Monday, July 26, 2010

Speedboat Back from Kandooma (Maldives)

This was way cool!

Operation Maldives - Part 1



Three days in the Maldives Islands and what can I say but wow! This has by far been the best vacation I have ever had bar none. This place was designed for nothing but total relaxation.
Expensive, oh yes, but worth every dime because of all the 'No's', the 'No's'?
NO LOUD BUS HORNS, NO AIR POLLUTION, NO ROADS, NO SHOES NEEDED, NO DOGS, NO MOSQUITO'S, NO COWS, NO BEGGARS, NO BLACKBERRY, NO LAPTOP, NO TRAINS, NO POLLUTED OCEAN WATERS.
We probably wore our flip flops 10% of the time we were there.

The adventure wasn't totally without a glitch. First we flew Emirates air as we heard that they usually offered a complimentary company upgrade, well we didn't get one out of Colombo but no big deal as even economy class was very roomy and they did give us finger sandwiches and drinks. It was only an hour flight so no big deal.

When we arrived the Holiday Inn staff told us that the tides were to high for them to safely take us to the island and they would have to put us up at the Holiday Inn on Male for a night. We took the speedboat over there and they put us up in a nice room. We checked out the hotel, pretty cool. Roof top lounge with swimming pool and a state of the art gym that we made use of the next morning. A fantastic breakfast was comped for us and I made use of the egg and waffle chef quickly! This was also our first introduction into how expensive the Maldives is. Coffee, cappuccino and pastry $17, the pastry was only $2!

Someone found us at breakfast and told us the boat would be ready to take us after breakfast.
We packed up and walked out to the dock with someone from the Holiday Inn.

The boat ride over took about 45 minutes. They offered us cold mint infused towels to refresh ourselves and cold beverages. No alcohol. The Maldives is a Islamic country but some resorts pay a license fee to serve alcohol, the Holiday Inn Resort was one of them.

Thanks to the twin Yamaha 200 HP engines we arrived in good time and I wasn't sea sick!

We were directed to a waiting area with lime soda drinks waiting for us. Someone came by and checked our names off on the list, guess who's name wasn't on the list! The staff was quick with apologies and assured me that they would take care of everything.

Soon we were walked out to our place. The man taking us there points to one side and said "These our are garden view villas, this is where we usually put our guests, but your not going there" "I have upgraded you two villas up from this" The second would be the garden view duplexes, and after that the beach view duplexes but even better are the detached villas which we got!

End of part 1