Back to the Maldives

It's October 1985 and Steve, inspired by a colleague's recent recommendation, has brought me a travel brochure featuring a handful of resorts in the Maldives. 'It looks fabulous', he says. 'What do you think? My friend says the brochure's not lying. There are fantastic coral reefs, terrific snorkelling, white sand, palm trees, clear waters and very friendly people. And it's not overrun with tourists. And it's pronounced 'Mall-divs'. 

Hmmm. The brochure photos certainly looked great. I wasn't sure exactly where the Maldives were; they were definitely not on everyone's radar at this time as Bali, Fiji, and Vanuatu were the go-to destinations that attracted Australian tourists. In fact, the brochure indicated that tourism in the Maldives was very much in its infancy with only a few islands having been developed for this purpose. That sounded just the kind of thing we liked. Some of these islands were operated by Germans who ran diving schools, attracting mostly Europeans. 

The brochure map showed hundreds of tiny islands surrounded by coral reefs - miniscule pinpricks on the paper in the vast Indian Ocean. The nearest landmass was the southern tip of India and Sri Lanka to the north-east which gave me a better idea of where these islands were. Africa to the west was a million miles away - or so it seemed.

We planned to go in January during the school holidays, which coincided with the islands' dry season.  We picked out two islands to visit. Getting there via Singapore would be easy, and we added a few days in Sri Lanka because it was only a short plane trip away. The very names of the islands we had chosen -Ziyaaraifushi and Embudu-finolu - promised an exotic adventure. 

It was only a 10-day holiday but it was the first overseas trip we had taken together. As it turned out, the holiday was so successful it was the start of 35 years of travelling the world for us.

The other day I dug out my old photo album and diary. I was not a great photographer then and the camera I had was small and automatic so I couldn't adjust for light etc.  And unlike today with my digital camera, I didn't take a lot of photos. Of course cameras used film then, so today the 35-year-old photos look a bit washed out and grainy. However, I managed to capture some shots that summed up the gorgeous scenery, especially the sunsets. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The journey to our island paradise did not go according to plan. I remember arriving at the airport on the main island of Malé at close on to midnight and finding no-one to greet us as arranged. Oops. Was this a disaster in the making? Fortunately, a man appeared who told us it was far too late to attempt the trip to faraway Ziyaaraifushi and we would be taken by dhoni (a slow water taxi) to Lohifushi, a closer island run by the same company. Disaster averted, and at least we were going to get a glimpse of another island. We boarded the dhoni which headed out into the extremely dark ocean with only the star-studded sky above providing light. It all felt rather unreal. This photo shows that I was rather excited! Steve just looks tired. By our clocks it was about 2:00am.

It took two and a half hours to arrive, by which time we were thoroughly exhausted and fell asleep within five minutes of being shown our room. The next morning we woke feeling refreshed but on an island where we weren't supposed to be. Luckily we had time for a quick tour. My diary records: The perfumed flowers from the tall trees gave off a heady scent as we walked along the narrow pathway around the island. Coconut trees. Buzzing insects. Scuttling lizards. A cooling breeze. At the far end, surf crashed against the rocky shore. I definitely felt I was on a tropical island.

And then we were on our way again, this time in a speed launch. What fun it was to watch the boat cleverly navigate coral reefs, seeing islands come and go as we sped along, being lightly drenched as white spray shot over us. The small boat was also full of bananas and chickens! Even zooming across the water it took one and a half hours to reach Ziyaaraifushi. 

We were enchanted. Our hut was right on the water.

 

In those days I sunbathed with nary a thought as to what the fierce rays were doing to my skin, so spent many hours lying on 'our' beach and wading into the calm, clear water to lazily swim a few strokes. 

It was wonderful. You can see how tanned we were. 

'This is the life' I recorded in my diary.

What stands out for me now are the memories of the sunsets; the water that merged with the sky in a pale misty haze in the early hours of the morning, turning from lavender to pink then pale orange as the sun rose; the underwater world of coral and brightly coloured fish; the happy, courteous and helpful staff. The meals were simple but delicious - lots of fish, meat stews, curries and rice, vegetables, salads and fruit.  The generator stopped mid-afternoon so there was no fan or electricity for a while, but we learnt to put up with it and rest for a couple of hours or go swimming.

As I said, the snorkelling was fantastic, but I have to say I was a complete novice - I'd never snorkelled before. I was converted in two seconds! The water was lovely and warm, no waves and the reef near our hut was only a few metres below the surface. It was an underwater paradise and anything I write here will sound like a travel brochure. I'll go to my diary which records my thoughts immediately after my first snorkelling experience.

Snorkelling was magnificent. Brilliantly coloured fish of all shapes swimming in front of my eyes - tiny aquamarine fish, larger blue with yellow stripes, orange with black markings, miniscule grey ones, small schools of silver fish.  The coral was vividly coloured and, to me, resembled a landscaped garden. Yellow, pink, blue and purple shapes, some branches, others rounded humps. I swam over coral valleys that suddenly dipped into slightly deeper water. What an experience. One I will never forget. 

And I never have. I recorded another three snorkelling trips. In each one I sound more excited and entranced.  The following photo is one Steve took with his small underwater camera. And I've cheated and included a brochure photo  of some fish because it shows exactly what I saw.

The intrepid snorkeller.

And so our time on Ziyaaraifushi passed in an endless round of lazy mornings, swims, snorkelling, scrumptious lunches and dinner, a crab race one night and another memorable evening when fishermen from an island 'only three hours away' we were told, came to play their music. Back to the diary to capture this moment.

It was exhilarating to sit on our deckchairs in the warm night air listening to the pounding beat of the native drums and cymbals and chanting. Every now and again some would break into a dance. Some of the younger ones really went wild, doing back-flips and somersaults. We finally wandered back to our hut with the sounds of the music still throbbing through the island. 

But it wasn't over yet and I loved my next paragraph.

We waded into the water which was still warm and perfectly still - with the stars overhead- wonderful. Millions of tiny sand crabs were scuttling across the sand and larger rock crabs were scrambling over the jagged rocks on the shore.  It was the end of a perfect day. 

After our Sri Lanka sojourn, we flew to Malé and caught a launch to Embudu-Finolu. Choppy seas and a rather unpleasant trip of a couple of hours. This island was much smaller than Ziyaaraifushi and there was only a handful of huts. I'd stuck a paragraph from the brochure into my album. It says: Embudu-Finolu is a new resort only 20 minutes from the airport. It is very intimate with only 20 duplex-styled units scattered around the island. An excellent "get away from it all" resort.'

In all I only took one photo of this island!   

We met a couple from Sydney who were officers with the NSW police. I've included this photo as it makes me wonder what their lives have been like. They sounded so adventurous as they told us they had just come from exploring India, Tibet and Sri Lanka.       

It was soon time for us to leave. Little did I know then that my future travels would also include many adventures. 

Fast forward to today. I wondered how the islands we had visited had fared over the years, now that the Maldives are a very popular tourist destination. What I discovered first was that the islands are one of the lowest lying in the world, making climate change and rising sea levels a very real problem for them. This fact of course was never even hinted at back in the 1980s. 

During the 1990s the islands began to be further developed, until today the resorts, numbering almost 100, could be in any tropical location. The brochures extoll the physical features of white sands, palm trees, clear waters and spectacular sunsets as our 1985 brochure did. But then we read about over-water bungalows, top-class restaurants, bars, infinity pools, TVs, water sports.... all the amenities that tourists seem to require nowadays. Disappointingly, I rarely read anything about the Maldivian culture. 

I discovered that the resort on Ziyaaraifushi was sold in the late 1990s. Then, in 2015, it was completely demolished and a new one, under the name of Summer Island Resort Ziyaaraifushi was built. Luckily, the website says it is 'owned and managed locally'. This is the photo from their website. How utterly different from our experience.

Unfortunately, there have been two very severe coral bleaching episodes. After the one in 1998 experiments were undertaken building artificial reefs in deeper waters and transplanting coral onto them. Sadly, another bleaching took place in 2016 and all the coral transplants died. However, there is cause for optimism. I read a 2018 report that described new technology in the form of a 3-D printed reef developed in Melbourne that had been installed offshore at the resort. 

Photo from Summer Island Resort website.

The developers and islanders hope that this concrete and ceramic reef will create a new coral reef ecosystem that will enable coral reefs to survive a warming climate. I certainly hope it succeeds as it is those long ago memories of the wonderful snorkelling here that I recall so vividly.