2000 leagues under the sea

The dive school here on Chaaya, ‘Dive & Sail’, kitted me up with a standard set of equipment, bar a wet suit, as the water temperature here means you can skin dive with no issues, and Tony the instructor took another diver and myself out to an underwater pinnacle called Ashaa as our dive this afternoon.

What can I say? Having only dived the UK previously I had no real idea what I would find under the surface, but it was amazing. The water was so clear you could see about 10 metres in all directions, and the top of the pinnacle was covered in so many different kinds of coral and fish as to be impossible to focus on any one thing! I spent the first 10 minutes or so sorting out my buoyancy and the camera and trying not to get too close to the coral and all manner of other things until I had it all under control and relaxed.

The pinnacle had everything you could want on a first dive here: it was clear, the water at the deepest point (23 metres) was still 29 degrees centigrade, which was lovely! And the fish...

Moray Eel

All obligingly happy to pose whilst you drifted past. Of course I didn’t and was happy trying to make sure I didn’t sink or float too fast past them, but you get the picture (as hopefully did I!)

Clown Fish

I took way too many photos, and have posted only a few of the better ones here, but you can see the variety…

Lion Fish

I need to adjust the camera to use the flash I think, as there’s way too much blue in these, but I had so much fun taking them…

Parrot Fish

Suz meanwhile was topside reading and enjoying the view of the turtle that we’d gone down to try and find/follow! I’m hooked though, so I’ve signed up for two more trips tomorrow morning! Let’s see if tomorrow brings some Manta Rays!

Of dolphins & hermits

Another glorious day in the Maldives, and Suz and I went snorkelling first thing, as I wanted to show her all the little fishies! We weren’t disappointed either, so pushing it a little we swam over to the neighbouring island, blissfully unaware that there was a big notice telling us not to as it was a private island! Oops!

Whilst I was posting yesterdays blog post afterwards, we saw a huge ray just cruise under the walkway right by the beach, I think Suz wanted to jump right in then!

Our dolphin watching trip was this afternoon though, so we duly varnished ourselves in factor 50 and headed out to the jetty to catch our dhoni (traditional Maldivian boat)

Our keen eyed guide headed up top whilst the rest of us kept a sharp eye out from down below, and it wasn’t long before Suz shouted out that there was something off the starb’rd side (all right, she shouted ‘What’s that over there?’, but you get my nautical reference), and it turned out to be a huge turtle taking a breath at the surface before diving under before anyone had a chance to train their cameras on it.

We motored further out towards the next atoll, and after about an hour, eagle eyed Suz shouted out ‘flying fish!’, but again they disappeared sharpish.

We thought we’d had a fruitless trip, and that our cetacean friends were being shy, but just before we were about to give up, they showed up out of the blue (literally)

but didn’t hang around to play for very long, though clearly some of them, further out were having a ball:

Dolphin executes a perfect triple salko loop with pike and is awarded 6.0 by the judges.

after that we motored back through the heat, though at least being out on the water meant we had a breeze, and went back to the bungalow to deal with the inevitable sun burn, though not before trying to relocate every hermit crab that I came across on the path home – some of them are so tiny and cute, in a crab-like way!

I’m off diving tomorrow! Wheee!

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!

Good bye!

We’ve reached the end of our stay here in Ranweli, Sri Lanka, and we’ve got to get up at 2.50 in the morning ready to catch our next flight off to Malè in the Maldives before a seaplane to our resort! I can’t wait!

Here then as a final posting from Sri Lanka is a brief map of where we’re stayed:

It’s been really good here, if little weird at times (I’m looking at you Mr Shirley!) but I think both Suz and I will be glad to move onto the Maldives, where I’m hoping everything will be really special.

Au Revoir!

Sweeny Todd

It’s hot here. Hot and humid. And I forgot to get a second hair cut right before we left home. So, my hair has been too long for out here, and it’s been annoying me. Well, I’d brought my electric razor along, so thought ‘what the heck’ and asked Suz to give me a hair cut, after all, my hair does grow at a ridiculous rate.

She reluctantly agreed.

Hahahahahah!

Grease me up!

So yesterday, Suz and I decided to take advantage of the ‘freebie’ you get here at Ranwelli, a half hour foot massage at the Ayurveda massage centre. When we walked in there though it was so calm and serene that we actually decided to go for a full on head, face, back & shoulders massage instead. Well, they wheeled us into separate rooms and I was asked to undress (eek!)

They started with my head massage by liberally applying a pool of oil onto my scalp and then patting it like you would a mud pie! Very odd, but the actual massage was lovely!

I next had to lay face up on a table and they started the face massage, again with liberal amounts of scented oil, but this treatment was the best – very nearly fell asleep during it!

Lastly came the back massage, which was very nice, but my shoulders hurt a bit afterwards, as they took quite a pummelling.

I met Suz back out in the lobby as we were both having a nice cup of herbal tea, and we really did look like we’d both been dragged through a tank of olive oil!

Greasy, but happy!

Bird watching by boat

It’s Saturday today (for anyone keeping tabs) and we had decided to book ourselves on a boat trip today, as Ranweli sits on a canal with plenty of wildlife to view, so at 10.00 we duly went down to the boat house and were met by another really friendly guide who was more than happy to point out the mullet and black crab in the water, as well as the Pied Kingfisher that was perched on the telephone wire running across the canal, which then obligingly plummeted into the water to snatch a fish (the Kingfisher, not the guide. Although we would’ve paid good money to see that!)).

I went one better though as a tiny Common Kingfisher buzzed right past us and sat neatly on a nearby twig. I’m monstrously proud of this shot:

We then jumped into the boat (it had brilliant swingy chairs!) and our guide chugged us up the canal a ways to the entrance where the sea had breached during the tsunami. The wildlife here is spectacular though, within throwing distance of the boat house we spotted a Water Monitor drowsing away the morning on a tree limb (these things are huge!) and then a Green Heron, Sandpipers and an Egret (of which I now know there are three types here, the Small, Intermediate and Great!)

Our guide managed to drive the boat to within meters of a Pied Kingfisher, allowing me to get some great shots of it:

We also saw a White Throated Kingfisher, but only at a distance. We then motored further up the canal with our guide pointing out all sorts of different species to us, which was great, we even managed to spot a couple of Brahminy Kites soaring happily on the thermals. We had a couple of close encounters with Water Monitors swimming through the water, which was great to see up close.

On the way back to the boat house, our guide stopped and plucked a flower for Suz, so she gurned and stuck it in her hat :)

our last sighting of the trip was of a parakeet which was sitting silently in a green tree being harassed by chipmunks, it was really hard to spot against the emerald of the leaves:

After we got back we lazed by the pool, only to discover we’d actually been incinerated by the sun here despite wearing factor 50 slathered all over us! God bless our English complexions!!