Dubai/Maldives November 2015
Dubai
While planning the logistics of such a large and time consuming trip, we discovered that the taking less connections by flying through Dubai would also give us a chance to tour Dubai. So we incorporated a 30 hour layover in Dubai which would give us enough time to "see" the city. We left Houston at 6pm on November 12th and flew direct to Dubai, just a short hop of over 13 hours (the return was almost 16 hours). Landed in the evening Dubai local time, got out of the airport and to our hotel. There was still time to get a glimpse of the city but since Rebe and I were a bit jet lagged we decided to stay in our hotel room and pass out. Of course passing out after a long flight leads to waking up at 3am... so we decided to start planning our day. We always have ideas of what we'd like to do during a trip but never really any concrete plans of the order in which we would like to do.
We started the day with breakfast at our hotel in the Embassy District of Dubai. Afterwards we headed toward the tallest structure (building too) on Earth, the Burj Khalifa (pictured at the very top of the post) by way of the Dubai metro train. This magnificent building alone is not that awe inspiring, yes it is tall and yes it is beautiful but in standing next to it it did not seem THAT tall. It was only when we discovered that the surrounding buildings in the city are almost as tall as the tallest buildings in New York City and the Burj Khalifa is only TWICE as tall as all the other buildings.
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| Dubai as seen from the desert, and notice how the Burj Khalifa towers over the surrounding buildings |
From the train we trekked through the Dubai Mall, the world's largest mall with its 1200+ stores... and got lost on way to the entrance for the Burj Khalifa.
Burj Khalifa has two observation decks, level 125 and level 148 (building has a total of 163 floors) and both of these observation decks are above all of the other "tall building observation decks" in the world. We only visited the lower deck, as we doubted the view from 148 was worth the extra time and money.
From the deck you can see the surrounding desert, the famous man made islands (Palm and The World), the Dubai Creek and all else that Dubai has to offer.
As I stated before, we planned to see the city and floated a few ideas between how to exactly do it in the 30 hours we had before we headed on to Maldives. While in San Francisco last year, we hopped on with Big Bus tours as a quick way to see most of San Francisco and help us examine which area we would like to come back to. Since we only had limited time in Dubai, we again trusted the good folks at Big Bus to show us Dubai and between the 4 routes they run we were able to see close to 75% of the city.
After coming out of the Dubai Mall at the base of the Burj Khalifa, we hopped on the "beach route" of the Big Bus which headed toward the coast of United Arab Emirates along the Arabian Gulf.
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| Rebe on the Bus with the Burj Khalifa in the distance |
Continuing on down the coast we came to the second most famous building in Dubai, Burj Al Arab. Famous for being built in the shape of a sail, and also being quite expensive. The smallest suite in the hotel is 1800 square feet (170 square meters) and even has a helicopter pad on the roof. If you are lucky enough to stay here, they will pick you up from the airport in the helicopter and bring you directly to the building.
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| Burj Al Arab |
After leaving the Burj Al Arab the bus headed to the man made Palm Jumeirah Island, famous of course for...you guessed it being shaped like a Palm Tree.
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| Palm Jumeirah (circa 2013) Courtesy Wikipedia |
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The island is really an amazing feat of engineering, basically the government just picked up sand and rocks and threw them in the Arabian Gulf. And now there are hotels and residences all over the island. At the crown of the island there is of course a Mega Resort Water Park, Palm Atlantis, complete with waterslides, aquarium and dolphin encounter. The island even has its own monorail and an underground tunnel... how do you make an underground tunnel on an island made of sand? Folks in Dubai are nuts...
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| Palm Atlantis |
After the Palm Island, the bus headed back to the Mall and we hopped on the second bus which lead us in the "old" Dubai, basically the section of the city before the Dubai went bonkers. The older section of Dubai is more in line of what you would imagine a city like this would look like. Typical low rise buildings, shops and open air markets.
Also the route took us along the Dubai Creek which is the water way that runs through the city is the main thoroughfare for all water industries that operate in out of the Arabian Gulf.
The bus company also provided a sunset bus ride out into the desert, so we go to see how isolated the city really is. Can't say this part of the tour was really worth it, but we did not have any better plans. Luckily Rebe got to sit on a camel.
This was indeed a long day, but our journey had to continue on to Maldives. So we got back to the hotel at ~9pm local time, walked down the street to get us some local food (Indian and it was good) then headed back to the airport at midnight to catch our 2am flight to Maldives.
Arrived in Malé, Maldives at 7am in the morning and of course the liveaboard vessel was not ready yet as they were cleaning it from the previous dive group that was onboard. We had to spend a few hours in open air Male airport while it was 80+ degrees outside, when this happens it become apparent that I spend too much time inside. While we were waiting on the boat to be ready we got to meet of couple of our boatmates for the week. It was a couple from Switzerland and their friend, really cool people and they had actually been dive guides in Tobago for few years before moving back to Switzerland. By 11am the MV Orion was ready and we were boated out to the main vessel, yes boated out because in this island nation everything is a island and the airport is of course its own island.
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| MV Orion |
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| Dhoni |
The MV Orion was built in 2009 and is apart of the "Constellation Fleet," the boat was very nice maybe not as nice as the pictures (but what is...) but still very nice. The boat holds 24 guests, 4 divemasters, and I think 12-16 crew which you really do not see a lot of. The lower level was all rooms, the 2nd level (main level) had a small seating area with 2 couches and 1 chair, the "reception" area, the downstairs bar, the dining area, and the captain's hold. 3rd level was where the main bar was, the jacuzzi, additional rooms and a sitting area for afternoon socializing. The 4 level was all sunbathing and lounging with basically a chair for every guest on board.
Most of the boat was British (including 2 of the divemasters, 1 dutch and the last Maldivian), but there were Germans, Swiss and Swedish couples on the boat too. Seems like the Americans and Canadians don't like to travel that far, as we only saw 1 other American in the 2 weeks we were there. Everyone got along pretty well but the divemasters said that it's really a shot in the dark as to who's going to be on the boat and how everyone will get along. There was only one guy that was a bit annoying, but he was tolerable...kinda.
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| Dive Group |
The diving was pretty unique as the Madives doesn't have a giant reef system but more similar to sloped walls that surround the tiny islands and individual plateaus that pop up in between islands. We did on average 3 dives a day, usually waking up at 6am for a snack and dive briefing at 630am and in the water around 7am. The MV Orion would anchor in deeper water and the dhohi would take the divers to the divesite and then pick us up and bring us back to the Orion. After the 1st dive we get back on the boat for breakfast and back on the dhoni at 10 -1030 for our second dive. Lunch was held when we got back on the Orion and then a slightly longer break before the afternoon dive around 3. Dinner was held at 7-8pm and people either crashed (which we did) or stayed up and socialized.
The diving was interesting, I wouldn't call the reefs beautiful like they are in Roatan but HOLY MOLY there are fish, sharks, rays, sea life EVERYWHERE. I don't think I've ever seen that many fish and activity. I can't describe all the stuff we saw, it was really just too much and too epic. Most of the dives are in about 90-100 feet of water and the currents in the Maldives can be pretty rapid. Sometimes we didn't really dive but just go down to a spot on the bottom 80-90 and "watch TV." Once it was a manta cleaning station and another time it was a shark cleaning station and every now and then at these cleaning station you might have to 'hook in', as in tie yourself to the reef just to stop from drifting away so that you can enjoy the show.
After 6 days and 17 dives the diving was was over and we were fortunate enough to have time to tour the capital island (city) Malé. The tour consisted of the first mosque in Malé, the new bigger mosque, the house of government and the presidential residence. We also walked by the fruit and fish market and of course the tourist trap stores where they want you to buy trinkets to take home. Then it was back to the MV Orion for one last night before we had to say goodbye to the crew and to continue our journey onwards.
Next morning we were up at 6 so we could catch our 9am flight to Reethi Beach, again since this is a nation of islands it wasn't a typical flight. We got to fly on a SEA PLANE, you know a boat plane, or a plane with no wheels but pontoons instead.
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| Island of Reethi Beach |
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| Our Sea Plane to Reethi Beach |
The plane ride was uneventful, especially since it was only us and the Canadian pilot and co-pilot (literally 4 people on the plane including the pilots). The pilot was kinda of curious as to how we got our own plane... yeah... we planned that...
The rest of the next week was spent resting on the beach reading, taking walks around the tiny island (a lap was about 20 minutes), watching the baby nurse sharks playing along the shoreline, watching the daily fish feeding where 8-10 sting rays appeared like clockwork at 4pm, an occasional snorkeling excursion off the beach.
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