MALDIVES
(3)A honeymoon in the Maldives must be paradise for a diver. Thankfully Dave
Colley found time to write about some of the diving he did there.
24 hours after setting of
from Heathrow we landed at the capital island of Male. With still a further
one and a half hour sea plane journey ahead of us, we were starting to think
if this was going to be worth the travelling, but shortly after taking to the
sky in a De Haveland twin Otto sea plane we realized we had come to paradise
looking down on small turquoise blobs on an ink black sea.
We got to the resort island of huvahendoo to be met by very friendly staff,
our room was fantastic, spotlessly clean and air conditioned, with a basket of
fruit and wine as a honeymoon gift.
We decided to explore the
island straight away and with it being only 500m long it didn't take very
long to walk round. Not being the sit and sunbathe type I donned my
snorkelling gear and went to check the reef out. I could not believe the
amount of different fish. Apparently there are over 200 species, including
parrot fish, oriental sweet lips, angel fish, trigger fish to name but a
few.
A couple of days later I did
my first of 6 dives, I was put with a PADI instructor and a novice diver,
after about 5 minutes in the water the instructors 'O' ring blew, leaving me
to look after the novice so i didn't get to see much on that dive. My second
dive was a night dive on the house reef and was excellent although quite
daunting when big moray eels and sting rays seem to jump into your torch
beam right in front of you
The other dives I did were all fantastic :- swimming through a school of
thousands of surgeon fish, sitting watching big jacks and tuna hunting small
fish, always waiting for the elusive manta which unfortunately we never saw.
The Maldives are a divers paradise but they won't be there forever, if you
wish to go make it sooner rather later.
David C.
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