The Trip Heard Round the World: Glorious, Glamorous, Great, Gorgeous [G]maldives with MANY X-tra special features

Fish eating their evening meal of algae off the coral

A brain coral

So, I'm sorry, I said I would do the blogpost tomorrow a few days ago. I wanted to, but the wifi in the Maldives is VERY unpredictable, so I didn't get the chance. But, the ocean has been very busy lately, from dolphins, to manta rays, to pufferfish, jellyfish, and even sea turtles to the old boring hermit crab. So let's get started! When we got in from our 12 hours of flight, and 2 hours of boat, we went out to the local beach which is less than a minute walk away. We didn't see much though because all the coral and fish in that area had been killed by a tsunami in 2004. The next day, we discovered that if you go out past where the wave broke, there is more stuff there, but you need to go at high tide, so no dead coral will scrape you. A few days in, we decided to go on a group snorkeling trip. We went to 3 reefs. The banana reef was very cool, with lots of lightning fish, and bluefish. There were also many colorful wrasses, which WILL bite you if you don't be VERY careful. It was very shallow, ranging in depth from about 6 inches to about 50 feet. The Turtle Reef really lives up to its name. Chris saw 5 sea turtles, I saw 4, and Jen saw 3. There were also many cool shells, and

A puffed-up pufferfish

the depth ranged from about 8-92 feet. The sandbar reef was basically a sandbar with some coral (and stingrays) growing around it. We also saw a TON of dolphins on the boat ride there. It was the best place for collecting shells, and sometimes snails hang along for the ride. The depth of the reef surrounding the sandbar was about 4-127 feet deep, and in the last 30 or so of those feet, you can't even see the bottom from the surface!

Any idea what THAT is????

Featherstar

Just today, we went to the Palm Reef/beach, but I could only stay in for a few minutes because my snorkel wasn't working very well. So far, the Maldives has been my favorite place to visit BY far, and it is a severely underrated place, and despite the money, and how hard it is to get there, I strongly recommend it.