TL; DR
Venue: Village Holidays Maldives
Cost: ~$700 per day, pay in advance via wire transfer
Benefits: Fishing whenever you want, room and full board, optional snorkeling
Recommendation: Try it out, it's pretty cool.
To get to our fishing adventure with Village Holidays Maldives, first we needed to get out of MLE. Our host, Mohamed Latheef, met us at the international arrivals exit and took us to the local departures area. We got on a tiny propeller plane to Maamigili's formerly-international airport (VAM). The trip was fairly short. We flew over a bunch of islands. I gawked despite my exhaustion. They were very pretty.
VAM was a dinky little thing. I could see why they were stripped of their international status after just a year: they weren't at all equipped for such a thing. We were ushered off the plane, across the tarmac, through the tiny building, and onto a small bus. It took us down to the harbor where, we were assured, our luggage would meet us shortly.
The flight and subsequently the harbor was full of Chinese tourists. I had to stop myself from laughing at their antics -- spreading SPF 110 sunblock so thinly across their pale skin that it would surely do nothing to protect them from the tropical sun, all the while loudly proclaiming how desperately they wanted to stay pale and untanned. I scoffed under my breath, wondering what the point of coming to a tropical island was in the first place, if they wanted so badly to hide from the sun.
I learned that Chinese tourism had picked up lately, that the Maldives was a favored destination. There was even a card in every seat pocket on the plane, explaining I-don't-know-what, specifically to Chinese tourists. Noting my interest in the other Chinese tourists, Latheef explained that they've been flocking to the resorts. They catch crabs, he told me. The Maldivians don't eat them, but the Chinese catch the crabs and boil them in the coffee pots in the resort rooms. The smell lingers for weeks and is impossible to remove. The resorts tried to put up signs and notices forbidding it, but had no success. Now, Latheef said, the resorts just remove the coffee pots whenever a Chinese tourist stays with them. I laughed, sighed, and cringed with embarrassment for my former countrymen.
Finally, our luggage arrived. Latheef called a taxi for us, and we and our luggage rumbled off to find some lunch. At the restaurant the taxi brought us to, there was only one small cabinet of fried things sitting more or less out in the open, a handful of flies leisurely buzzing on the foodstuffs. We fled back to the harbor -- it took a while for the taxi to return -- and loaded ourselves onto the fishing boat.
The crew made us tuna sandwiches with canned tuna, sliced onions, and white bread with the crusts cut off. They cut the sandwiches into perfect triangles, and stacked them onto plates. It was adorable. We devoured the lot. The wind stole a few pieces of bread and a plate with one sandwich left on it, but for the most part, the food went into our tummies. We also had hot, sweetened black tea to wash the sandwiches down. It was pretty tasty.
The boat ride out of Maamigili started off with fixing the engine. Something about a filter needing to be replaced, sea water getting into something it shouldn't because the chop was so bad. The crew busied themselves hopping down into the hole in the boat where the engine sat, plying it with tools and things. I tried not to get sea sick.
At last, we got going. The chop was pretty awful for me. Facing backwards, I quickly became rather ill -- not that I had been particularly hale nor healthy from our long travel beforehand! The ride seemed interminable. I oozed closer and closer to the bottom of the boat, eventually wedging myself onto the floor -- deck? -- between a chair and a ladder. The crew took pity and fixed me up an impromptu bed. I managed only a grunt of thanks before I collapsed upon it and blissfully let go of consciousness.
"Miss, miss, the action has started!" I startled awake to find the crew and our host buzzing with excitement. Rolling to my feet, I scrabbled for my camera, still half asleep. My husband has had a hit, and was now bedecked in a fighting belt, wrestling with some monster fish in the ocean. I started taking pictures, like ya do.
It was a giant trevally, a very popular sport fish. After a quick photo, we let it go so that some other fisherman could catch it. I learned that my husband had started casting, jigging and popping. I was still feeling sickly, so I just hung out, trying to hydrate and not immediately vomit it all back up.
Eventually, we got to Nilandhoo, the Faafu atoll capital. We were introduced to Mama, Latheef's mother-in-law, and handed a pair of freshly opened young coconuts. Latheef explained the origin of his fishing expedition business -- he's actually a mechanical engineer, and fishing was a hobby that grew organically into a successful business -- handed us our room keys, and told us to get cleaned up so that he could show us around.
We just barely missed the sunset, but it was still lovely out. Latheef walked us around the island, pointing out the mosque, the hospital, the atoll capital administrative building, the school.... We scared up hordes of crabs. In the dim twilight after sunset, they looked like giant skittering spiders, their feet hissing against the sand from the speed and numbers of their passing. I admit, the experience was pretty creepy.
Latheef had to get back to his engineering job, and told us our host would be one of the crew, Ali. Ali didn't have a lot of English, so communication was a bit tricky, but we were able to manage.
The second day, I begged off due to severe dehydration with a host of secondary issues, stayed in bed chugging water infused with hydration salts, and felt much more human by late afternoon. Once I recovered, my husband and I went out fishing in the early morning for sport fish, came back for lunch, rested a bit, and went out again in the late afternoon to catch dinner.
One of the days, we had to cut our fishing short due to some engine problems. That afternoon, Ali took us out snorkeling instead. Being that we were on a local island, I had to snorkel fully clothed (t-shirt, shorts), but it was still a pretty fun time. In the evening, we learned that the crew suspected a bad tank of gas, and had to ditch and refuel the entire tank. Yikes.
One of the evening fishing trips, the crew did some handline fishing while my husband and I fished off the bottom. They caught an enormous grouper, and everyone stopped to take photos with the fish. On the way back, the captain and one of the crew cleaned and filleted it as well as the other fish we caught.
The fishing was reasonable but not thrilling. On the last 2 days, we kind of got skunked, and didn't catch anything in the mornings, and nothing exciting in the evenings. I caught a good number of smaller eating fish, but nothing as cool as my 3-ft northern pike in the Boundary Waters.
The food that Mama made us was really tasty. There was a thin, bright yellow curry with fish and potatoes that was delicious. I also really enjoyed the thicker fish curry we had with breakfast sometimes. It went really well in the chapati. The fish had a wonderfully toothsome skin, which gave it an amazing texture. The typical Maldivian breakfast seems to consist of chapati stuffed with mashuni, which is a Maldivian tuna salad comprising canned tuna, sliced onions, grated coconut, and lemon or lime juice. There may be other ingredients but I don't know for sure. For lunches and dinners, we had a variety of dishes, including fried rice with fish, fried noodles (looked suspiciously like rehydrated ramen) with fish, grilled fish, and once or twice, chicken.
Our room at the guest house was very spacious. The bed was enormous, but quite firm. My back was pretty sore, but other than that, it was fine. The bathroom is a large, tiled room with at least one drain in a corner, and the entire room is basically the shower. The toilet was weird -- the seat was thinner than the width of the bowl, I had to kind of prop myself up so that my thighs didn't end up resting on the lip of the toilet bowl directly.
Overall, the fishing adventure was a lot of fun. At least one of us went out fishing everyday, and even when we didn't catch anything, being out on the ocean was beautiful and enjoyable, despite the glaring sun and my sea sickness.
2014-10-27
Honestly Maldives, Part 2: Getting There
I won a pair of round-trip tickets on Qatar Airways at a silent auction benefiting Citizen Schools. (This item also included 2 nights stay at a 5-star hotel in Chennai, but that's not really relevant to this trip.) The details said that this was redeemable for any destination Qatar Airways flew, excepting Australia and a few other fine details. The origin was limited to a small handful of US airports, including JFK and ORD, but excluding BOS. This cost $1200.
My husband worked with a Qatar Airways rep to redeem this certificate for actual plane tickets to the Maldives. The process itself was simple enough: a few emails were exchanged, and boom, done. Unfortunately, the certificate only covered the fares for the flights, not the taxes. It was here that I finally understood why my colleagues despise the YQ/YR surcharge. For 2 travelers, the taxes and fees added up to another $1000.
Notice, now, that we have to somehow get from BOS to JFK. Thanks to Google Flights, we were able to find some reasonably timed flights on Delta Airlines that didn't involve sitting around in the airport twiddling our thumbs for too long. We waited a bit too long to book this part of our travel, so we were out yet another $1000.
For those of you following along at home, our round-trip from BOS to MLE totaled roughly $3200.
Delta's flight from BOS to JFK was straightforward enough. The $25 fee for the first piece of checked luggage was annoying, but that's the way the airline industry has gone, so meh. Getting from the domestic terminal to the international terminal at JFK was pretty straightforward too. We had a bit of a wait to board the plane for our next leg, but with Kindles, it passed reasonably quickly.
JFK to DOH (Doha International Airport, Doha, Qatar) was a rather long flight. The listed duration on our tickets is 12 hours and 20 minutes. I successfully slept for 9 of the 12 hours, so it didn't seem too long. I'm pretty sure I missed a few meals or snacks, but that didn't particularly bother me.
With a roughly 6 hour layover in DOH, my husband and I grabbed a meal at a decent Italian restaurant, wandered around the terminal, took a bunch of photos of the Bear Lamp and the animatronic dinosaur, and drank a huge quantity of Moroccan mint tea at a tea and sweets cafe. I regretted the mint tea on the flight afterward, where the caffeine disrupted my sleep, and the liquid surged sickeningly in my stomach before demanding, urgently and repeatedly, to be purged.
For our final leg, we were pleasantly surprised to have been upgraded to business class. It was pretty damn swank. We had enormous couch-like seats that reclined to more or less horizontal. The dinner menu looked delicious, and was complimentary, so we stuffed ourselves some more. There was also complimentary wine. I found myself growing more and more uncomfortable as the flight progressed. Near as I could figure, the slight angle of the seats off the direction of travel (they were pointed a bit away from the center aisle) made me extremely motion sick. Those 5 hours were some of the most luxurious yet sickening flying hours I'd ever spent.
Finally, we arrived at MLE, Male's Ibrahim Nasir International Airport. I was ready to collapse or vomit. It was shockingly hot and humid after the frigid air conditioning of basically everything leading up to arrival. We weren't given a moment to rest, however, as we were almost immediately greeted by our fishing guide.
Getting to MLE took a total of 28 hours, including the taxi from our house.
Stay tuned for more adventures!
My husband worked with a Qatar Airways rep to redeem this certificate for actual plane tickets to the Maldives. The process itself was simple enough: a few emails were exchanged, and boom, done. Unfortunately, the certificate only covered the fares for the flights, not the taxes. It was here that I finally understood why my colleagues despise the YQ/YR surcharge. For 2 travelers, the taxes and fees added up to another $1000.
Notice, now, that we have to somehow get from BOS to JFK. Thanks to Google Flights, we were able to find some reasonably timed flights on Delta Airlines that didn't involve sitting around in the airport twiddling our thumbs for too long. We waited a bit too long to book this part of our travel, so we were out yet another $1000.
For those of you following along at home, our round-trip from BOS to MLE totaled roughly $3200.
Delta's flight from BOS to JFK was straightforward enough. The $25 fee for the first piece of checked luggage was annoying, but that's the way the airline industry has gone, so meh. Getting from the domestic terminal to the international terminal at JFK was pretty straightforward too. We had a bit of a wait to board the plane for our next leg, but with Kindles, it passed reasonably quickly.
JFK to DOH (Doha International Airport, Doha, Qatar) was a rather long flight. The listed duration on our tickets is 12 hours and 20 minutes. I successfully slept for 9 of the 12 hours, so it didn't seem too long. I'm pretty sure I missed a few meals or snacks, but that didn't particularly bother me.
With a roughly 6 hour layover in DOH, my husband and I grabbed a meal at a decent Italian restaurant, wandered around the terminal, took a bunch of photos of the Bear Lamp and the animatronic dinosaur, and drank a huge quantity of Moroccan mint tea at a tea and sweets cafe. I regretted the mint tea on the flight afterward, where the caffeine disrupted my sleep, and the liquid surged sickeningly in my stomach before demanding, urgently and repeatedly, to be purged.
For our final leg, we were pleasantly surprised to have been upgraded to business class. It was pretty damn swank. We had enormous couch-like seats that reclined to more or less horizontal. The dinner menu looked delicious, and was complimentary, so we stuffed ourselves some more. There was also complimentary wine. I found myself growing more and more uncomfortable as the flight progressed. Near as I could figure, the slight angle of the seats off the direction of travel (they were pointed a bit away from the center aisle) made me extremely motion sick. Those 5 hours were some of the most luxurious yet sickening flying hours I'd ever spent.
Finally, we arrived at MLE, Male's Ibrahim Nasir International Airport. I was ready to collapse or vomit. It was shockingly hot and humid after the frigid air conditioning of basically everything leading up to arrival. We weren't given a moment to rest, however, as we were almost immediately greeted by our fishing guide.
Getting to MLE took a total of 28 hours, including the taxi from our house.
Stay tuned for more adventures!
Honestly Maldives, Part 1: Summary
My husband and I decided to visit the Maldives. Looking on Google Image Search, I found photos of beautiful beaches, small islands, clear waters, and adorable little cabanas built right on top of the water. I was excited.
Getting there was an endeavor. We flew Qatar Airlines, with a several-hour-long layover in Doha, Qatar. We spent the time pleasantly, dining and sipping tea. To our surprise, we were upgraded to business class on our final leg to Male's Ibrahim Nasir International Airport (MLE). It was pretty posh.
Arriving, we were greeted by Mr. Latheef, with whom we reserved a 4-day all-inclusive fishing adventure. He led us to the domestic "terminal" at MLE, and flew with us to Maamigili's tiny airport. Then, we took a boat to Nilandhoo, on the Faafu atoll.
The fishing was tough for me. My husband enjoyed himself, but I was pretty seasick. It was hot and sunny, and there wasn't a whole lot to do, especially in the mornings when we were mostly trolling. In the afternoons, we fished for our meals, and that was more fun. The bottom-fishing was also much easier than casting, which was very tiring.
After our fishing adventure, we went to Mathiveri on the Ari atoll. We stayed for over a week at the Mathiveri Inn. It's located immediately next to the mosque, so we were blasted with prayers via loudspeakers 5 times a day, every day. The food was not as good as at the guesthouse on Nilandhoo, and the service was laughable at best. Toward the end of our trip, we got sick of it, and moved over to Casa Mia, a resort located on the same island.
The snorkeling was lovely. There are reefs basically everywhere, and we were able to see many colorful fish, and beautiful, intricate corals. One of the days, we went on a manta expedition. The first place we went to, there was a single manta, and about 20 visitors in their bright orange life jackets and snorkels, chasing the poor manta. We moved on to a second location, where we found another single manta in the distance, but didn't get a chance to get close. We eventually gave up looking for manta, and just went to a nearby reef for snorkeling. It was gorgeous. My husband saw a sea turtle (alas, I did not).
We took a beginner scuba diving class at Casa Mia. The dive instructor took us out into the shallows by the harbor, teaching us some basics like how to recover the breathing thing, and how to clear our masks. Then we went deeper into the harbor and dove to about 10 meters. I was terrified, and spent a good 10 minutes worrying about my equipment and being completely overwhelmed by nerves. After a while, I managed to loosen up and actually look around. Turns out, it's quite beautiful down there. I did clutch my instructor's arm the entirety of the dive, but I succeeded in not flipping the hell out, and even had a reasonably good time. My husband took to it like a fish to water, that brat.
On the way back to Male, we took a sea plane. It was pretty amazing. The entire travel back from Mathiveri to home took about 39 hours, which was a different kind of amazing. Stumbling home, we crashed at 8:30pm and slept for 11 hours. Melatonin is wonderful.
Getting there was an endeavor. We flew Qatar Airlines, with a several-hour-long layover in Doha, Qatar. We spent the time pleasantly, dining and sipping tea. To our surprise, we were upgraded to business class on our final leg to Male's Ibrahim Nasir International Airport (MLE). It was pretty posh.
Arriving, we were greeted by Mr. Latheef, with whom we reserved a 4-day all-inclusive fishing adventure. He led us to the domestic "terminal" at MLE, and flew with us to Maamigili's tiny airport. Then, we took a boat to Nilandhoo, on the Faafu atoll.
The fishing was tough for me. My husband enjoyed himself, but I was pretty seasick. It was hot and sunny, and there wasn't a whole lot to do, especially in the mornings when we were mostly trolling. In the afternoons, we fished for our meals, and that was more fun. The bottom-fishing was also much easier than casting, which was very tiring.
After our fishing adventure, we went to Mathiveri on the Ari atoll. We stayed for over a week at the Mathiveri Inn. It's located immediately next to the mosque, so we were blasted with prayers via loudspeakers 5 times a day, every day. The food was not as good as at the guesthouse on Nilandhoo, and the service was laughable at best. Toward the end of our trip, we got sick of it, and moved over to Casa Mia, a resort located on the same island.
The snorkeling was lovely. There are reefs basically everywhere, and we were able to see many colorful fish, and beautiful, intricate corals. One of the days, we went on a manta expedition. The first place we went to, there was a single manta, and about 20 visitors in their bright orange life jackets and snorkels, chasing the poor manta. We moved on to a second location, where we found another single manta in the distance, but didn't get a chance to get close. We eventually gave up looking for manta, and just went to a nearby reef for snorkeling. It was gorgeous. My husband saw a sea turtle (alas, I did not).
We took a beginner scuba diving class at Casa Mia. The dive instructor took us out into the shallows by the harbor, teaching us some basics like how to recover the breathing thing, and how to clear our masks. Then we went deeper into the harbor and dove to about 10 meters. I was terrified, and spent a good 10 minutes worrying about my equipment and being completely overwhelmed by nerves. After a while, I managed to loosen up and actually look around. Turns out, it's quite beautiful down there. I did clutch my instructor's arm the entirety of the dive, but I succeeded in not flipping the hell out, and even had a reasonably good time. My husband took to it like a fish to water, that brat.
On the way back to Male, we took a sea plane. It was pretty amazing. The entire travel back from Mathiveri to home took about 39 hours, which was a different kind of amazing. Stumbling home, we crashed at 8:30pm and slept for 11 hours. Melatonin is wonderful.
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