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Maldives - arrival

Added: August 07, 2016

Tags: Maldives beach palm photos
I was forced to take 2 weeks off in my work in February 2015. We were thinking "Why should I sit at home and then have less available time for proper summer vacation? Let's go to some warm place". But where to go during winter? Europe is cold, it has to be somewhere further away. Sri Lanka had raised occurrence of some virus in January, so we were afraid to go there. What about Maldives?

We bought Lonely Planet, only to realize Maldives are not ideal for individual holiday makers, and even worse for travellers - distances are huge and accommodation expensive, unless you want to stay in capital Male. Not to mention food - islands open for tourists are usually handled by single resort, so they have only "single" restaurant and no shop with food. Self catering in Maldives is probably as expensive as half board.

We started to look at operators offering last minute holidays. We picked Holiday Island in South Ari Atoll. Everything was great, apart from possibility for paying more for shorter flight through Dubai. We sticked with original plan to fly to Düsselforf, then to Abu Dabi and finally to Male. That was major pain. All together, with waiting for about 3 hours in Male for local flight (about 30min) to Maamigili and nice experience with boat ride to next island Dhiffushi, it took about 23 hours.

View of Male from "airport island". When I took this photo, I had no clue we will get there on our last day and see it nicely up close. Well, nothing about being there was nice - it was loud, ugly and more smelly than places we have seen in India. Or, maybe I forgot how smelly India was. I pity travellers who experience just this side of Maldives.
Male, Maldives

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Local flight was pleasant, occasionally offering glimpses of other islands. Most memorable part was that after getting off we were lead directly to waiting boats (without seeing our luggage) and went to our resort. We were offered seats and while paperwork was handled, our luggage arrived.

Here we come! Last 200 meters.
Holiday Island, Maldives

Look back...
Jetty at Holiday Island, Maldives

Holiday Island, Maldives

Reception area.
Reception at Holiday Island, Maldives

We were accommodated in bungalow No 191. Not bad inside. Also sea is just 6-8m away. But beach was full of sharp shards from corals. And Zuzka hated the view - island with airport and with some ship scrape yard.

accommodation at Holiday Island, Maldives

accommodation at Holiday Island, Maldives

It was nicely hidden in foliage and beach started immediately.
accommodation at Holiday Island, Maldives

Did we pay for this?
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Fortunately, Zuzka overheard receptionist telling somebody if they don't like their accommodation, they can ask for a change. So we did. But it took a few days, due to "Come tomorrow, we will see if anything is available", "Manager is not here tonight, try tomorrow".

Finally, we got to bungalow 169, at opposite direction. It was about 100m to water (half of that was in shade) and we did not have direct view of sea, but it was much better.

You could ask "What prevented you to go to other side, from your first bungalow?. Well, it was not laziness. On island, where there are only 2 sun beds per bungalow, we had feeling we are entering private property of another holiday makers.

Our second accommodation. Notice clean and swept sand. They did that every morning.
accommodation at Holiday Island, Maldives

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Well, accommodation is settled. Let's go for dinner and see other eating/drinking possibilities. (I did not take a camera to breakfast or dinner, so cannot show what we ate. Even if I took it, when I see the food, I forget about taking pictures until it is too late ;-)

Restaurant
restaurant at Holiday Island, Maldives

Bar. I did not spend much time there. I was going there only to buy water ($4 per bottle!) and to use only WiFi on island.
bar at Holiday Island, Maldives

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