We heard rain coming down hard last night which resulted in some fairly oppressive heat and humidity today. To be fair, there is a strong breeze on our side of the island, so you don’t notice it as much, but as soon as you go to the other side or are partially sheltered by some palm trees, it’s quite shocking how hot it feels with the humidity. I took my camera lenses out early to let them acclimate. It took several minutes for them to clear.
We hit the breakfast buffet hard once again. This is just one of my plates. I had another with some scrambled eggs and hash browns and fried rice. All was consumed, though many of the items on the plate above were transferred to my camera bag for lunch. One has to always be one step ahead of the Conrad’s steep prices. Though evidently the Conrad has decided to be one step ahead of the rest of the Maldives.
You see, we got a call within our first hour here that we are actually one hour ahead from Malé despite the less than 30 minute flight between the two. We didn’t really question it too much, though I found it annoying that my phone won’t switch because it thinks (correctly) that we are in the same time zone as Malé. The Conrad, for whatever reasons, has decided to just do its own time zone. I’m not sure if it works better for their planning purposes with sunset and dinners and so forth, but it is a little confusing. We almost missed happy hour on day one, which would have been criminal.
Though there were a few passing overcast clouds earlier in the morning, they had given way to almost all sun. It beat down on us while we explored an area with some overwater villas. The water was such a vibrant blue in the intense sun. Everywhere we looked was like a page out of a tropical-themed calendar.
I keep trying to get a decent shot of the floatplanes landing or taking off, but not unlike the Conrad, Trans-Maldivian seems to just kind of make up its own time schedules and it’s hard to predict when they might arrive as well as their direction of departure in relationship to the sun. Knowing that they need to take off into the wind, I keep positioning myself accordingly, and then they’ll do something unexpected.
Alas, I still enjoy watching them and am rather intrigued with the whole thing. Isn’t that why everyone comes to the Maldives? — to watch floatplanes take off and land? At happy hour last night, I went darting off along the beach to try and snap another picture and one of the workers got to talking to Nicole about it. She outed me as a pilot and then he was really interested in what I did and wanted to see my pictures and such. Today we were in one of the stores near the lobby and Nicole found a keychain that had a wooden model of a DHC-6 Twin Otter, the plane flown by Trans-Maldivian and we couldn’t have found a more perfect ornament for our Christmas tree.
Before heading back to the beach, we were a bit concerned about our dwindling supply of sunscreen. It was hard to gauge exactly how much was in our tubes before we left and we thought we had plenty, but I’m down to rationing droplets, which isn’t great in this sun. We dared ask how much a bottle of sunscreen was at one of the shops. My guess was $30. Wrong! $49. The price was so shocking that we both had outbursts. I think the worker understood the absurdity of the pricing, disappeared for a moment, and returned with two small sizes of SPF 30 Australian Gold sun screen. “They are yours,” she said. I guess they’re expired by a couple months, but we both thought it was quite a get.
Back to the beach we went. The waves and wind were a bit stronger today, so the water was a bit murkier from churning sand. We did spot a little shark swimming near the shore, but it disappeared before I could jump in and play. We jumped in the water just to cool down a bit. We then retired back to our villa for a spell to enjoy the nice breezes that favor our side of the island.
We made sure to not miss our free happy hour, which seemed a bit more crowded tonight. Too many Hilton Honors members in one spot if you ask me. After happy hour, I dragged Nicole out to the middle of the bridge that spans the two islands because it was around this time for the previous two evenings that a floatplane arrived. We waited much longer than we should have, but Trans-Maldivian does seem to kind of just show up whenever they feel like it. An hour after it arrived the prior two nights, the Twin Otter finally landed.
Nicole was a really good sport. She helped shoot video whilst I was working on the stills. We immediately went to have dinner at the Rangali Grill, the “informal” dining option that is on the beach. I had fish curry and Nicole had some pasta (naturally). The wind had become even stronger now and it was a little difficult to eat. Parmesan cheese and curry were everywhere.
We rapidly ate our food because it wasn’t super chill to be holding on to various items to prevent them from blowing away. We called for the check, which is always handed to me (even though everything is under Nicole’s name and account), and walked back to our villa to relax for the remainder of the night.
passports & pepto bismol 