From the Mountains To The Ocean And Back

We're back.

I've been accused before of posting blog entries too long for comfort, and at first, I considered blogging this in two or three parts, but after some thought, it seemed to me that doing it this way would somehow subtract from its effect. It would strip it, if you will, from its beauty and magic which is the true essence of this whole experience, and the true essence of the magnificent islands of the Maldives.

Having said that, here we go.


The smell of coffee drifted up my nose slowly bringing me out of the shallow, unsatisfying sleep I had finally managed to achieve after hours of tossing and turning this way and that, trying to find the impossible comfortable position in an uncomfortably cramped airplane seat. The clinking of trays and trolleys and the muffled, incoherent drone of people's voices followed the scent of the coffee and managed to bring me to a semi-complete state of wakeness. My head was fuzzy and I felt slightly dizzy and disoriented and definitely like I hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep. The flight attendant didn't seem to notice or care, placing the breakfast tray on the folding table in front of me. The coffee tasted horrible, like all airplane coffee, but did the trick. I was wide awake and suddenly full of excitement. Where are we now? How long till we land? What time is it?

I took a look out the window. Nothing. Only sky. I looked at the monitors suspended from the top of the plane. Local time at destination: 06:45. Estimated time of arrival: 09:30. 2 hours 45 minutes. Great.

We began our descend about thirty minutes before landing. Gradually, the ocean appeared literally out of the blue underneath us. The outside temperature began rising. -30 C, -17 C, 0 C. The plane dipped to the right to make a turn before lining up for landing and that's when they came into sight - the islands of the Maldives. The passengers gave out a unified "Woah!" and the cameras began flashing. I was so taken with the sight that I failed to notice how close the ocean had come up to us. As I looked down, the plane seemed to hover a few measly meters above the blue water. It looked as if the plane was landing in the ocean. Before I had time to panic, the wheels found solid ground (as solid as a coral can be) and the engines reversed wildly to bring the machine to a much gentler stop than I had anticipated.

We were there. Male International Airport. It should be called Male International Airstrip, because that is what it actually is. One, way too short and way too narrow, landing strip in the middle of the Indian Ocean, completely surrounded by water on all sides. It's pure miracle that the huge trans-oceanic airplanes even find it on their radar monitors. But they do and we were there.

A wave of suffocating heat and humidity hit me like a ton of bricks as we walked out of the airplane. There was no connecting corridor leading directly into the Airport so we had to walk a few short minutes from the plane into the cool, air-conditioned interior of Male International. A new stamp in my passport and our holiday had officially begun. The smell of curry and spice clung in the hot, stale air as we walked out of the airport and were met by our travel guide who promptly showed us to the boat which would take us to our island of Embudu situated in the South Male Atol. Forty five minutes later, we stepped out of the boat and into Paradise.

The islands of the Maldives are influenced by their closest neighbours, India and Sri Lanka, but they are independent in all aspects of life. Religiously, they are strictly Islamic however. There was a mosk on our island for the local people who worked and lived there to be able to perform their daily prayers. There were no Maldivian women working on any of the islands on any of the resorts. Of the hundred and forty employed on our resort, only half were native Maldivian, the other half was a mix including Indian, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and European. Of the hundred and forty employees on our resort, four were women. Two worked in the bar and two in the spa. All four were Sri Lankan.

The Maldives are truly different than any other tropical place I have visited, including Fiji. I know the term has been way too overused to describe any and every tropical island but what we saw was truly Paradise. The turquoise waters were crystal clear and warm (27 C - 29 C), the sand was white and clean with only the bare minimum of the usual sea shells and sea weed which litter the beaches, and that only following the retreat of the waters after highest tide.

The first day welcomed us with a nice and painful sunburn before we remembered how close we were to the equator and our 30 SPF sunblock was quickly replaced by its superior (and much more efficient) 50 SPF cousin. But the sun doesn't shine every day, even in Paradise and we did see our share of nasty tropical island weather. I thought I knew what a torrential downpour meant before I went to the Maldives. I was wrong. Because we were on a very small island in the middle of a very big ocean with the closes mainland (if you can call the Island of Sri Lanka main land) miles away, we were actually experiencing "ocean weather", a.k.a. same as if we were on a ship in the middle of the ocean - scorching sun some days, threatening clouds which fail to deliver on their threat other days and violent winds bringing heavy but short-lived downpours. And throughout all that, always, but always, hot!

We ran around all day half naked and barefoot. Of the two pairs of flip flops and four pairs of shoes that I'd brought, I only used two pairs of flip flops! The entire island was covered with sand and (which should come as no surprise) we were allowed barefoot in the restaurant. Oh, I wore one pair of shoes on Lobster night but I cursed them the whole night! You try wearing high heels in soft sand without breaking an ankle.

We snorkeled, we (Reto) dived, we saw beautiful, colourful corals brimming with equally beautiful and colourful marine life including sharks, turtles, calamari, lobsters and crab and literally tones of fish, all kinds of shapes, sizes and colours. We saw the moon start off as a thin slice and grow into a half circle. We sat under brilliant starry sky counting satellites and falling stars. We ate, we drank, we danced. We got sore backs and butts from lying around.

But all good things (and alternately and thankfully so, all not so good things) must come to an end. The same boat which brought us to Paradise, so cruelly took us away at the end of our holidays. Back to Male International and the awaiting plane (how on Earth is that monster going to take off from that strip?!?), back to the mountains of Switzerland, back to the cold and back to reality.

Did we really even go or was all that only a dream? I look at the photographs and our smiling, happy faces look back at me. Moments in time. Moments of life captured in Paradise. Forever.