What happened in 2008 (part three in a series...)

Hi,

Not too long ago, I blogged about our family vacation in 2008. That was in September.

Right after that vacation I went to see our doctor because I was feeling dead tired all the time. I was sleeping 16+ hours a night and still I was exhausted. According to the doctor this was due to a lack of adrenaline. I was underworked! She suggested I should go sporting, so I picked up swimming and things went better.

In November 2008 I went to Egypt with two buddies of mine, scuba diving in the red sea. The high lights were seeing a group of turtles grazing underwater and a little fight between two of them as well as spotting Hamer head shark. The trip in general was just great and relaxing.

The end of 2008 was marked by a Christmas in bed. I had an ear infection that resulted in nausea and dizziness. Every single move of my head resulted in throwing up. After a couple of days all was fine again, but it was scary. So I spend Christmas alone in bed instead of with the loved ones.

New Years eve was great though and the kids loved the fireworks. Jay was all up-n-go with the fireworks, and Ray, well Ray was just Ray; all into it.

That more or less concludes 2008. This year has been a year of excellent stuff so far... well it would've been if I wrote this a week ago, which I didn't so next time I'll tell you what happened a few days ago, that wasn't excellent.

Iwan

Words from the Maldives (5)

Hi,

Another post from the Maldives. It's Sunday and that means a quiet day... well just because we're at the Maldives where it is more or less a quiet day everyday. Not much happened since we're here to relax, but I went on a night dive, my last dive here this time. As you might expect, it was dark, and fortunately I had two torches, since my primary went out after 24 minutes.
We saw two octopussies, octopuses, octopy (?), anyway, we saw two of those fighting. I think about territories, but that doesn't matter, it looked great. Never saw it for real.

Tonight we had a nice diner, although the duck wasn't really good. I left it where it was. We did see a Chinese movie (Curse of the Golden Flower), which seems to be a nice movie (soon to be found in my collection I guess).
Later on we went for fried ice with almonds for Olcay (her favorite desert as it turns out) and some lounging with an espresso (Illy) and a cognac (Hennesy VSOP) and a Shisha. That turned out to be a nice finalle of the day. Monday and Tuesday are left for us before we're leaving paradise and getting back to the real world, where there are Jay and Ray, who we really miss.

Iwan

Words from the Maldives (4)

Hi,

Another day on this paradise like island. Today not much happened apart from the fact that I went diving this morning and we saw sharks, Whitetip Reef Sharks to be exact. Like six of them. Which was really cool. First time I saw so many sharks. We also saw a fairly big Napoleon fish. After the sharks (deco time at 5 minutes) we took a current and drifted for a while, which was also really cool. Unfortunately we couldn't spend that much time drifting. And on top of this all, while drifting, we heard dolphins. Yup, we heard the squirking (I really have no clue as to this is really called) by the dolphins. Unfortunately they were to far away, and we only saw them while back on the boat. But cool it was, some of them made some nice jumps. My guess is that these are trained dolphins, set out to entertain divers, and to make them feel bad that they didn't encounter the dolphins while diving :).

Nothing much else happened, although not to me anyway. Olcay on the other hand saw a turtle while snorkling. And considering that Kandooma doesn't have much of a reef, that truely is a sight to behold.

Until the next post...

Iwan

Words from the Maldives (3)

Hi,

Today I've got something to tell, as promised yesterday, because today and last night stuff actually happened in this paradise of total relaxation.

So what happened? First of all last night we had quite the rainstorm here on Kandooma. Well maybe it was just your average everyday tropical rainstorm, but we woke up from the rain, which especially in my case means something as I don't wake up usually until it is time according to the alarm clock (or Ray). But rest assured, the Water Villa we're staying in is build very well, and apart from the bathroom (which is partly open) no water came in.

Today I also went diving. First dive here with Euro Divers, which means you're not allowed deeper than 20 meters, which is cool. The diving site had a wreck at 30 meters, but the top of the wreck was at 20 meters deep. From what we could see, there was no way you could actually get in the wreck so not much lost here. After the wreck we saw an Octopus hiding its little cave and later on a turtle. Which in fact was small compared to the turtles we saw in Marsa Alam last November, about which I need to blog... still. That turtles crossed our path later on, but that was also because we went around a big rock a second time and that turtle was at more or less the same spot.
A bit later we saw some Morenes. Two to be exact, which weren't that big compared to the one that swam right in front of me in Oman last year, or rather 2007.
After hitting the 50 bar mark we went up and started our return to the boat. We now were over the rock we circled twice and Jerry, my buddy for the occasion pointed behind me. I looked behind me and saw a Triggerfish (see also Wikipedia) trying to bite me. Yup, it wanted to get a piece of my fins (I like to think that it wasn't after my butt). It was a bit intimidated by me and my mask as it hesitated everytime I turned around. After some distance it gave up, or maybe I left its territory or something. Anyway, I am still me, 100% and nothing was left of me in the belly of this terrible monster of the sea :) haha. Although I must say that its teeth were somewhat big and sharp, I have to admit.

So that was today on the Maldives. Soon there will be more.

Iwan