Mosquitos, mantas and murky water....

Such is this paradise, and the fact that we hadn't seen a single mossie for days, when I left the villa and realised I had forgotten to put on repellant, I thought, oh I'll be fine. Thank goodness there is no malaria in Maldives. I've got about 70 bites on my lower legs. It may look like paradise but those little blighters are still lurking.

They say this atoll is a little sharky. I say that is a little under statement. Sitting on the beach little baby sharks about a foot or so in length, glide up and down the shallows. There are black tip reefs and nurse sharks (which look a peachy colour). In the evening, the bigger ones come to feed near the shore and last night there was pair of black tips, one was about 3 ½ ft and the other was over 5 ft. It's head was about a foot across. I can't stop watching them. They're incredibly beautiful, I think I'm being hypnotised. The biggest sharks in Maldives are the grey reefs and hammerheads but they tend to stay out in deep open water. Thank goodness!

Yesterday we were starting to feel the pressure of spending 24/7 with the children. The reality of children, away from the romanticised view, is that they can be demanding and that you rarely have much space for your own conversations and thoughts. By the time they go to bed, we are often equally exhausted and not far behind behind hitting the pillows. I have a friend who says that when they go on a family holiday, he is more exhausted by his children, with no school time to relieve the pressure and assist with the discipline. Disciplining children is exhausting and sibling fighting, which our twins have a tendency toward, is even more so. This was one of our biggest challenges when we travelled last time.

The children are also having to adjust to being in each other's company more than usual, and ours to I suspect. I had hoped the children's club here would offer us some respite but if I'm honest, it's a little disappointing. The sessions are often very short, mostly an hour or so, and to organise the kids (dry yourself off, wash that sand off, get some clothes on, brush your hair, etc) is starting to feel too much like being at home and then to only have an hour's break. Not really worth the hassle.

So in honeymoon terms, it's not scoring very highly. Even Habeeb could see that we needed some space, so we organised for him to take them to dinner alone. Apparently they were really well behaved and happily ordered their food and played cards. So it's just us they're giving the run around to! Meanwhile, Lee and I got to go and play pool, drink beer and go for a lovely meal at the asian speciality restaurant (with the great big sharks swimming underneath).

Snorkelling yesterday afternoon, the water was very cloudy, barely a few feet of visibility and there was a strange coral scum floating on the surface. It looks a lot like human waste, except I'm assured it's not. So as we paddled our way across the scummy looking cloudy water towards the reef drop off, I started to feel a little anxious (this may be a slight understatement). Just couldn't see anything but shadows and flickers. Then we spotted some people we met earlier, passing by on a sea kayak. There's manta ray feeding up here, they said. The mantas love this murky water, a soup of plankton loveliness apparently. So I gritted my teeth and swam out across the deep channel, away from the perceived safety of the reef and over the drop off.

For those of you not acquainted with the reef drop off, let me me introduce you. The shallows of the blue lagoon are the starting point for snorkelling from shore. It's easy to be distracted by the darting fish and flashes of colour as you start to approach the first coral; here that's mostly boulder like and what they call brain coral. Then there's smaller tree like coral, the kind that you might see as a cartoon drawing, bleached from the rising sea temperatures, but the new growth at the tips glows sky blue. Families of tiny black and white clown fish defend their coral tree shrub. The boulders start to get bigger but the water is barely 3 feet deep. There's trigger fish, fish that look like trumpets (pilot fish?) and iridescent parrot fish, and then a darting jack fish chasing a flashing fusilier that has broken away from it's shoal. The water starts to deepen and as you look ahead, there's a darkening from the translucent turquoise of the lagoon to a deeper azure. You can hear the sound of your own thumping heart beat, and darth vader like breathing through your snorkel. Then as the current draws you out over the shelf, it's like jumping off a cliff but then being suspended by this huge force of water. A rush of adrenaline flows through you and below, the reef drops away steeply. The wall is dense with shoals of fish, and huge varieties of coral; great big tables, giant brain boulders with caves and soft feathery corals waving in the current. Huge shoals of parrot fish munching at the coral with their beaky mouths; then there's the butterfly fish, every colour and size imaginable, sunbursts of yellow and orange and stripy everton mint. They swim against the current so it looks like they're just suspended in the same spot. An eagle ray swoops up against the lower part of the coral wall and then, faster than their manta cousins, flaps away into the distance. A sting ray passes by, feather tailed and spotty. Along the top of the reef wall, a reef shark glides past. You have to make as little movement as possible if you want them to stay around as they are easily spooked. As a family we are fairly experienced snorkellers and so have learnt the joys of skin diving (or free diving as it's also known). With strong fins, you power your way down the reef wall, some 20 to 30 feet depending on how well practised you get. Like divers, you have to equalise or it feels like your brain is about to implode. The best technique is simply to hold you nose and blow hard every metre or so, once reaching the depth you desire you can then swim freely alongside the deeper residing coral and fish. A spotty box fish gives his best pout and the googly eyed red snapper hide beneath the shelf as though they already know they are on the menu.

But today, I could see very little and the drop off looked like a dark murky crevasse with only the sound of my heavy breathing and pounding heart for company. I also heard the unmistakable clickety clicking and whistles of dolphins. I surfaced and Mark was pointing, look look and there gliding near the surface was a 6 or 7 ft manta ray, the tips of it's wings just flicking the surface as it prepared to dive again. I swam across and tried to dive but the murkiness was just too overwhelming, so I floated and drifted. The she started to surface again, swimming alongside and passing me to my left. I swam as hard as I could to try and keep up with this black ghost like creature with it's graceful wings. It was magnificent. Using our kayak based spotters, we swam across again to catch up with her. This time she was right underneath me and then passed under Lee. Both of us were simply exhilarated by the experience. As we paddled back to shore, a pod of about 6 or 7 dolphins surfaced just at the edge of the channel, splashing about before quickly disappearing.

If you're wondering where the kids were at this point, we had left them playing in the lagoon on the other side of the island, and Habeeb watching over them of course. While they played, a dolphin chased a fish almost beaching itself before flipping over back into water and darting away. It's simply jumping with life around this island. And worth every one of those mosquito bites!