March 18

The morning dawned beautiful as usual. Today, we went island hopping. Now when you hear the term “island hopping” what do you envision? 5 or 6 islands where you can snorkel and look at cool reefs? No – the first place we went was interesting. We went to an island where native Maldivians live. We got to see how they make the boats, their schools, mosques, shops, etc. Then we were able to shop at a few places. Mark got a set of Maldivian coins, and I got 2 outfits.

Next we went to a reef around an uninhabited island. That was neat. We snorkelled for about 15 minutes. Around 12:00 we went to the uninhabited island for a buffet lunch. It was nice – they had umbrellas and cushions for us under them. We stayed there for over 3 hours. Now for some this was paradise, and it was pretty, but we were expecting more activity based things for the trip. Lastly, we went to the resort on Nika Island. It was very pretty, but once again, not what we were expecting to do. By the time we got back, it was very obvious that we were both seriously sunburned on some areas of our bodies (nowhere dodgie). Our feet and below the knees had to be the worst. My face was a bit red, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the tops of my feet! When we got back to Velidhu, Mark went to the scuba place to see if we could take a scuba training course, and when we could start. We ate a small supper, and came back to moisturize ourselves properly.