Swimming with nine sharks

My options for the day

Today, I move to Maafushi, an island I visited 8 years ago.  The public ferry leaves at 1615 and I had three options for killing the day:

• Spend the morning at the beach then the afternoon in the café,
• Go diving in the morning and then the afternoon in the café, or
• Go for a full-day excursion then hopefully return in time for the ferry to Maafushi.

The latter seemed like a good idea but the hotel receptionist wasn’t certain I’d return in time.  He organised for me to be dropped off at Maafushi at the end of the excursion.

The excursion

I had time to kill before the 1000 departure for the “Full-day Excursion”.  I went to the Ayala Bubbles Dive Center across the alley a couple of times to try retrieve my USB-drive on which they were meant to put the dive photos.

They were closed so I gave up.  I was a bit upset about their unreliability and not having the photos; not so much the USB-drive as they’re kinda hardly used nowadays. [Edit: I got the photos by a Google link next day.]

We walked to the small boat just before 1000 and took a short ride to Maafushi where we were told we had about 35 min spare time of exploration till 1045.  It seemed like a time-waster as it wasn’t enough time to swim and it wasn’t meal-time (not that much was open during Ramdahan).

I took the opportunity to offload my 7kg bag to the Rehendi Villa where I would be staying for two nights.  It was a sweat walk in the sun and the exploration thereafter was short.

We departed in earnest at 1045 for snorkelling off Biyadhoo Island Resort.  We started around 1100 and had quite a long snorkel of less than an hour along a considerable portion of the island’s coastline.

There were lots of beautiful reef fish and we spotted one turtle in the distance.  The guide and the other swimmer in our group gave the poor turtle a chase but I couldn’t keep up as I kept getting water in my snorkel when going at speed.

This wasn’t my idea of a good trip.  It was quite good for the Kazakh who touched the turtle and the two Keralans who couldn’t swim who used lifejackets.  I used a lifejacket too and it proved to be the right decision as I needed to clear my mask and snorkel many times.

We continued to the Sandbank and had our simple lunch of tuna rice around 1205.  While the crew scrubbed the bottom of the boat, we had more time snorkelling in the water.  While pristine, there wasn’t much to see here.

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We left around 1300 and spotted some dolphins shortly after.  We paused and followed them slowly, managing to see them doing a few flips.  We seemed to be headed towards Male and eventually made a stop kinda halfway between Gulhi and Male.

Here we were meant to be able to see sharks and rays.  I wasn’t holding my breath for anything special but the moment I hopped into the water, there were nine nurse sharks swimming below me!  There were also two stingrays and plenty of unicorn fish.

I hovered and enjoyed the surreal experience.  At times the sharks disappeared into the distance and I followed them a little bit only to realise that they will return, with the crew throwing bloody water with fish entrails into the water to attract fish and possibly the sharks too.

We had more than adequate time here, probably 30 or more mins.  I was happy to climb back onto the boat, feeling that the day had been worthwhile at USD70.

Here’s a video of the highlights of the day.  It’s not in chronological order but with the most amazing part, the nurse sharks first:

I didn’t care that the stop at Fulidhoo had been conveniently dropped off (or perhaps replaced with Maafushi) as we headed back to Gulhi to drop the other guests off around 1415.

The so-called “Full-day Excursion” was only about 3h30 if you subtract the walkaround at Maafushi this morning but I knew that it would be kind of a half-day jobbie.    Half-day excursions are basically a couple of hours.

I toyed with the idea of going to the dive shop to try retrieve my USB-drive but didn’t want to risk losing my free ride to Gulhi and having to wait 2h for the public ferry.

Maafushi heartbreak

I was dropped off at Maafushi around 1430 by the excursion boat who had to do a return trip from Gulhi.  It shows that the cost of providing the service was very little and they were happy to throw it in for free in order to sell me the excursion.  But to buy the service standalone, it would have cost about half that!

Maafushi measures around 1270m x 265m and has a population of around 3000.  This morning I was heartbroken to see that my little island paradise of Maafushi now has several high-rise hotels. Incidentally, it is home to the country’s largest prison, taking up a third of the island.

It was the first inhabited island to open to foreigners so it seems natural that development is rapid, especially with its proximity to Male.

After dropping my bag in my room, I returned to the pool area to have a dip, to wash off the day’s dose of salt.  There I had very pleasant chats with a British couple.

The lady, Nicky, teaches in an international school while Kevin is a househusband and teaches golf at times.  She’s a very keen diver and that added to the variety of subjects that we could talk about.  They rent a villa in Koh Tao occasionally so it’s something for me to consider in the future.

It ain’t that bad

After doing my laundry and a rest, I wandered out into the evening.  The north end of the island where there was once the secluded bikini beach is now busy with three (and counting) big high-rise hotels.

However, the beachfront area there and in other places were delightful with open-air dining and lamps.  It was all very tasteful.  There were some souvenir shops around and mini-markets.

There are worse places around the world that have been ruined by tourism and this is still pretty nice.