The Maldives

On Wednesday morning we arrived home from our two week holiday in the Maldives with our dear friends Jackie & Cliff.

Meedhupparu Island Resort where we stayed has not changed much since our visit this time last year. The tranquility and ambiance still remains the same. The food is still excellent and there is so much choice. The Resort staff are still as friendly.

They are carrying out work on one tip of the island to repair damage to the beach caused by errosion. They have constructed a stone wall

several metres from the edge of the damage and are in the slow process of filling in with sand behind the wall to reconstruct the beach. Experts have told them that nature during the monsoon months will do the final filling in when the tides will bring sand over the retaining wall and the beach will be reconstructed.

The coral reef surrounding the island is recovering from the storm damage in such a short space of time.

Each day after breakfast we walked to the end of one of the two jetties to watch the fish under the crystal clear water. One of the fish we were lucky to see was the giant Napoleon Wrasse.

At night this same area of water was lit up by bright lights on the jetty and two of the Island staff would come down with a big drum of fish waste to feed the abundance of fish. On several nights this attracted a school of Jack Tuna and on a couple of nights a giant Eagle Ray.

Snorkeling off the beach in fairly shallow water was one of our daily activities. The colour and the diversity of species was amazing. From "Nemo" to species of Ray. On one stretch of beach in shallow water we saw baby Reef Sharks swimming up and down. On the day before we left Cliff and I were lucky to see Dolphins leaping out of the water just on the edge of the deep part of the reef about 12 metres from the shoreline.

Because this was a repeat visit to the Resort, on both Saturday nights we were there we all got invited to a thank you cocktail party to meet the General Manager and some of his management staff.

The highlight of last week for the management was a visit from The Maldivian President who has his own waterside bungalow on the Island.

The biggest highlight of the week was Yvonne - Mum - Mermaid, swimming and snorkeling without the aid of a safety line!