Back from the Maldives

[fullspizz]

Oh well, after 2 gloriously peacefull and stress free weeks in the Maldives I came back to the UK on Tuesday lunch and was at work Tuesday night.
Firstly, what a fantastic place people are sooo friendly and the islands themselves are like paradise on earth.
Did 14 dives whilst over there, saw 3m Manta Rays, black and grey tip reef sharks, Morays, Turtles, Napoleon, barracuds and big tuna.
Did an interesting night dive, no boat when we surfaced , had to swim 200yds to get clear of the reef and wait 5mins for the boat in pitch black (my torch failed) Apart from this the dive team were great, the women who was in charge on the night dive got a severe roasting.
Visiated a couple of islands where the tsunami struck and was suprised (although glad) to find that 90% of the people survived the 2mtr wave and surge.
The bride was happy as she got to sunbathe (lots )
The island was only 6 acres in size and took about 15 mins to walk around.
We are looking at booking for next year already.
I will post some piccies up soon as.

 

[fullspizz]

We stayed at the Hakurra Club, which is being renamed Chaaya Lagoon for this following season. Maximum of 180 holiday makers on the island and almost everybody has a water bungalow with a glass panel in the floor.
The manta's were most impressive, it's the season for the whale sharks as well but we didn't see any The Manta were about due to a heck of a lot of plankton in the water.
The biggest Napoleon was about 4ft in length and the biggest shark was about 3-3.5m in length, we followed him down to 35mts but then he went deeper and we had little no deco time left so ascended to about 20mts.

You could sit in the bar and watch little sharks and morays in the water over the railing. There was also a lion fish and a couple of stingrays that got inquisitive most nights and came up close.