (night dive), Finolhoos and Hanifaru. Things we saw: 30 to 50 manta ray, octopus, great barracuda, large lobster, banded shrimp, lots of moray eels, napoleon wrasse and mantis shrimps. Once again the visibility was so so and there where strong currents which made it difficult to find a lot of the smaller things, but we saw a lot of manta rays, so we can't really complain ! I think next time we'll visit the Maldives at a different time of the year.
Video from Hanifaru:
Before arriving in the Maldives we'd heard and seen videos about a dive sight called Hanifaru, the videos we'd seen were amazing with lot's of manta rays and whale sharks, now there are no guarantees that they will be there but we had to try. We had been asking the dive centre to take us there, so one cloudy morning we set off on the choppy sea to find out what all the talk was about. We arrived after about 45 minutes or so and saw only two other boats (there is a strict rule that there can be only 5 boats in the area at any time).
We were in luck, the water was boiling with activity, we quickly entered the water and kneeled down in the sand at about 10 meters and waited for the show to begin (Hanifaru is a U shaped underwater reef). It all started when a cloud blocked the sun but we soon found out that it was not a cloud but manta rays, 30 to 40 that we could see, they flew by in waves doing summersaults, two or three at a time, swooping down, then racing to the surface, we sat and stared in amazement at what we were seeing and then came the manta train, 7 to 10 following right behind one another like a train and we got it on video. At one time a Japanese gentleman we had met was kneeling in the sand when a manta ray comes swimming at him and at the very last minute it swoops over his head and continues on the other side (this I also got on video). After an hour it was time to surface again and the excitement was electrifying as we stored our gear for a bumpy ride back to Royal island, and the talk of manta ray lasted the whole trip.
We had a German couple sitting close to us in the dining hall that were funny and very social, one day an English couple sitting next to them as joke had turn off there ceiling fan so that it got a bit hot, in the end they told them what he had done so the German tried to turn on the fan and it worked slowly so he pulled it again and and pulled the cord off so they had to come repair it. Things did not end there for the German he was supposed to come with us to Hanifaru but he'd been out drinking so did not make the trip and when finally he got to go they only saw 2 manta rays, so he was not very happy.
On a rainy morning the boat took us out to the sea plane as it was time to head back to the airport at Male, after a quick safety briefing which very few people understood we headed for the sky for the last look at the small coral island before we headed for home and dreaming of the quiet beauty of the Maldives. This is really a great country to visit !
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