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Male, Maldives, 5 December


Today was lovely!  Blue skies, no rain, very hot still but a great day for the beach!  G had cancelled this trip today, as snorkelled instead yesterday so I joined my group of 14 on the tender across to the jetty.  There was another group too but we were in different boats to Guhli Village.  A half hour speedboat trip to the island was fabulous - that alone was worth the visit. Passed many resort islands, all with expensive boats anchored alongside. The colour of the water was impossible to capture, so beautiful.  

Arrived to some island bongo music, three guys welcoming us.  The island is quite small, has 1000 people living on it and they mainly fish for a living. We walked around the area for half hour or so looking at the fishing boats, way of life, etc, but the housing looked pretty ordinary although a few new buildings are going up.  No shopping to speak of except a lot of Muslim women selling their wares along the beach.  Mostly stuff we don’t need of course.  I rented a beach lounge and enjoyed the solitude for three hours!!!  The water was so lovely, as you would expect. Then the boatman gave us a thrilling ride home, tried to race the other boat and did a few twists and turns.  Doesn’t take much to make me happy, does it???? 

I have a few more facts about the Maldives - the Maldavian Archipelago is located on the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, a vast mountain range in the Indian Ocean.  With an average ground-level elevation of 4ft 11in above sea level and a highest natural point of only 2.4 meters, it is the world’s lowest-lying country.  The Maldives has a tropical monsoon climate and the temperature is constantly hot and often humid.  

The Maldives remained largely unknown to tourists until the early 1970’s and only 189 islands are home to its 447,137 inhabitants.  The other islands are used entirely for economic purposes of which tourism and agriculture are the most dominant.  The first tourist resorts were opened in 1972 with Bandos Island Resort and Karumba Village - this transformed the economy greatly.  The number of resorts increased from 2 to 92 between 1972 and 2007 and at that point over eight million tourists had visited the area. 

Shared a table at dinner with some nice people from Toronto - there are lots of Canadians on the ship, particularly from the Toronto area.  And then we both went to the show to see Chris Hamilton, Piano Showman and wow! was he a showman!  A fantastic pianist, will be seeing him again in a few nights. 

Some friends with birthdays today, 6th, happy birthday from us!!!! 

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