Our Trip to the Maldives

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Originally uploaded by Rob@SFU.

Well I finally made it to one of my "have to get to" destinations, the Maldives. I tried to get here a few years ago when I was working in India but just couldn't make it. It was a fantastic trip. The flight was only and hour and was really good, Sri Lankan air is quite nice, we got a full meal on a 55 minute flight, top that Air Canada! The plane was really nice to and had the new touch screen monitors for each passenger. One new thing I hadn't seen before were the inflight cameras, one pointing forward and one pointing down, quite fun to watch the landing from three different perspectives (the window, Cher's monitor and mine). We had a water bungalow which was at the end of a long pier. Each bungalow was very private and had a huge balcony with stairs leading down to a smaller balcony with a fresh water shower and stairs into the water. Just standing on the deck you could see hundreds of fish of all sizes, it was amazing. The snorkelling was awesome except Cher was attacked by a Titan Trigger Fish, quite a nasty character really. It bit her hand and then kept following her. I had to get in between her and the fish and kick at it for it to leave. The fish was about a foot and a half long but also very big and had huge ugly protuding teeth. I also saw turtles and lots of eels, some very large with heads about the size of a miniture schnauzers head - not nearly as cute though mom... I also found that near the reef there were lots of sharks, some as big as 5 feet. Our neighbour called me the shark hunter because I could always find them Our neighbour and his wife were from Taiwan and were really nice, we enjoyed snorkelling with them. He had an underwater digital camera so maybe he'll email me photos of the sharks. I also did two dives and those were amazing! Coming home was a bit interesting. It started raining as I was finishing my last snorkel and boy did it rain! The boat ride from the resort to the airport was fine, it was a large speed boat with 40 airplane seats. We were kept nice and dry and it wasn't too rough. We arrived at the airport (you come and go by boat) and went through the process to get to the gates where it was REALLY crowded. The roof was leaking and the whole place was flooded. About an hour after our flight was to leave I overheard someone from the airline talking with another passenger and went over to eavesdrop. It turned out they had cancelled our flight so we were boated over to the main city and put up for the night. It was an interesting experience. Well must run, hope you are all well. Things are getting interesting with the election here. It is scheduled for the 17th of November. They found a small gun near where they were searching people who were attending a presentation by the oposition party leader. I wonder if it was just something someone carried and didn't want to get caught with or if it was meant to be used... Bye for now... Rob
PS
There are some more photos on my Flickr site....