We are in the Maldives today…sorry to say it was so ho-hum.

The Maldives are an independent nation of islands – many islands. A few are inhabited. The capital is Malé (mal-A) on the island of Malé – quaint… The Maldives are an Islamic-based society and we were told by the ship’s travel consultant that they are teetering on the verge of killing the golden goose by beginning a stricter enforcement of Sharia-type regulations: bikinis are frowned upon; absolutely no alcohol or pork products; etc. Most people go to the Maldives for the gorgeous waters, expensive hotels on private islands, and just to get away from it all. That is easy to do here. If you are not into sun, sand, and surf – with liberal applications of $$$$ - then the Maldives will not hold much for you.

Male is wall to wall buildings as you can see from the map above. It is the only one of the Maldive Islands to be so populated. About a third of the total population of the country lives here.

We are anchored offshore at Malé. The harbor is too small to permit us to dock alongside, so we have to tender in. Unfortunately, we are anchored near the other ship that is in today: the Costa Atlantica. Based on the number of tenders, the number of decks, and the number of people we found ashore with bright yellow “C” stickers on, we believe that the Costa ship carries about 2500-2700 guests as opposed to our 250 guests currently on board. As we viewed both our ship and the Costa from shore, they dwarfed us!

That's our ship peeking out from behind the Costa Atlantica.

The day was to have been a short submarine trip followed by a short walk around town to pick up a refrigerator magnet just to prove we have been here. The first inkling that the day would not go as planned was the Captain’s announcement at 8:00 AM (the time we were to have been anchored) that he was still awaiting the harbor pilot. When we did get to our anchorage, about an hour late, we tendered in to meet the shuttle boat that would take us to the submarine.

Yes, a submarine! We decided to take an underwater tour because we had heard so much about the beautiful Maldives waters teeming with tropical fish and clear as a bottle of gin. This is a vacation spot that people come to from around the world and pay big bucks to stay at exclusive island retreats. We saw none of that. What we saw was Malé, the capital stuffed with wall to wall buildings (much of it on reclaimed land) and tourists. The submarine ride was novel, but not unique.

The submarine ride was to last for about an hour and then we wanted to spend a few minutes looking around the town before tendering back to the ship. Because of our late start due to the harbor pilot thing, our two-hour tour took 4 ½ hours, most of it spent waiting for shuttle boats to and from the sub platform and waiting on the sub platform for the prior tour to return.

Waiting for our submarine...

Several shots of the sub. My underwater pix didn't turn out so well and I decided not to use any in this blog.

 While on the sub, we did see tropical fish, moray eels, and some corals, but we have both done enough SCUBA diving to know that what we saw was more coral rock than coral reef. Although we were down for about an hour, it was about as exciting as one of the old Disney “C” rides. Fun, but been there – done that.

After arriving back on the tender dock, it was hot and starting to sprinkle so we just got on the tender and made it back to the ship with barely enough time to grab a quick lunch.

OK, we’ve been to the Maldives and it was nice, but not a place I would run to return to.

We now have three days at sea before the Seychelles, so stay tuned…