One thing about staying at a resort is that they take care of you. The room had an iPod docking station, no iPod they'll lend you one. Fresh oranges delivered daily so you can make fresh squeezed orange juice, free comfortable flip flops (More comfortable than the ones I bought for the trip!), free wifi, free Internet computers, big 8 foot thirsty bath and beach towels, of course everything for the bathroom even sunscreen lotion if you needed it!
All of this comes at a price. The airport is an island unto itself, there is nothing to do there, its just an airport island. From there you have to take a speedboat to whatever resort you're booked at. The further the island, the more it costs (ka-ching). Seaplanes are a very common way of getting to the further islands (ka-ching ka-ching).
The entree's weren't to over the top expensive, but a dessert might be $11 while dinner was $15, coffee another $5, mineral water $8. You can safely budget $100 per day per person to eat, easily. We didn't go that extreme as we brought food for breakfast, made our fresh squeezed orange juice and coffee in the room (They supply a French press, coffee and hot water maker!)
THE WAVES
The waves at the surf break were incredible. Huge tubes that rolled forever. There were boats that took the surfers out behind the break and it was neat watching them jump in one after the other and ride the tubes. I had to hand it to them they were brave.
I had to try one myself with my body board. I made it out to the second set of waves and caught the shoulder of one and rode it in, right into a bad rip tide. The water was shallow and the bottom covered in rocks, it was scary trying to get out. Scary is not the word, frightening.
I managed to get out but I got banged up from falling down over and over. I was convinced I wouldn't go out again but I ran into an older (63) California businessman I had befriended and he was going out on his surfboard, he wanted me to go out with him, more for safety than anything else. He made it out to the last set of breakers, I turned around and rode some very fast whitewater back in. The waves were so huge when I got up on them, I couldn't do it.
SNORKELING
The resort offers a daily snorkeling trip where they take you out to a reef. We were to late to sign up but there was a paid snorkeling trip with a marine biologist. They would take us out to two reefs. Chris had never been snorkeling so we checked out the equipment and I gave her a quick lesson and when we got to the villa we heard our phone ringing, I knew that meant we were late for the boat. We made it to the dock in time but didn't get a chance to buy a underwater camera (Probably ka-ching!).
The boat took us out to the reef, and we all jumped in with fish identifier cards in hand. It had been years since I had seen such beautiful coral and fish.
Went to the second reef which was right off of another resort (Well every island in the Maldives is a resort). This reef had more fish. I would bump into Chris and she would show me her fish card and point at the fish we could make out. It was a fun trip.
End of Part 2
