Above: Chained birds near Maafushi’s port area.
After a relaxing day yesterday of chilling and swimming, it was time for me to do some diving before leaving tomorrow.
I had booked to dive with Arena Dive Club who offered the best rates of USD40 per dive and USD10 for all equipment per dive, plus a discount of at least 10%. (The discount turned out to be 20% when I returned to pay that night).
They were easy to deal with and fitted me out with nice gear yesterday during my visit. So, when I turned up at 0750 this morning, it was all too easy and we headed to the spacious dive boat. On board was one other customer, a dive master/guide each and the captain. That’s a total of five people.
The first dive was at Cocoa Corner near Guraidhoo. We had a good sighting of a white tip reef shark followed by two large turtles separately. There was hardly any coral at this site.
After a surface interval, we move to our second site at Manta Point, also near Guraidhoo.
Here, there was some coral but nothing spectacular. When we got to the significant coral mound where mantas sometimes hang out, we waited at the sandy bottom and watched the small reef fish. Sadly, no mantas turned up.
I felt perfectly weighted with 5kg which I requested based on last year’s experience. On the second dive, my mask didn’t fog up at all for the entire dive! That’s quite unbelievable!
We were back on Maafushi around midday. Boo and I went out for a local style meal of a curry and some sides. It was a shock that it came to about USD7 per person. Like on Gulhi, that seems to be the norm regardless of the meal or the poshness (or otherwise) of the venue.