Once In A Lifetime

Poolside at the resort

One of the more exotic and interesting locations I was able to visit not too long ago was the Maldives.  You may be silently asking yourself, “now, where in the hell are the Maldives?”… and you would not be alone.  I say that because that’s exactly what I said when I found out I was flying a trip there.  I had to rely on the good ‘ol internet to find out this information.  It turns out that the Maldives are a collection of roughly 1200 or so small islands located about 250 nautical miles west of Sri Lanka out in the Indian Ocean.  It holds the distinction of being the country with the lowest average elevation of something like 5 feet.  It is a concern to the people of this country that as ice caps melt and the ocean levels rise that they will eventually have an average elevation of zero… or less.  It’s enough of a concern that the people in charge of these sorts of things have made arrangements with neighboring India and have acquired some land as a place to relocate in the future.  I’m sure that’s going to go over well.

Let me first say that flying an aircraft carrying nearly 300 people and landing on a runway that occupies nearly one entire island is an interesting experience.  The runway was plenty long enough and plenty wide enough… it just seemed much smaller than it truly was.  The blue/green waters surrounding the airport island made it tough to concentrate on the task of actually flying the visual approach and landing because it was so beautiful to look at.

Once off the airplane, in order to get to the city of Male, (pretty much the only city in the Maldives), from the airport you had to get on a water taxi and ride it for about 20 minutes to the next island over.  The resort we stayed at happened to be on the same small island as the airport so I didn’t need to go to Male, but once I was settled into my room and put my tropical clothing on I hopped on a water taxi anyway just to go check it out.  It turned out to not be anything too special as far as cities go but I bought a couple trinkets anyway and headed back to the resort. 

During my 3 day layover I was able to visit one of the nearby island resorts.  The entire crew and I took a speedboat ride for about 45 minutes to get to the all-expenses paid resort.  I enjoyed great food and drinks with the crew and did a little snorkeling as well. 

Once back to “our” resort, I spent most of the time out at the pool.  I met up with a few of the pilots who fly the inter-island float planes at the resort and discovered that most of them were either from Canada or Australia.  They were quick with a story and were a blast to share a few drinks with. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the Maldives.  I’m not too sure I’d travel to the other side of the planet JUST to go there specifically in the future, since there are places much closer to home that offer the same basic experience… but if I happen to find myself there again for some reason I won’t complain one bit.


Tulleeho!

Still hanging by the pool