Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation of an article originally written in French. I apologise for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have resulted. If you read French, click on the French flag below to access the original, correct text:
Français I've been dreaming about it for years. I am there! The Maldives... A gigantic archipelago on the water, spectacular as soon as you arrive by plane.
New destination
The destination is a new one, on Bubbles Underwater & Beyond ! I'm in the Maldives for two weeks, in this month of February 2014.
The archipelago consists of 1,199 islands, according to Wikipedia, 202 are inhabited. Crumbs of coral land scattered in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka.
CLARIFICATIONS: in April 2014, I interrupted my series of articles on the MaldivesI found it difficult to continue to praise the beauties of this Indian Ocean archipelago (and thus to encourage people to go to the Maldives) when the regime had tightened its application of Sharia law, after my stay in February 2014. Not respecting human rights, the Maldives had to leave the Commonwealth of Nations in 2016. But in september 2018, things have changed, with the surprise defeat in the autocratic president's elections Abdulla Yameen supported by Islamists and now prosecuted for corruption, beaten by Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, an ally of the democratic camp. Then in april 2019, the party of Mohamed Nasheedformer president of the Maldives (2008-2012), several times imprisoned by the regime and main opposition figure, won the first legislative elections since Yameen left. The Maldives return to the path of democracyThis is great news!
Due to the lack of a good internet connection, it will be difficult for me to post "live" articles about this new trip. But I will try. Here are already some pictures of the Maldives seen from the sky... I chose a seat on the window side of the plane, so as not to miss anything of the show.
Like in French PolynesiaI'm going to get blue eyes again... It's beautiful !!!
What is striking, when flying over, is the fragility of these islets just above the water. Their sand and coral barriers seem derisory in the face of the immense ocean, of an intense blue.
Hanimaadhoo
At the time I post these few lines, my stay is already well underway... I just spent a few days in a nice guesthouse, Asseyri Inn, located on an island in the very north of the Maldivian archipelago, Hanimaadhoo. It is an inhabited island, with a village and "real" people, not a luxury island-hotel reserved exclusively for tourists.
Update - January 2017 : the guesthouse Asseyri Inn as I knew it no longer seems to exist. The website now refers to another hotel, much more chic, located on another island ...
Despite the white sand and the coconut trees, Hanimaadhoo and the so-called "local" islands are far from what we imagine in Europe, when we talk about the Maldives. But I will soon write more about the peaceful Hanimaadhoo in a future post. Here, it's just for the appetizer...
Until very recently, contacts between Maldivians and foreign visitors were strictly limited and regulated. But things are changing little by little. As a reminder, the Maldives is not especially the country of freedom for the inhabitants, with a whole bunch of laws dictated by the Sharia...
For decades, the Maldives has relied on luxury tourism with island hotels at crazy prices, cut off from the population. The development of guesthouses and more modest accommodations, for independent travelers with smaller budgets, is new.
This development was supported by Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives from 2008 to 2012. A young president, forty-year-old, eco-friendly and progressive, who made a lot of headlines in 2009, holding a council of ministers 3 metres underwater, with scuba tanks, to alert public opinion to the rising waters and global warming that threaten the Maldivian archipelago – but he has been ousted from power and thrown into prison since then by the new Islamist dictatorial government...
Dive from shore and cruise
I close the political parenthesis here, to come back to my more futile concerns as a vacationer and to quickly present the rest of the trip... Because it is, among other things, the famous underwater world of the Maldivian archipelago that attracted me here!
I have already dived a little during my stay on the island of Hanimaadhoo, but the best is yet to come...
The second week of my stay will be totally dedicated to diving. On the program: a cruise aboard the magnificent Ocean Divinetowards Ari Atoll !!! It seems that in this season we meet manta rays and whale sharks... I'm waiting to see.
I'm boarding this Sunday... Can't wait to get there!
