Trains, Planes and Automobiles
Well, I didn’t quite use all forms of transport to arrive in the Maldives but after a 12 hour journey it started to feel that way.
Bryan couldn’t quite resist adding ‘just another” item to my shopping list – quite a worry when your 20 kg baggage allowance consists of a 17.9kg repaired sail!!! Still, I think can manage the copy of Yachting Monthly he has asked for from the airport 🙂 Laith tells me when I get on the domestic flight they will weigh me with my baggage so reckon I will only eat what I can suck through a straw till I get there – mmh? Processed McDonalds? Nah – not doing it for me. I am sure I can find some other liquid refreshments 🙂
Typically traffic out of Mirdiff was appalling so the “plenty of time” to get to the airport was well needed. Still, the new terminal is pretty efficient so after getting the sail “cling filmed” to allow it in the hold and taking a deep breath as the luggage was weighed (20.5 kg!!) all that was left was a quick wander of the terminal shops (nothing inspiring and no money to boot made it a short visit!) then it was boarding time to what appeared to be a pretty new Emirates plane headed to the Maldives via Sri Lanka. Reasonable food and half-decent movies passed the time – along with an unedited copy of Cosmopolitan (no Dubai-style marker pen censorship throughout!) and three and a quarter hours later we were landing in Colombo. Onward passengers to the Maldives were not allowed to disembark so I can’t claim to have seen anything of the place other than a large roller shutter garage door for some airport vehicle or other. Not the most scenic of views – oh and it was pitch black! After an hour’s wait and another 1 hour to Male – I arrived early hours and quickly cleared customs and was actually early for my domestic flight leaving at 3.30 am. No worries – I will be sailing back to Sri Lanka in just a few days!
Shortly before leaving Dubai, I’d received an eleventh-hour phone call from the Maldives domestic airline to say my internal flight has been changed. Now in one respect, this may be a blessing over the 6-hour delay I would have had at Male, but seeing as we have the speed boat pick up booked and ready, we now have to start a chain of changes – added to which, the information I was just given over a poor line and with poor communication all round, I am only 70% certain of the details I had been given.
As I checked in for the flight at Male airport I was told to wait outside until the gate was open – a little humid and not unpleasant. I later discovered that had I ventured inside I could have passed the time watching Sky News in air conditioning! But still – it all seemed to run smoothly as did the flight to Hanimadhoo. My speed boat driver was meant to be waiting for me at Hanimadhoo but there was no one around – and of course, this was the time my mobile refused to connect with Bryan or the agent so I ended up in the Supervisors office and with the use of his mobile was soon passed over to the speed boat driver and in pitch darkness still we set out for Uligan.
The sun had just risen when we arrived forty-five minutes later and I was so busy trying to take in the new sights of the atoll islands that I had actually passed Aroha at anchor and hadn’t even noticed! Bryan was already heading inshore in the dinghy and we met up on the beach a few minutes later – at least once I recognised the Robinson Crusoe look alike! The three weeks beard growth made for a fetching disguise – and one of the first tasks on board was to christen the hair clippers that were part of Bryan’s shopping list to remove what he himself had described as “face fungus”.
We had a few hours to kill before the customs and immigration island office would be open to allow me to finally board the boat after reams and reams of paperwork were completed – giving us enough time for Bryan to give me the insiders tour of the island and the Island’s mosquitoes enough time to feast their little hearts out on me! They even managed to bite me in three places through my trousers! And I am now sporting a very fetching swollen eye where a large blighter had bitten my eye! And this was after dousing myself in repellent! All a great decoy for Bryan – they seem to much prefer me!
Finally, with the anchor and dinghy lifting done we set off. We are now a good hundred or so miles from the Maldives and a quarter of the way to Sri Lanka. We have just finished lunch, interrupted by a huge pod of Dolphins there were so many it was impossible to count. They played in the boat’s wake for a while before disappearing again. Last night was uneventful with the wind no more than ten knots and mainly from the west on our starboard. A distant thunderstorm stayed exactly that way. I am not sure that I have caught up on my lost night’s sleep but it is good to be finally underway.
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