I have always thought that Maldives was a country that had to be travelled on a huge budget, but the country has more to offer than five star all inclusive resorts! guest houses are popping up and scheduled ferries are making most of the inhabitant islands connected.
After our Dhoni cruise we had a few days off and decided to spend these at Rasdhoo, the smallest of the Maldivian atolls, known for having the countrys best diving spots. We stayed at Rasdhoo Dive Lodge, being the first guests to stay in the rooms where we slept, as the lodge was just starting up.
Being an islamic state there are regulations to where it is allowed to go swimming in bikinis, but the diving lodge was situated right on the islands main streets and was within short distance of both the bikini beach and the harbour where all boat excursions took off from. One of the days we borrowed the kayaks of the dive center and paddled out to the picknick islands and the sand bank right next by. The picknick island had a table, umbrellas for shade and restrooms and was a place people went to have lunch, relax or just do some snorkelling at the reef right by. The sand bank was just a white and smooth pile of sand surrounded by beautiful turquise water, which was the perfect place to take photos that all looked like they could have been on the cover of a travel magazine.
While being on the island I also got to do two afternoon dives and one morning dive. For the morning dive we got into the water before 6am, in the beginning it was pitch dark and then gradually it started getting brighter throughout the dive. What totally blew me off about this dive and almost took my breath away at nearly thirty meters was a blanket of “bioluminecent plankton” glowing up like starts underneath us. Apparantly that was not even a seasonal thing and was something that could be seen on almost all morning and night dives.
The morning dive we did at Hammerhead Point, known for having hammerhead sharks, but unfortunately I did not see any on my dive. However we saw bubblefish that came to play with our bubbles, we saw a manta ray and a marble ray, we saw white tip, black tip reef shark and a leopard shark and a few giant moray eels. Although a bit bummed about not seeing hammerheads I was quite lucky and satisfied with the dives I got to do. The only problem is that I from now on will compare my dives with the Maldives, which will be quite hard to beat. I guess I will have to be back for a longer diving holiday sometime.
