We learned that each of our dives would be accompanied by a PADI instructor, Impthi, who had experience of in excess of seven thousand dives.
Our first dive at Sunlight Thila in North Male Atoll preceded breakfast. Although my buoyancy was a little astray to say the least the dive was fantastic and we reached a depth of 17.7 metres. It is Maldivian law to dive within 30 metres and to use a dive computer so Ian and I had a quick briefing on how to use the hired computers. It's very simple. You get in the water, it automatically activates and you make sure you don't exceed your no decompression time nor your descent and ascent rates.
Three and a half hours later we completed a second dive at Kudagili Wreck in South Male Atoll, passing by Embudhu Village on the way which is where we spend the first four nights on a resort island. It looks very nice and lush. During the dive I concentrated really hard on my breathing this time and things definately improved. The dive was a multilevel dive so we can't use our PADI recreational dive planner tables to calculate a realistic residual nitrogen level as they best accommodate absolute depth dives so this is where the dive computer excels. The dive commenced at 27 metres at the wreck and shallowed to just 5 metres. We were very lucky to see frogfish at the wreck which are quite rare and don't look anything like frogs nor fish.
In the afternoon there was an offering of a third dive at an additional cost for the guests who were doing two dives a day but given that we had dived deeper this morning than technically we should, albeit with a PADI intructor, and our second dive was deeper than our first, we agreed that we would be knackered enough tonight having done two dives already and so we opted to go snorkelling instead which was fine but tiring because the current was so strong.
Having the luxury of showering in warm water every day is excellent. It is a far cry from our Africa days. We even get to shower after each dive which is fantastic!
Earlier we saw four dolphins swimming alongside the dhoni on the way out to the second dive site.
After dinner the guests all introduced themselves to each other which was quite entertaining as they were mostly in Japanese. They all made an effort to translate their speaches into English for our benefit but unfortunately we couldn't return the courtesy!
Copyright 2002 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.