Day 293: Hulhumalé - Omadhoo (އޮމަދޫ)

Jan 21 - Find out first thing today that there will be a speedboat to our island, but only at 15:00. This leaves us at a loose end most of the day. A lot of rain in the morning, so we pack up again and check out at noon before walking the two blocks to the beach. Odette fills the time searching for more hermit crabs.

We thought this was a jellyfish but it is actually called a blue button and is a colony of hydroids (small predatory animals distantly related to jellyfish).

Eat some lunch, I have a chicken kottu rosti, which is a Sri Lankan dish of noodles, vegetables, and chicken. We collect our bags and catch our ride to crowded downtown Malé where the speedboat jetties are.

The speedboats are more modern and comfortable than I was expecting. I was all ready with my rain jacket in case we had to sit outside in the weather. The ride was 1.5 hours and costs $35 (for the tourists). Locals pay about $26.

We are going to Omadhoo Island, located in the Alif Dhaal Atoll (abbreviated ADh, as I discovered at the Abu Dhabi airport when trying to fill out our destination).

A couple of things about the Maldives. First, the inhabitants speak Dhivehi, an Indo-Aryan language, related to Sinhalese. It shares many letter sounds with Arabic and is written right to left, though the script is unique. The Maldives covers such a large area, and has been so historically isolated, that speakers of Dhivehi dialects in the north cannot understand those in the south. Fortunately, like in India, many people learn English in school so communication is not an issue.

Second, the Maldives are vast, not in total land area, but in distances between islands and island groups. Total land area is less than 300 square km, but the total area of the island groups is 90,000 square km, meaning that over 99% of the territory is ocean. The islands (about 1200) are grouped into 26 separate atolls, or remnant reefs encircling volcanic islands that went extinct and are now eroded away. As such, the land surface is all crushed up coral. The original volcanic islands formed about 68 million years ago on a hotspot in the oceanic crust, at the same time significant volcanic activity was occurring on the Indian Sub-continent (the Deccan Traps).

I spent a lot of time comparing islands to come up with a place that looked decent for a week-long stay. I decided a small island with some wild vegetated areas was better, even though that might mean limited food options. What I didn’t want was an island completely covered by town, and with Google Maps it is easy to see which are like that (some islands have dedicated ‘Green Zones’). Another factor was distance from Malé. Atolls to the far north and south can only be reached in a reasonable time by seaplane, meaning $$. At any rate, the accommodation in these remote areas was invariably expensive.

The island I decided on was Omadhoo. It was less than two hours by speedboat, but far enough away from Malé that it looked isolated. There were two Green Zones at either end of the island, and no large structures (nothing over two stories). It also had a few guesthouses that were reasonable and came in with decent ratings. By reasonable, I mean in the $70-90/night range including breakfast. If you reach down into the $50-60 range in the Maldives, you may not be getting the ‘quiet tropical island feel’ that you are most probably looking for. That was my conclusion after reading up on many places.

After an eventless ride on the speedboat (there were six other tourists besides us), we landed first at the island of Hangnaameedhoo then continued to Omadhoo.

The bustling harbor at Omadhoo. Our bags were put on a motorized cart and we walked the five minutes to our guesthouse.

Today’s route: (A) Male, (B) Omadhoo. I’ve shown the map in satellite view, to give a better image of what the atolls look like.

In strolling through this tiny community, we leave any semblance of the urban pavement pounding we’ve grown so accustomed to and entered ‘island time’. It has been a really long time since I’ve felt it.

The front garden of Kuri Beach View Inn, our home for a week.

Odette is immediately ecstatic with the island. The streets are tiny and accommodate only motorbikes and pedestrians. Palm and breadfruit trees drape over the houses, and large fruit bats flap in the afternoon sky. After being installed in our room, we are taken on a tour by our guesthouse host, Shagil, of the parts of the island most relevant for tourists. The island is only 1 km long by 300 meters wide, so it doesn’t take long. There is no crime here, or traffic, so really nothing to stop a nine-year old from just running down the sandy roads looking at stuff.

Sunset off the southern shore of Omadhoo. The tide is low enough that some of the reef is above the surface.

Shortly after sunset, the tide starts to come in. This is the designated feeding time for the stingrays. Whatever fish-based organic waste is produced on the island gets thrown in the water here, or at the pier a few hundred meters west.

Two types of stingrays regularly attend feeding time. The large one in the foreground is a black-spotted ray. We also briefly saw a baby black-tip reef shark.

A bit later, as the tide rose, we went to the pier, where we saw some large (1+ meter) nurse sharks and more stingrays. A large light has been placed at the end of the pier to allow better viewing.

There was good viewing of the sharks, as they searched for food in the shallow water.

We met Shagil as we walked back through town, and he took us out the northern shore, where there was bioluminescent plankton washing ashore. With lights off, it is an eerie but captivating show of deep blue glowing points, moving back and forth in the surf. There are only a few spots in the world (including San Diego) where a display like this can be seen.

Maldives