Wow.

This morning was a bit of an early start, but we left Ranweli and headed back to Colombo airport to catch our flight out at 7.30am. I was intrigued though, as we began our descent, and looking out the window I couldn’t see anything at all. As it happens Malè is actually a small atoll island whilst it’s airport is actually on it’s neighbouring island with a extension reclaimed from the sea. Male itself seems to have grown upwards as it’s unable to grow outwards, but looks fascinating, however, we didn’t get a chance to go there, as as soon as our pilot had bounced our aircraft to a rather jumpy stop, we headed out to our water taxi seaplane!

I think I was looking forward to this bit! We duly climbed in to a little Twin Otter and the pilots took us around several of the resorts, dropping off guests as we went. Going up and down in these things is so much better than a roller coaster!

Anyway, the third stop was us, at Chaaya Lagoon. What do you think:

I honestly can’t describe how beautiful the Maldives are. We flew over atolls with lenses the lightest colour of turquoise, whilst the surrounding sea was a deep royal blue – I can now see why people rave about this place, it should be on everyone's bucket list just to come here and see the colours. And when we got to Chaaya, it has the longest walkway in the Maldives (allowing the air taxi to pull right up to it) and walking back to the resort, our host casually pointed out the huge stingray drifting over the coral sand, along with a large number of other fish chasing each other. Amazing!

Chaaya sits on  it’s own piece of heaven, with bright white coral beach, and palms and other trees growing  sheltering the main buildings on the island. All of the water bungalows extend out from this island 100 metres into the sea (which at best is about a metre deep), and have their own glass bottom floor to look at all the fishes, and other assorted aquatic life…

no comments about a whale please!

and the view from our own private deck..

not bad eh? I of course immediately jumped in for a swim around, and under our bungalow have so far spotted a Zebra Lionfish, Damson fish, loads of Reef Triggerfish and assorted jacks and others (my ‘guide to the reef fish of the Indian Ocean’ isn’t as comprehensive as it needs to be!)

So tomorrow Suz and I have already booked ourselves onto a dolphin watching (aka dolphin bothering) tour, then I’m hitting the dive centre with the underwater camera!