Crunchy ‘Nanas

…and so are humans!

Crunchy husband and I took a brief break from reality to soak up the sun (beneath our layers of 50+ sunscreen, of course) and learn about all the fish in the Maldives last week. We were calling it our “honeymoon” because a) we got married in November (not this past one - in 2005), so the 3 days of our honeymoon in Portugal weren’t very warm and we always said we’d go on a tropical beach holiday, and b) we never do stuff quite as extravagant as this so it felt special, just like a honeymoon. I even bought new pretty underwear (which is so NOT me) and wore a bikini the whole time (which is even more so NOT me).

It was an amazing trip. I didn’t stop feeling lucky to be there and experiencing the beauty of the place. We were given a sea plane transfer from the main airport in Male’ to our little island in the Raa Atoll (in the north, so we didn’t quite make it across the equator to the southern hemisphere, but we got close!). The sights from that flight blew me away. I was glued to the window. The islands are formed by a mountain range rising up through the ocean.  So, as you’d expect, some peaks are higher than others (those ones form the islands above water) and then others just form craters of shallower lagoons. You end up getting spots of clear, light blue surrounded by the deeper, darker ocean. The contrast in colors and patterns reminded us of so many of the geothermal pools at Yellowstone.

The first day we got there, we got to the island around 2pm. We were graciously received and told to have lunch as it was through being served in a half an hour. After we had our first (of many) tastes of very spicy curry, we dug out our bathing suits (I put one of mine in my carry-on, just in case!), snorkels, fins and hit the beach. My first trip out - Crunchy husband’s not so much a water baby as I am - I was swimming along, reveling in the fish that were so close, you didn’t have to swim far, or really at all to see so many, and then I looked up. I did a double take and then thought, “oh my god, that’s a shark!” They look exactly like they do on tv and at the aquarium! I was so excited, rather than sit there calmly and observe (or even kind of follow it because it saw me and headed the other way), I had to tell someone. I swam back to Crunchy husband and said, “oh my god, there was a shark, right there! I got to swim with a shark!”

I stood there in the shallows taking it all in. I was so excited, but then did I really see it? Was I hallucinating? It was really a shark, right? How could I be that lucky? And then I turned around. And found I had nearly landed myself on a sting ray. The excitement continued!

It was amazing. As we found as the week went on, the shark was real. We saw it again in the water later that day, which I am glad about because I wanted Crunchy husband to see it underwater too and share that with him, and then we saw it a couple times while we were walking along the groin and jetty. And the stingrays were common, too. You had to watch where you were stepping and shuffle your feet in the sand so as not to startle them as soon as you got in the water.

The snorkeling completely met my expectations. It took me a little while to get out to the drop off because, especially at low tide, it was not always easy to get straight through the shallow area. But,  I felt so good to finally make it out. The first glimpse of the deep while underwater is hard to describe: breathtaking, awesome. I was swimming along just barely above the coral and then at once, I was floating at the top of this immense blue void. It’s deep and solid, just blue everywhere. And then as my eyes adjusted, I could make out shafts of light penetrating the water near the surface and little dots that, as my eyes focused even more, I came to realize were tons and tons of fish.  It’s one of those moments in life that puts so much else in perspective. It’s quiet, calm and yet it’s so intense and meaningful.

There were so many fish to see, and so little time and knowledge to take it all in. We bought our “Reef Fishes of the Maldives” book and waterproof card to take with us out in the water, but it still took many trips of memorizing patterns and colors and sizes to start to be able to match them up with the pictures in the book. The scariest thing we did see was a triggerfish (like this one, but not the exact one) that we think may have been guarding a nest because it looked agitated and we swear we saw teeth. We gave it a wide berth, since we had just read in the book, “Titan triggerfishes are so powerful and defend their nests with such vigor that they are often considered the most dangerous fish in the Maldives. They are certainly capable of inflicting a nasty bite.” We didn’t stick around to find out.

There weren’t very many anemones on our reef, at least not at the depths we were going to, but I did find one and it did feature a couple of Maldivian anemonefish, so yes, I found Nemo.

It’s going to take a while to get through all the photos from all the various cameras we had, and pick out the best ones to put on Flickr. If you are interested, keep a watch on this link for additions.

This entry was posted on Thursday, 2nd April 2009 at  17:30 and is filed under Travel. You can follow responses to this entry using the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.