I’ve spent a lot of times across different seaside locations, but Maldives simply stands on their own, it’s a paradise and therefore not comparable with many of the other places that come up in your mind.

Let me be clear, in every single travel I’m usually among the planners and I don’t use tour operators unless strictly needed, and using one for Maldives is one of the cases where you won’t regret it. I started my journey from Milan, with a direct flight to Malé, the flight itself for example was completely booked if I were to buy it by myself and not by a tour operator. My advise is not to visit Malé, a very crowded city.

Maldives is made up of thousands of different islands, so depending on where your island is you may need to take another flight or a sea transfer, or both. In my case after the first flight to Malé, I took a second plane that landed directly on the sea in front of the island, located in the Vaavu Atol.

Highlights:

Nurse sharkes are very common on this part of the atoll, you could easily see them on daylight, but it was at night that they went out even more. They’re generally not aggressive and usually swim away when approached. However, some unprovoked attacks on swimmers and divers have been reported. If disturbed, they may bite and are definetely capable of inflicting serious injury

We had a 45 mins sub session at -15 mts, sharks where literally touching me. It’s hard to describe my feelings, as I was terrorized but fascinated at the same time, and that’s a feeling we have the opportunity to feel few times in a lifetime.

For this expedition we used a typical Maldivian boat called Dhonis. This type of boat is at the very heart of the Maldivian way of life and cannot be missed while you are spending several days there. They are the most common transportation in Maldives and play a fundamental role in the Maldivian economy for fishing, transportation of people and goods between Atolls and Islands. They can be spotted everywhere, from the airport to the most remote Atoll of the archipelago in all kinds of weather conditions.

Have you ever used the island emoji? 🏝️ 🏝️ 🏝️ This is exactly how this place felt like, an island smaller than a soccer field in the middle of the Indian Ocean. With an incredible clear water.

In one of the tour we completed with our Maldivian guide, he took us to a sunken boat, pretty close to the inhabited island of Keyodhoo, the most populous of the islands of Vaavu Atol. This boat is not as historical as others you can find in other atols (in the video below you can easily spot a bike on top of the captain control room), but is believed to be an Indonesian vessel that drifted empty into the atoll a few years ago and became a tourist destination as nature started to take it over.

Despite the crystal clear water, what impresses the most is the color of the corals, in the vast majority of the areas they’re almost completely white, a phenomena called ‘bleaching’.

During our daily trips to the different reefs, islands of the archipelago we were accompanied by a Maldivian guy whose family has lived in Keyodhoo for 4 generations so far. During high season he’s a diving teacher and a tour guide in the resort I was staying in, in winter season, he teaches Maldivian scholars how to take care of corals, the most valuable property of Maldives. As a matter of fact Coral reefs provide an important ecosystem for life underwater, and most importantly protect coastal areas by reducing the power of waves hitting the coast, the barriers can reduce wave energy by up to 97%, providing crucial protection from threats such as tsunamis. A warming planet means a warming ocean, and a change in water temperature—as little as 2 degrees—can cause coral to drive out algae. The guide also showed us how, sunscreen brought by tourists, can increase the bleaching process. Our guide friend is still heavily involved in underwater Gardening, that’s to say the creation of underwater Coral Reefs and Aquaculture