Escape to paradise – Maldives

           Islamic three day EID holidays are almost a mandatory reason to leave the country! I didn’t have enough leave days to extend it to a full week, but fortunately my generous company allowed me to take leave from 2014 J And because Jitka had leave enough, we could start planning where to go…which is somehow being quite difficult decision for us!

          We were obviously not the only one who wanted to escape from Qatar, so two weeks ahead all the tickets to anywhere were double the price and with a fact that autumn seems a worldwide low wind season our decision making was really a tough task!

          At the beginning we wanted to go to Greece, than Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Egypt…but always there was something wrong we didn’t like. It was either too expensive, too complicated, too long travel, too crowded and as we were spending more and more time just browsing without finding we started to get even crazier ideas like Indonesia, India or Ethiopia! We were running out of time and each day we didn’t decide the tickets were getting more and more expensive!

          At the end we made a comprehensive Excel spreadsheet with flight times and cost estimations, picked two and we liked the most and chose our destiny J “Wherever we go it is going to be great if we are together” I secured Jitka that Maldives will be superb!

          You’ve seen pictures from Maldives right? Crystalline waters, white beaches rounded with palm trees, wooden houses on shallow reefs and stunning underwater life. Safe bet! Well…in certain places and certain time for sure! 

          We wanted to be at the smallest budget possible and do kitesurfing and stand up paddleboarding, so based on Google maps I chose the Maafushi island. Maafushi is one of the many local Maldivian village islands, with no alcohol, no picturesque cottages standing on water and no luxury what so ever, but cheap and public ferry ride from airport. 

We got a decent and clean room in a guesthouse, which was unfortunately not directly on the beach. But no problem…beach was just 100m away. 

          The problem was though, that the beach was full of rocks, corals a palm trees were just on the water edge, making it quite unfriendly to kiters. The good places for kitesurfing were either on the leeward side of the island or inaccessible, because there was a prison. Things like this you cannot find out from Google maps!

          Using SUPs was also not exactly as expected because even on the shallow reef area there were many waves and once the waves are half a meter high it is very difficult to stand upright…especially on a 26 inch race board! And going to other islands across deep open water channels to snorkel at better reefs than the Maafushi’s small one was almost impossible!

         Also an exceptionally big hurricane was forming up next to India was making the weather extremely shifty, unpredictable and which was forming isolated heavy rainstorms running across the sky and showering us every hour! Adding up very average meals and rather vegetarian unfriendly cuisine in our place, no wonder that from the first day the mood was not great and there was a tension and questioning “Why the hell are we here and not in some beautiful resort like from a catalogue!” It was just not going according to the plan!

          True…the place was not perfect and the first two days we were just running around, trying to do what we wanted with little success and basically learning our way around, but on the other hand there was no guarantee that we would be happier in a posh isolated hotel island with no spirit and among people from higher levels which we would hardly come along with! There we wouldn’t definitely met Jascha, a lone German kitesurfer, having his last minute budget holidays in Maafushi also J

          With more people stuck on the island (he definitely didn’t look that “stuck” as we did!) it was easier to do things, ease the tension and try to enjoy more. With him we saved our second day by hiring a boat to go kiting to an amazing sand bank at Cocoa Island resort nearby. We had a great session spiced up with some rainstorms passing by and pinning us down under the kite to protect us from heavy rain and winds.

          For three hours we were kiting like in the promotion spot…shallow blue water, white clouds, sand and palm trees at the back! Magical! Then the resort staff kicked us out to protect their 1000 dollar a night guests from invaders disturbing their boring peace by doing some activity one kilometer away from the beach and spoiling their view!

          Inspired, we took another boat the next day and went for the whole day to a similar island with a perfect sand bank, but no resort and annoying people. Unfortunately the cyclone Phailin had a different idea about us enjoying kiting in paradise and sent over 25 knots of wind! Excellent conditions if you have smaller kite than 12m…which you usually don’t have when the forecast is 15 knots max! Like that we just had to sit and wait until the boat picked us up in the evening. Such a bad luck and waste!

           So we resigned on kiting and went for a snorkeling trip the next morning. Much better, because we were swimming with manta rays, turtles, huge schools of fish and were surrounded by unbelievable colors of coral reefs and the life around. I went out kiting at our beach in the afternoon and had very nice session. That I had to launch and land the kite in the water, ride over corals and waves, and pay for any possible mistake (which didn’t happen!) by smashing the kite into the trees was a small issue J And the mood was going up again…

            The last day we took our SUPs and paddled to the Cocoa Island once more to have a lunch and maybe a beer too! Waves were quite big so we spent the most of the 9km paddle doing Sit Down Paddleboarding! But it didn’t matter, because it was nice to be out on the sea anyway. Luckily the decided to check out their beautiful house reef first before going to eat, because as soon as we ordered and we revealed ourselves not being their guests, we were again kicked out from an empty restaurant with 150 dollar order. Private is private and policy is a policy! Silly!

          And that was it! Five days in “paradise”. Once taking a boat back to the airport we were kind of happy to go home again, despite the last good days improving the experience 100%, but on the other hand kind of unhappy, because we knew that if having a better weather, better island and better hotel, this place could easily be that dream paradise as we were imagining it! We’ll see when and if another chance will be given to prove it J