Following a baron few COVID years of zero travel, we took our PCRs and headed to the Maldives (my seventy-something country).
No more cheap hotel as we got an island resort just a short speedboat ride away from Malē airport. No more drinking with the locals as Maldives is a dry country, our resort did knock beers out at $13++ a pint but I didn't trouble the barman. The only 'locals' on the island were staff from Male.
This holiday was all about cleansing the mind after a couple of years of Covid abuse. What a place to do this. We were on an island that took about 45 mins to circle the white sand beach circumference. There wasn't a great deal to do, but that was the beauty of it.
One thing that was there was plenty of brightly coloured fish which you could see through the crystal clear waters. Having previously spectacularly failed at my only other snorkeling experience in Indonesia (documented here http://rebootmycareer.blogspot.com/2015/10/bali-and-gili-islands.html?m=1) I was determined to give it another go.
After a shaky start I soon got right into snorkeling, swimming out over corals to see some spectacular coloured fish. It was a whole new world that opened to me.
The waters of the Indian Ocean are inhabited by lots of things I wasn't keen on seeing a snorkels length away. On the last morning I literally came eye to eye with a shark (a baby one at about 3ft). I knew they were out there and people had told me they would be more scared of me than I was of them...WRONG, let's just say I didn't hang around and quickly put my snorkeling pastime on hold.
I've often debated what constitutes visiting a country, definitely transit stops are not counted for me, I'm sceptical about day trips to a country (this would scratch both Uruguay and Brazil from my total), the general rule I observe is one an old guy said to me in Gothenburg about 20 years ago, "you can only say you've visited a country if you had a meal, a sleep and a number 2 in that country". I might throw another into the mix and that it used the local currency. On this trip everything on the island was priced in USD, I never even saw a Maldivian Rufiyaa, so did I do enough to tick the Maldives?
