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Most likely I'll post some pics as part of whatever update I give, and given that there is no way all three of my daughters will think that they look good in the same photo at the same time, pics will likely be pulled and right there is your incentive to check back every day to see how things actually went before something gets taken down.This section will contain the running commentary from the trip, in regards to the most recent country we have been in. But once I'm able to start the next country, I'll put the historical posts in the "Old Updates - XYZ" tab above. This all assumes I (or one of my kids) will be able to figure out how to make this website work.

If you want to read about the first 28 days and our time in Italy, then click here.

If you want to read about our time in Turkiye, then click here.

If you want to read about our safari in Kenya, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach vacation in Tanzania, then click here.

If you want to read about our amusement park/desert experience in the U.A.E, then click here.

If you want to read about our desert/beach experience in Oman, then click here.

If you want to read about our jungle ruins experience in Cambodia, then click here.

If you want to read about our elephant/beach experience in Thailand, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach/city experience in Australia, then click here.

If you want to read about our adventure/beach experience in New Zealand, then click here.

The Journey Continues - The Maldives

Auckland to Male (through Singapore)

To jump directly to one of our days in the Maldives, click here:

DAY 187

DAY 174

This was going to be one of the longest days of travel that we are going to have (the longest will be going from the Galapagos to Greece). We left our apartment around 10:30 and drove to Auckland. The problem was that our flight didn’t leave until 12:50am that night. So we ate lunch and then split up - Lily went to the library to do work, I got my haircut and then made some flight reservations, and the rest went to a play park/pick your own strawberry place.

Sorry no pictures of my haircut. Looking at the pictures, my description of it being a place place might have been generous.

Then we met up at the library and walked to a restaurant at the harbour.

We generally have found that the libraries in other countries are better than in the US, particularly for kids.

Lily didn’t want to carry her backpack there, so I walked half a mile back to where our car was parked (up hill, both ways) and dropped it off and then met up with the rest of them who walked directly there. After about 4 minutes of walking back to the car with the backpack, I knew why Lily didn’t want to lug it around. Apparently her studying has something to do with carrying bricks.

In an earlier post about Auckland I noted that I saw some homeless people. We were in a little different area and there were a lot of homeless people about. It seems like the problems that we have in the US are just US problems.

We had read that there was a playground near the restaurant, so after the dinner we walked over to it and let Liam play for a little.

I'm glad that we got to see the harbor and Liam is glad that we got to see the playground.

Then we walked the mile back to the car. The parking garage was the last adventure for driving for me, as they appear to have built it either as small as possible given today’s vehicle size, or long ago before vehicles got to today’s size. But we made it out of the winding building and back to the airport. I dropped off everyone at the terminal and then returned the car and met up with them after security.

Liam, Megan and I went to the lounge while the rest of the girls went to the gate. We were flying Air Singapore, but had to go to the Air New Zealand lounge. In general, the Air New Zealand lounge is underwhelming with limited food choice that isn’t great (similar to United or slightly worse). Meanwhile, we have found that Thai Airways and Singapore Airlines tend to have great lounges. So when the girls asked if they could get ice cream at McDonalds since we were in the lounge, I contemplated leaving the lounge and joining them.

Megan and I were upgraded to Business class through to Male (we had a stop in Singapore) so Megan and I took business class for the first flight, but I gave my seat on the second leg to Keira (who had the role of watching Liam on the first flight). That is somewhat generous of me, but also I took the 10 hour flight and gave Keira the 4 hour flight, because I'm paying for the flights.

When I was telling this plan to everyone on the car ride to the airport, I asked if everyone was listening, but Lily was listening to her airpods. Knowing this, I asked if anyone had any objections about Keira getting the business class seat on the second leg, and Lily didn’t say anything. I was a little annoyed about how the kids (especially Lily) disengaged from everyone else on the car rides. True, they would have to listen to my music, and we wouldn’t always be talking to them, but periodically we would say something important or see something that we were passing, but could never get their attention (or by the time we got their attention we had already driven by it). When Lily found out the plan, she immediately asked why she didn’t the seats because she would have watched Liam (Elenna heard the plan real time but didn’t complain), and I told her that at the time I asked if anyone had any objections. She said that wasn’t fair, but then I pointed out that it really wasn’t up for discussion anyway.

We landed in Singapore, which is a huge airport, but one that I vaguely remembered from our last trip to Singapore. Once again we split up, with Liam, Megan and I going to the lounge while the rest got food on their own. This time, it was a Singapore Air lounge and the food options were great (waffles, eggs, ice cream, dumplings, etc).

Liam had slept pretty much the entire first flight, but didn't sleep at all on the second flight. Lily had a plan not to sleep much so she could sleep on the boat from Male to Dhangheti. After the seasickness incident on the way to Rottsnest Island, we had bought plenty of New Zealand's equivalent of dramamine, and all took some, since the ride reportedly could get bumpy. There were only two shuttles to the island and we had to wait at the airport for 4 hours for our turn, so we got some lunch and hung out. Unfortunately, the Maldives is not a place that is covered on our phone plan, so we had to be near wifi to do anything (Megan got a plan for the Maldives so that one person would always have access, but it cost $50, so it seemed cost prohibitive to get everyone one).

We got on the boat and Lily, Elenna and Liam slept a good portion of it. The boat ride was a little bumpy from time to time, and it would tilt every once in a while on an angle that didn't feel like it should get to. It wasn't quite as bad as the boat ride that Megan and I took snorkeling off of Koh Chang, but at points it certainly did give some flashbacks. But we got there safe and sound and walked over to our hotel.

I guess if you are tired enough, you can sleep through anything.

The island itself is quite small - 1,000 people live there and everyone seemed surprised to hear that many people lived there. There is one main street, so its a bit hard to get lost. The water here is that perfect blue water you get at the best Caribbean Islands. We ate some dinner and there was an orientation for the World School Hub that we were part of, and 4 of the 21 kids were asleep by the end of it. Then we all went off to bed, after a draining day of travel.

The Maldives beaches lived up to the hype.

DAY 175

Our First day in the Maldives hub, or any hub for that matter. Something that I didn’t know before we started planning this trip is that there is a whole community of people who “world school” their kids. Essentially, they home school them while traveling the world. Since parents would go crazy just hanging out with their kids in foreign countries (and vice versa) these hubs bring together families who are traveling so that the kids (and the parents) get some socializing. On our end its great because the hub chose the resort (they rented out the whole thing - granted its a small resort with about 11 families there), and they are setting up all of the excursions and setting up breakfast and dinner.

Liam woke up early (around 7am) and then woke up Megan and me. At this point I was pretty hungry, so I was ready to go to breakfast early. The girls met us at 8:30, and after breakfast the whole group went on a short walk around the island. After that, we decided to go out to lunch with a family (with a boy a few years older than Liam) who had been here a couple of days already and were going to a restaurant on the beach with some shade. It was pretty hot, so outside shade sounded like a good plan. They wanted to go at 1, which was a little later than we were looking for, but when you do things with other people you have to be flexible.

We spent the time between the tour and lunch hanging out at the pool, as Liam loved jumping into the pool and using the various water guns that were laying around. We picked up another family (a mother and a son) who joined us and we went to lunch. The service there was very slow, but apparently it is slow on the whole island. While we were there, another family came by and joined us as well.

The service was so slow that we barely got back for the 3pm tour on time (we were actually probably 10 minutes late, but the tour was leaving at 3-”ish”, so we weren’t too late. Plus, at this point, we were about ⅓ of the people in the hub, so they couldn’t leave without us). We boarded the boat to go on our first snorkeling tour.

Megan had heard that it was best to bring your own mask, so we had bought the mask and snorkels in Australia, and had been carrying them around and finally were able to put them to work. The hotel had fins that we borrowed. Liam wasn’t a fan of the snorkeling gear, but did wear the fins in the water. Lily stayed home because she had a Spanish class at 5 and we were likely coming back a little after 5.

Liam gave a thumbs up to his first snorkely outing.

The snorkeling was done along a reef with a current, so the boat wasn’t anchored, it floated down with us. We went along a large reef that had a steep drop. It was a pretty cool effect because the reef part was maybe 8 feet deep, but the drop off went 50ft+ deep. The coral was pretty and there were a good amount of fish. A couple of the families were scuba certified and a couple of the kids were diving deep into the water without scuba gear - it was pretty impressive. One of the girls popped out the water and then pointed ahead and yelled “Shark!,” “shark!” But not because she was scared, more to point it out so we could see it.

I dove underwater and saw my first shark on the trip - a brownish shark, probably about 4 feet long. Elenna was getting scared, but Keira (at least acted like she) wasn’t afraid. A little while later we saw a sea turtle.

The trip was a little nerve wracking because there was a current and Liam is a decent swimmer for a 5 year old, which means that he isn’t a good swimmer for a normal person. Megan and I took turns watching him and snorkeling. Eventually, we went back to the boat and the kids took turns jumping off of the top of the boat into the water. Liam decided that he didn’t want to do it, but he did jump off of the front of the boat a few times with Megan. I was the only adult who jumped off of the top.

Keira and Elenna jumped off the top of the boat.

The problem with jumping off of the boat was that we no longer had flippers on, so swimming against the current was much more difficult. I had flashbacks to swimming down the River Kwai, and getting Liam back to the boat was a bit of an undertaking. So after 3 jumps in, we called it a day and got back onto the boat for good.

The water was an amazing color.

By now, Liam had made friends with Henry, who had a bunch of Legos, so when we got back to the room, they went off to play with those. Elenna made friends with Liberty, and they went off to a floating water park that they played at earlier in the day.

The floating bounce park.

Then we all took showers and had dinner. The dining room had a bunch of tables, some for 4 people, some for 6 and some for 12, and we generally tried to eat at the longest table, so that we could talk to other families while we ate. Liam wanted to sit with Sam who had some Sonic the Hedgehog toys with him, and demanded that we go back to the room to get his Transformers so they could all play together. After dinner he went to Henry’s room and played more Legos, while the girls played cards with a bunch of the 11-13 year old people there.

Day 176

Before I explain what we did today, I should take a step back and talk about scuba diving. Scuba diving is something we have talked about doing for a while, but never really got around to doing. I have always been luke warm about it - it sounds cool, but it takes a few days to get certified which I could be spending on the beach. Meanwhile, it also sounds a bit scary - from having something go wrong with the equipment, to getting the bends, to meeting something underwater you don’t want to meet, the risk/reward always felt more or less like a wash to me. But as Megan would say, I have FOMO, but as Keira would say, I’m always "up for the plot", so if someone wants to do something - scuba, paragliding, bungy jumping - I may not be the one recommending it, but I’m always the person most likely to say yes if someone else says they want to do something.

Scuba is something that Lily has wanted to do - this is simultaneously a little surprising to me given that she is the most anxious person in our family, but at the same time not at all surprising since she has also been the person who loved snorkeling the most. So once Lily said that she would get certified, Megan said she would, and then I joined in too. We had been spending a number of our nights in Waipu taking the online classes that were about half of the training that we would need to do so we could do the water component in the Maldives.

So today was the first in-water class for scuba. I was pretty exhausted the night before - still a little jet lagged, but also tired from the snorkeling, etc of the day before, so I went to bed easily. However, by 6am I woke up and had a bit of a hard time falling back to sleep - in part because we are underneath the dining room and they start dragging chairs around at 7am, but in part because I started thinking about scuba diving and getting anxious.

But first we had breakfast and then did a group snorkeling session. The weather was overcast and then as we went out into water, we appeared to be driving directly into a storm. And soon we discovered that we were driving into the storm. Rain started coming into the boat, so depending on what side you sat on, you were either dry or drenched, but then we would turn and your fortunes would reverse. One of the boat divers jumped out in the rain to test if the snorkeling would work, but came back on and we kept going.

Eventually, we went to a place and the test diver said things were good and we jumped in. It was still overcast but the visibility was pretty good. Similar to the prior day, it was a drift snorkeling session as the boat followed us down the current. Once again, there were plenty of fish and the reef was cool as it went from 3 feet deep to 40 feet deep very quickly. The good news was that Lily joined us this time but unfortunately, there were no turtles of sharks this time.

It was a bit overcast, but still a good time

After the snorkeling, the kids all jumped off of the roof of the boat again for a while. And once again, I was surprised by how strong the current was once you took off your flippers and had to swim normally.

Jumping off of the boat is an all weather activity.

There wasn’t a lot of time between the snorkeling and our scuba session so we had pre-ordered some food, but then Keira and Elenna decided to join us for lunch, so we all went to the restaurant. The food that we preordered came 15 minutes late but still with plenty of time. Once again, a few people from the hub walked into the restaurant, and we ended up eating lunch with Henry’s family too. Liam and Henry went outside since there were some swings while we waited for our food.

Finally, we got to the scuba lesson. We got some gear then walked out to the pier and were shown how to put it on. As this was happening, we heard thunder in the distance but our instructor didn’t seem worried by it. Eventually, we were all suited up and he had us go into the water. At this point, Megan was somewhat nervous about the thunder, but since the instructor seemed fine we all went in.

He started to show us some skills that we needed to learn, such as how to clear the regulator if it gets full of water. To do this, you had to sink under water, then take the regulator (the part you breathe through) out of your mouth, then put it back in and the blow hard, like you would clear a snorkel with some water in it. The first time I did it, after about 15 seconds under water as I was getting ready, I felt like I hadn’t been getting enough air from my tank and I had to stand up and breathe out of the water. I took some deep breaths and tried again. This time I was able to do it, but in general, I was finding it difficult to stay under water for more than a minute or two, with the feeling that I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Megan was having the same issue, but a bit more pronounced.

The thundered continued, but then we saw lightning and at that point Megan said we should really get out. We were used to swimming at our lake where even hearing thunder would cause a complete evacuation from the water. So we all got out. I could tell that the instructor probably would have been happy staying in and completing more of the training (we only probably got 90 minutes of training in), but there are plenty of ways to die, and this didn’t seem like the way we wanted to go out.

We went back to the hotel and “chilaxed” until dinner.

DAY 178

The day before was a washout. It rained all day, with thundershowers in the morning, so everything was canceled. We spent the morning after breakfast playing Skipbo (a new game fore us) and just hanging out. The rain died down in the afternoon and a bunch of kids went to the inflatable bounce area in the ocean and Megan volunteered me to take Liam, so we went over.

It ended up being fun, largely because the ocean water was pretty warm.

Liam and Henry had a great time running around the course.

And then of course this happened.

I got one of the boys up there, but getting myself up proved a bit more difficult.

Despite the fat lip I got, it was a fun time.

Liam jumped off of my shoulders and over a rainbow.

The weather apps said that it would rain the next three days and although we all agreed a lazy day is fun, it wasn’t clear that 3-4 straight lazy days would work. That said the kids, especially Liam, didn’t complain, and he had a great day playing legos and hanging with the other kids. The people running the hub put out the agenda for the following day which said “Tree Planting - in the rain” and “Reef snorkel - in the rain”, so we knew we were going to have to man up.

Luckily, the next morning was clear and pretty nice. Lily, Megan and I had scuba lessons, so we were going to miss the tree planting, but weren’t that upset about it. Both Megan and I lost some sleep about whether or not we would be able to breathe enough to actually scuba, but luckily during our rain in, we talked to some people who had some ideas that might make the regulator work better.

We fooled around with the equipment, and Megan said she felt much better, but I still couldn’t find a setting that let me scuba for more than a minute and half. I eventually went away from the group and just tried to practice breathing, since it would do no good to learn skills if I had to come up for air all the time. After about 50 minutes in the water, I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and I decided to throw in the towel. Scuba was supposed to be fun and relaxing, and I just wasn’t enjoying being under water - whether it was the gear, poor lung capacity, or I was just psyching myself out, it just wasn’t working.

Megan, meanwhile, was getting better at breathing, but she kept having some equipment malfunctions - one of which was her regulator went off and discharged a bunch of oxygen a couple of times, and she was having trouble clearing her mask. While we were struggling, our instructor just kept on training Lily and Saif (a boy maybe 10 or 11) who weren’t having any trouble. It was almost 10am, so I left and caught up with the rest of the hub to do some tree planting, while Megan continued on, and even when she was with the group, the instructor wasn’t really testing her on things (he would have Lily do it, then Saif do it, and then move on to the next skill) which made her feel less confident in the water.

I caught up to the group and we walked off to do tree planting. I wasn’t really sure what this was going to look like - I pictured some guide planting a tree and telling about the tree and what its used for. Instead, we got to the place and there were about 20 holes dug, with 20 coconuts with plants growing out of them. Our job was to put the saplings in the hole and then fill the hole.

The Maldives is Muslim, which impacts our lives in a few ways. The first is that there is no alcohol on the island - there is a “secret boat” moored off shore which is in international waters and serves alcohol, but we haven’t been there yet. The second is that there is the call to prayer 5 times a day that goes out over the loud speakers from the mosque. This has happened in a few countries we have been to, but we haven’t been so close to one, so around 5:30am there is a loud noise to try to sleep through, and it is often difficult to get back to sleep. The third way it impacts us is that there is a modesty provision - not as strict as in the U.A.E (you can wear shorts, etc.) but you can’t wear bikinis and the men must wear shirts in the water. The one exception is “Bikini Beach” which the islanders have designated for tourists.

Bikini Beach is where we were planting the trees, and essentially these trees would end up creating a barrier around the beach so that the local people wouldn’t have to see the tourists dressing inappropriately (today there is a big mesh fence that blocks the view). After planting the trees, we walked around the island and did some trash clean up. After that, we went back to the hotel and met up with Lily and Megan and then we went out to eat lunch.

The afternoon we were trying to go on a snorkeling trip, but the bad weather rolled in and we had to cancel. That night we had a lesson on coral, and learned about a program that we were going to participate in to help damaged coral reefs regrow. After that, Megan, Keira and I played some Rummy 500 by 1s. Meanwhile, Elenna was in the middle of reading a book series upon which an Anime show was based. In order for me to buy her the $50 of books, she agreed to do a book report on each one, so I read her first report, that would get her access to her second book.

DAY 179

A little about the hub - its a pretty cool thing. Since we have the hotel all to ourselves, we can let the kids roam without really worrying about where they are. Liam spends most of his time either with Henry or Samuel, two nice kids who don’t mind that he is about 4 years younger than they are. Liam would play Legos or with toys with them for hours, and it was great to see him make friends and enjoy himself. There were a few girls Elenna’s age, and despite big talk initially about how she was going to be outgoing and make all sorts of friends, she acted shy and became friendly with everyone, but most of the time she had to be encouraged to hang out with the other kids. Lily and Keira did a decent job of encouraging her and playing games with them all.

That gives Megan and me the ability to talk to other adults for the first time in a while and in a rare part of this trip, enough time to get to know them. Everyone here is nice, and as is often the case, we have gotten to know the parents of Henry and Samuel (Liam's best friends) quite well.

Meanwhile, the island is tiny, and although there are a bunch of side streets, its really hard to get lost because pretty soon you end up at a beach and then you can can just walk until you reach the pier or the harbor and then walk up the main street until you get to the hotel. This has allowed us to give Liam a little free reign walking around the island with his friends. I was actually a bit surprised that Megan let Liam and Henry walk home more or less from Bikini Beach on their own. If that was Keira, there is no way she would have let her do that, even with someone who was 9.

I spent most of the day filling out the forms for the visas to India, which in my opinion asked for WAY too much information. After this trip, I feel like our digital footprint is more of a marathon track. It took me about 6 hours to fill in the forms, in part because the internet was slow, in part because it asked for photos of us and our passports in weird formats that I had to create, and in part because they asked for every piece of information about us that one could think of. My least favorite was to list every country we’ve been to in the past 10 years, and I put in 40 countries for me after racking my brain for 15 minutes to make sure I didn’t miss anything, only for it to tell me that the limit was 20, and I had to correct the page. Then, like most websites, it wouldn’t accept the credit card payment and it took a while to get that figured out.

Later in the day, everyone went to Bikini Beach to swim, since it was windy, but that part of the island was much more calm than anywhere else. There was good snorkeling there, but the current was quite strong. That was actually a theme in general around these islands - you have to be careful about the current. This is really only a problem for Liam, but when I went snorkeling without fins, I had a bit of a difficulty getting back.

Since I just realized that I didn't have any pictures in this point, I'll write a little about the animals on the island. There is a giant parrot in the resort.

This parrot will yell at you if you don't say hello to him. He will also say hello to you.

Also, there are a lot of huge fruit bats on the island. It took a while to get used to this. We even saw a couple of bats fly from one island to the next.

These bats don't wait until night time to fly around.

DAY 180

Megan had talked to the woman who runs the hub about our mixed experience in getting certification, and she talked to the person who runs the dive shop and said that he would join us the next day on our lesson and make sure that everything went smoothly. I decided to try again, which I had mixed feelings about since at this point I had already given up and wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to breathe underwater, so I spent the night having dreams about scuba diving and difficulty breathing. Even Megan, who had a much better Day 2 than I did, said that she spent a good part of the night worrying about it. We were starting to wonder if we should both just bag it, and if Lily wasn’t enjoying it, I’m sure we would have.

But we went over anyway, bouyed in part by the fact that another couple at the hub decided to get certified and we were all going to start from scratch in the water. We got there and the other couple was still getting suited up and our old teacher brought us into the water. The new teacher was nowhere to be found, and we started lessons again with our first instructor.

I had asked for a different regulator. I assumed that my problems were largely psychological, but I figured that if it was a problem with the equipment, then changing equipment would fix it and if it was psychological, then psychologically, I might feel like I had a better chance with different equipment. Meanwhile, Megan gave me a trick that she read on line about sometime if you don’t completely exhale, carbon dioxide can build up in your lungs and make you feel out of air, so I decided to exhale completely any time I felt like I wasn’t getting the air I needed.

Armed with those two changes, I was able to breathe underwater and do the skills. I absolutely hate getting water in my eyes, and since you are often deep underwater and your mask can fill with water if someone accidentally kicks you or something, one of the skills is being able to take off and then put on your mask underwater. You are supposed to open your eyes underwater and look around with your eyes open but if you had contacts you didn’t have to. But there was no way I was opening my eyes underwater - every time I swim and then come up for air, I spend about 10 seconds making sure there is no water dripping on my eyes, so this seemed like a problem. If I realized that we were going to do this, I might have had more nightmares about this than running out of air.

It felt weird breathing through the regulator without a mask, but I was able to get it on and clear it. Since I was deathly afraid of getting water in my eyes, I probably cleared it 2 times more than I needed to, but it worked. There was a little bit of water dripping into my eyes and it felt uncomfortable, but I decided that instead of going to the surface and cleaning it, I should see if I could deal with it. After about 30 seconds, I stopped noticing it.

Megan, though had a bit more difficultly. Underwater you are always supposed to only breathe through your mouth and not your nose, but with the mask on, if you breathe a little through the nose, all that happens is your mask fogs. But if your mask is off or full of water, then breathing, even a little, through your nose means you are swallowing water and feel like you are drowning. So I watched her do the skill, and then immediately swim for the surface as she took in water. She tried again and the same thing happened.

We stopped and took a little swim about 8-10 feet below the surface and ended the lesson. I was feeling much more confidant about things, but Megan, after getting the drowning feeling twice, was feeling less so.

After that, we went on a snorkeling trip. This one was especially cool because we got to see a bunch of sea turtles. It was a little hard to spot them when they were hanging out on the bottom of the sea floor, but they would periodically come up for air, giving us a great view.

We got up close and personal with some sea turtles.

After dinner I tried to get a group of people to go to the “secret boat” for a drink. We only got a couple of couples to come. I’m not sure if its the sun and salt water, but the night life tends to dwindle by 9pm. But the 5 of us when out to check it out, since it was the only place on the island that served alcohol.

We had to take a little boat to the large boat and when we got there, the whole thing was a bit sketchy. Coming on board there was a a seating area and hookah pipe, and then inside there was music playing and a disco ball. The place was completely empty except for the two people who worked there, which also made things seem a bit weird. We got drinks off of the limited menu and walked around the boat. The boat was old and not terribly well kept, with some of the floors sinking in a little as if made of foam. We found a a table on the second floor and hung out.

I bet that this place is hopping on Saturday night.

About 30 minutes in, the bar tender asked for someone’s passport, so I gave mine, and who knows where that information went. Then a few minutes later, a drone flew up and hovered near us. We joked that it was the government following us, to see who the people drinking were. When we were ready to leave, we went downstairs, and it turned out that one of the people who worked there had the drone and he gave us the footage that he took, but the file was too large to post.

This picture wasn't taken by a drone.

We had heard that a restaurant feeds the stingrays at night, so we walked over to check it out. There were bunch of them around and they were huge.

The rays gave this restaurant 5 stars.

There was also this eel type thing.

Its a little disconcerting to see things like this close to where you swim.

DAY 181

Today was an all day boat trip. We left at 9:30am on our way to a deserted island. Along the way we saw dolphins swimming by.

Then we saw some manta rays and stopped and jumped into the ocean to check them out. The first stop was a zero for Megan and me, as by the time we got Liam ready and in the water, and then dragged him to where we were supposed to go (the ray swam away from the boat, and Liam had a life jacket and wasn’t very hydrodynamic as I pushed him), the ray had swam away. But Lily got a a great look at him.

On the next stop when we saw another ray, Megan and I split up and I watched Liam while she chased the ray. But I was able to get Liam close and we saw it at the surface. Then it went under water and I saw it coming right at us, and I tried to get Liam to look in the water at it, since it was huge and so close. He dunked under and then came up and yelled, “Why are we doing this!?”

I realized that I had spend 30 seconds of the time when the ray was right by us trying to get Liam to see it and not seeing it myself, so I ducked under, but only got a short look before he swam away.

The next time we stopped for a manta, Megan and Liam stayed on the boat and I chased the ray. Unfortunately, he stayed at the bottom of the ocean, and it was a little murky, so this is what it looked like. Still pretty cool to see them in the wild.

I was so proud of this picture when I took it. But I will be posting some really good manta pics in future posts, that I almost didn't bother posting this, but I figured that I should, to preserve history.

Then we got to the beach and it was beautiful. Our girls promptly lay down and started reading, while Liam played in the water with his friends. After lunch, Liam, Henry and his dad and I went for a walk down the beach. The water is so clear and blue. But the sun was hot and we constantly put on sunscreen. Flies were also a bit of problem, and they tended to hang out near the trees, meaning that you had to choose between sun burn and bug bites. But it was still a paradise. Everyone there said it blew away anything in the caribbean, but Lily thought Turks and Caicos was the only thing that matched it.

The Maldives is full of beautiful beaches.

Liam and Henry went for a walk to explore the island.

Liam never found a swing he didn't like.

Then we did a beach clean up, and it was sad how an uninhabited island could have so much garbage on it. It was due to a combination of storms and people coming over and leaving trash. After that, they built a bonfire and we roasted marshmallows. The marshmallows weren’t quite as good as what we get in the US, and that’s probably because it didn’t have as many preservatives. In fact, the Ritz crackers and Oreos also tasted a bit off, and we agreed that it was probably because they weren’t as toxic as they are in the US.

On the way home we saw a beautiful sunset.

I've never seen so many beautiful sunsets as I have on this trip.

DAY 182

We went out for another reef snorkel, this time to a reef just outside a resort with over water bungalows. I felt a little bad bringing our boat so close to those bungalows which probably cost an arm and a leg, but I jumped in the water anyway. We got to see a sea turtle come up. The snorkeling here is so amazing that seeing fish is now like seeing zebra on a Kenyan safari - really cool the first few times, but hardly worth mentioning after the 5th day. Now turtles, sharks and rays are what make or break a snorkel.

Its cool to get so close to some of these sea creatures.

After the snorkel, we rushed out to lunch because we only had 90 minutes to eat before Lily, Megan and I had to go out to our first open water scuba.

The restaurants had amazing views and Liam would often decide where to eat based on what kind of swing the restaurant had outside.

I was feeling more confident about scubaing, as evidenced by the fact that I didn’t have any nightmares about scuba diving the night before, but Megan still wasn’t fully comfortable. To compound things, her sinuses weren’t at 100%, and they warn you not to dive if you are having any issues because if you can’t equalize the pressure in your sinuses, you could burst an ear drum. I was putting the odds of Megan actually diving around 45%, which I couldn’t fault at all, since I was 4 days removed from quitting and not expecting to come back.

Megan was determined to at least come out with us and start the dive. Unfortunately, she had cut her finger on the edge of the pool right before going over and was bleeding profusely. She got it stopped at the hotel, but it started bleeding again on the boat. I was now making jokes about how we had to wrap that tight to avoid sharks from attacking.

We all jumped in. This is a video of the first fish we saw on our first real scuba adventure. I was Megan’s buddy and I could tell that she was very nervous but after being under water for about 3-4 minutes, she was much more relaxed. Lily and Saif (one of the boys from our World Hub) were very confident.

Not a long or great video, but there for posterity.

Within a minute of starting to swim, we saw this turtle.

Very cool that this happened so fast. Usually, finding cool animals is a lot of waiting and searching.

It was a really cool experience. We also saw a puffer fish. Unfortunately, once you go down about 8 meters, the button on the Go Pro gets stuck and you can’t take pictures or video, so everything I have is from about 6 meters down and above.

We went back on the boat for an hour to let our bodies release some of the nitrogen that builds up when you scuba. I joked to our trainer that he did a good job of showing us the turtle on the first dive, and asked if he takes requests, because I wanted to see a shark.

Megan said my suit was very slimming, which I took as a back handed compliment.

Then we dove back in. Megan was comfortable from the start this time. Within a minute of swiming we saw a shark. It was only about 3 feet long, but it was a shark nonetheless. About 10-15 minutes in, we saw another shark that was probably 4+ feet long. Although we were down about 10 meters, it was another 5-10 meters below us.

Underwater selfie!

I would say that the sensation of swimming under water and the ability to get close to the reefs is pretty cool. As far as visibility, it is only moderately better than the snorkeling that we have been doing. But Lily loved it and was excited to see if we could scuba in the Galapagos or in Turks and Caicos later this year.

On the boat ride some we saw the sunset.

A successful first day on scubaing.

Now onto a different topic, which is illness. After a day where we went snorkeling, then to the water playground and then to the pool, Liam fell asleep and didn’t eat any dinner. The next morning, he looked sick. There has been a cough and some sickness going around and Liam looked glassy eyed and wasn’t very responsive and woudln’t eat anything. It got to the point where Megan was starting to freak out (although admittedly, it doesn’t take too much sickness with our kids before Megan starts to freak out, especially if we aren’t near first class medical facilities), but eventually we coaxed some juice into him, and then some food and then he perked up and was fine.

But the night that we came back from scubaing, Keira wasn’t looking good. She said that she didn’t feel well and felt faint in the morning, so she skipped the snorkeling and stayed in her room all day. Although this meant that she rested, it also meant that she didn’t eat breakfast or lunch, but we made her eat some protein bars. She was supposed to stay hydrated and she said that she did, but we made her go up to dinner and she didn’t look great.

We made her eat some food, but at one point her heart was racing and she seemed to be having a panic attack. She eventually calmed down and we got her to drink some fluids and eat a little, but she looked like she would be sick. She lay her head on the table, and when Megan tried to get her attention by saying her name and shaking her, it took her several seconds before she reacted. So now Megan was freaking out and told me to ask the locals for information for a doctor. We were in the middle of a briefing on how we were going to try to see whale sharks the next day, and when it was over, they had arranged for us to go to the local clinic. They were so nice and helpful, when I mentioned that Keira shouldn’t walk, they drove us there, even though it was about 4 blocks away.

But since we were in a briefing, it took about 10 minutes between when I asked for the doctor and when we left. During this time, we were pumping Keira full of liquids with electrolytes and some bananas, and she was looking much better as we left the hotel. We had to wait about 15 mintues to see a doctor (who was called in just to see us) and by then, Keira was mostly back to herself. The clinic was nice - clean, well maintained and could have been anywhere in the US.

Keira was diagnosed with over exertion and dehydration from the all day trip the day before and told to drink more fluids and eat food. So more or less what we would have thought, but it was good piece of mind to have her vitals taken and make sure that nothing worse was going on. The total cost for the clinic? 200 Rufiyaa or $13. To put that into perspective, that is the cost of 8 Diet cokes, and when we went shopping for snacks for the next day's trip, we spent $17.

DAY 183

The next day we went on a whale shark hunt. Despite the name, it wasn’t a whale, but a fish. We were warned that the hunt would require that we jump out of the boat quickly because once a whale shark is spotted, there will be a lot of boats trying to find it. We left Keira home to continue her recovery (looking and feeling much better) and headed off with Lily, Elenna and Liam.

We set off a little before 9am and headed out a reef where whale shark often are. As we went along, one of our new friends said that this whole trip was a little surreal - we were heading out to a place where a whale shark might be, hoping that it happens to surface at the same time we are there and then that we will be able to jump out and see it before it goes back under and swims away. But apparently it happens enough that they thought we would see something.

While we were waiting to leave, Liam got brave and started jumping off of the peer.

Liam was initially afraid to jump off of the lowest step, but was ultimately jumped off of the top.

The boat that we go out on is pretty big and and everyone really enjoys it. Plenty of seating, and the upstairs deck has a great view and is great for jumping off of. That said, even though I tan very well, I am constantly avoiding the sun, so depending on what direction we are going in, one side of the boat might have shade, but the other won’t, so I am constantly moving around the boat to avoid the sun. Invariably I will choose the wrong side of the boat when we head out. But at least moving around is good for mingling and talking to people.

After about 3 hours of not seeing anything, we jumped in for a reef snorkel. It wasn’t a great snorkel by Maldives standards, which means that anywhere else we have snorkeled, it would have been a great day with all sorts of fish to look at.

Fish are everywhere, even if there aren't turtles, manta or sharks.

We also saw some dolphins from the boat, but they didn’t stop to see if we could swim with them. Apparently they will just swim away.

Dolphins are always exciting to see.

We got back on the boat and then ate some food. They had some cheese sandwiches and we brought a bunch of snacks. Luckily we did because the day kept dragging on. that said, the cheese sandwiches were a surprising hit with Liam. We couldn’t find the whale sharks so we kept going around to new reefs. We thought for sure that Lily woudl be back in time for her 5pm Spanish class, but we ended up having to cancel that.

The long day meant having to keep the kids entertained. The whale shark hunt was described as a mad cap chase where our boat shoots forward and we all jump out, and then when the whale shark leaves, we all quickly get back on board so the boat can find the next one. The reality of it was much more boring. Elenna borrowed a book from one of the other girls at the hub, and then finished it and then borrowed another book and finished that too (800 pages in total). Lily read some but did a bit better job hanging out with the kids. Megan and I watched Liam, chatted with grownups and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.

We stopped again for another snorkel, and we were on the fence about whether to go back in. Ultimately Megan and I went back in but everyone else stayed on the boat (we figured how often do you get to snorkel in the Maldives?).

We snorkeled around and saw a bunch of fish again, but after a while, we decided to go back to the boat. We were about 20 feet from the boat and I was doing one last long before getting on the boat when I saw a turtle.

We followed the turtle for another 20 minutes and eventually it lead us to a second turtle, but they didn’t seem to get along very well. We got back on the boat and kept looking for whale sharks, and passed another group of dolphins.

Eventually, they decided to give up and turn around, about at 5pm. But we were still looking for whale sharks, so the boat headed back slowly. A couple of times people thought they saw manta rays and we would try to find them, but didn’t. The day was getting longer and longer and without seeing anything, getting home so late was more and more of a drag.

Then we came across another group of dolphins. At this point, someone joked that unless they were whale dolphins, he didn’t care anymore. But these dolphins were pretty neat, slapping their fins on the water and jumping out of the water. We decided that this was likely some sort of mating ritual, which put the whole Sea World show that we had seen with dolphins in a whole new light.

The sun was setting and we watched the dolphins for quite some time. They pulled the boat around so that we could get a picture with the dolphins and the sunset.

Real life dolphin show at sunset.

Then we kept going home, but it was getting darker and darker. The sunset was pretty for a while, and then it was nice to see the night sky and all of the stars. But we didn’t get home until around 7:30, so about 11 hours after we left and we were all hungry and tired. `So it didn’t take long before we were all asleep.

DAY 184

Today was a big day - it was the final scuba dive to get certification. But before that, we had a reef snorkel. We thought about skipping the snorkeling given that we have been in the water a lot, but then again - you are only here once. We were going somewhere that was likely to have sea turtles, so we made Lily come too, so it was one of the rare times everyone was there.

Unfortunately, there were sea turtles there, but we didn’t see them (a few of the people on the boat did see them), so I felt a little bad for Lily since we made her come to see them (sea turtles are her favorite animal). But it did allow Keira, Lily and Elenna time to take these pics.

Underwater pictures are always cool.

Although we didn’t see any turtles, Megan and I saw a couple of octopi, which was pretty cool. They are hard to spot unless they are moving, so it was good that there were a number of experienced divers with us who knew what to look for.

After the dive, we went to lunch and then Megan, Lily and I went to our final dives, while Keira went home to rest and Elenna watched Liam, including taking him (with the hub) to a little island a short distance from the pier. It was a sandy beach that almost disappeared during high tide, and looked really cool - Megan and I were sad to miss it. Especially when we heard that there was a banana boat there and Liam fell off it.

The reef dives were good. The first dive we saw a few sea turtles, so I felt better that Lily was able to at least see some today. In fact, one swam so close to her that she had to swim to get out of the way. We practiced an emergency ascent - basically going up to the surface from 6 meters (about 20 ft) with no air - and you aren’t supposed to rush. It was actually a little difficult - I was gasping for air when I got to the top.

If you look, you can see a turtle to the left of and slightly above Lily, that Lily is actively trying to avoid.

The second dive was probably my least favorite of the four, it was back to the same place that the second dive was last time we dove, but we didn’t see anything cool, except for a moray eel. That said, Megan had been having trouble with her mask fogging up, but this dive it never did, so she thought it was an amazing dive - which compared to almost anywhere in the world, it was.

Once again, we were getting home just in time for a sunset cruise.

I think all boats should have bean bag chairs on their roofs. Meanwhile a group photo with the crew we got certified with - Laura, Keith and Saif.

After dinner, Megan and I went out to get some groceries (we were going to go on a whale shark hunt again the next day, but this time it was guaranteed to end at 3, so it would only be a 7 hour trip, but plenty of time to get hungry (plus at this time we were somewhat wary of end times to the snorkels and we assumed saying that it had to end by 3 meant it would end by 5:30). Liam and Henry played Minecraft in our room, while Lily tried (unsuccessfully) to log into her Spanish class - the internet was bad. She had now missed the last three Spanish classes she had, due to not getting home in time from an outing, or technology issues, and it was starting to stress her out.

DAY 186

Whale shark trip part 2. Only Liam, Megan and I were up for this one as Lily did work and Elenna and Keira were boring and wanted to stay home after the marathon day before.

Some people in our family aren't lame.

Unfortunately, I had left my snorkeling socks on the boat two days ago, so when I did the last suba dive, I used flippers without socks and rubbed 6 of my 10 toes raw. This made snorkeling a bit painful so I only did half of the dives that the boat took, trying to save up in case we saw a whale shark. Once again, the snorkeling was amazing, but once again, there were no whale sharks to be seen. And, once again, we stayed out much later than was promised. But we did get to see some Mantas.

These encounters seem more like the types you would have in an enclosed "Manta Encounter" somewhere, rather than in the middle of the ocean.

We got our official PADI diving certification done at the shop, but when we came back to the hotel, we found that Liam had cut himself on the pool tile while Elenna was watching him. She bandaged him up with band aids and gauze.

The next day was a “Wow” day, according to the schedule - we were going to see sharks, then go to an island for lunch and look for more dolphins, potentially to swim with. The first part of the trip started out very well as we went to a new shark area that they had never tried before, but there were sharks there.

Up close and personal with some sharks.

And boy were there sharks there.

Doesn't this look a little scary.

And sting rays.

I told you that I would have better pictures of sting rays.

It was definitely a bit scary at first, but after a while of sharks swimming around you and not eating you, it became simply cool. We had to stay a couple of meters away from the “feeding zone” where our guides threw fish into the water, which apparently was all we needed to do to not be eaten.

I did my best to stay out of the feeding zone.

Liam didn’t want to jump into water with sharks, but he had to pee, so we made him jump in on the other side of the boat and then pee and get back on the boat. We told him to quickly look under water to see the sharks, but he refused. Keira didn’t want to jump into shark infested water, but eventually we made her. This led to this video, which I edited out the 3 minutes of her starting to go in, and then backing out again.

I think that her initial reaction, although funny, was quite a normal reaction.

Elenna never went into the water.

We headed off to the island but then got waylayed by some manta rays. My feet were hurting, so Megan jumped in but I stayed in the boat with Liam, Elenna and Keira (who were all party poopers).

Then we got to the island and it was beautiful. I wonder if I would ever get used to water that pretty.

A picture of our normal boat (not the speedboats that we actually took that day) at our dock and then almost all of the hub at the island.

We stayed at the island for a while and I felt like we were there for too long in order to get back by 5, which was the vague time for a return (by “dinner, whenever that will be” was another time thrown out later on.

Doesn't get much better than a deserted island.

Dinner is at 7, but if we come home after 7, it is held for us). We were there long enough for Liam and Henry built a fort on the island.

I'm sure that this fort can withstand any attack.

Eventually we left and headed back. The director of the hub often says that it will take a certain amount of time to get from one place to another unless “we get distracted by shiny things” - such as seeing manta rays or turtles or dolphins. So on the way home we were on the lookout for dolphins, but then the boat slowed down and we looked around. They had spotted some mantas. Instead of being on the one large boat, we were separated into two smaller speed boats. The people on the other boat jumped into see them, but no one on our boat did. At this point it was around 5pm and everyone on our boat was tired and wanted to go home and were silently resenting the other boat.

Our boat puttered around for about 20 minutes and the snorkelers on the other boat continued to snorkel. Then more people jumped in and we all groaned. But then we came across 3-4 manta rays near us. You can seem them near the surface and their wide tips of their fins will pop above water, such that you aren't sure if its a manta or two dolphin. Our friend Mike stood up and said he would go in because the other boat wasn’t about to stop any time soon. I had been on the boat half regretting not jumping in because my state of mind usually is “how often will I ever be here (wherever I am at the time) and get to do this (whatever this happens to be)?” So when Mike decided to jump, I went in too along with his wife Jen.

By the time that I got my gear on, the boat had gone a while and it wasn’t clear where the rays were any more, but the guides told us to follow one of them into the water and he would show us. So we went in and ran into some rays. It was very cool to see a few this close.

Very cool to see these big guys.

So far my feet weren’t hurting, but I was cognizant of not holding everyone up, so I called up to our boat to see if the other boat was done, and they weren’t. So I took off again after the guide. He was pretty far away, and swimming away from me, so it took a little while to get there and I was wondering if I should have just got back on the boat. But he brought us to a place with three manta (I still don’t know how he saw them). I saw one and started to swim after it to get a good video. But then all of a sudden I was cut off by this other manta coming at me. I was going to cut down this video because I figured people wouldn't want to watch a minute video, then I could find a spot to stop it because something else cool was about to happen, so here it is.

I hope you enjoy this video, I had so much great footage, I put it all in.

Then I took this artistic video.

I'm a big fan of this video, even if I did rip off the idea from Lily.

It was a very cool experience, and I’m glad that I jumped in. But by now I was starting to feel a bit stung by the little jelly fish in the water and swam back to the boat. Soon after, everyone got back on board the other boat and we headed back. But we were still 90 minutes from home and didn’t get back until a little after 7:30.

Liam had fallen asleep on the boat, and we had to drag him to the hotel and force him to eat some dinner before going to bed. But during dinner he got a second wind when Jax played “This Time for Africa” by Shakira, which always gets Liam up and dancing.

During the day we had noticed a weird string in Liam’s cut from the day before and had to extract it with tweezers when we got back to the room. Liam was a trooper and didn’t complain (in part because he was watching his iPad while Megan did it). Then we put a bunch of antiseptic on him and let him stay up while it soaked in.

DAY 187

Today is our last day in the Maldives. We had been watching the weather apps for the past week around the potential for rain, which started out at 80%, then dropped to 40% and now was back to 80%. But it looked like it was more in the afternoon than the morning. We had been worrying about the weather on the boat back ever since we took the boat to the resort. It had been pretty bumpy even though the water looked calm, so we were worried about what kind of ride we would have if it ever actually got bumpy.

After breakfast we went out on a reef snorkel. The goal was to go out and pick up small pieces of coral that had fallen off of the reef but was still alive. Then we would attached those pieces to some metal rebar that they had fashioned to help it regrow. Then we would take those out to a reef, where a ship had run aground on the reef and cut a big path through the reef, in an effort to accelerate its regeneration.

The biggest problem was that in order to pick up the coral, you had to “duck dive” or hold your breath and dive 10-15 feet under water. It was pretty hard to do, and I could do it, but I never got quite as far down as I wanted to. Lily could do it easily, and the other two girls were good at it too. But there were a number of people at the hub who could dive down 20-25 feet and stay down there for 30-45 seconds without a problem. They were the ones who got the most, but Lily got 7 pieces of coral.

My feet were still bothering me so I took it slowly and puttered around with Liam. Unfortunately, my Go Pro was giving me an error message so I couldn’t take any pictures of the girls diving for coral. Then when I brought Liam back to the boat, I noticed that the cord I had tied around my wrist to hold the Go Pro was still attached, but somehow the Go Pro had been unscrewed and was lost.

I told another guy on the boat my problem, and we weren’t sure if it would float or not (because it was still attached to the foam piece it usually floats on, but the handle might now be full of water) and we climbed on top of the boat and looked around. It was pretty much like looking for a needle in a haystack and I was losing hope. Then we saw Ben (who was the husband of the woman running the hub) still in the water, and yelled out to him to explain my problem. And then he held up my Go Pro! Apparently, it had fallen to the bottom of the ocean, but he had found it. Unfortunately, the Go Pro wouldn't turn on, so I’m not sure if this amazing find will actually pay off for us. We will let it dry out and try again in a few days.

Once we had enough coral, we boarded the boat and attached the coral to the metal.

If you go to the Maldives and see some cool underwater creatures, then you know who to thank.

We went over to the reef that we were trying to regrow and the guide would duck dive down and place the metal forms. It was pretty neat to see as once one was put down, fish would swim over and start feeding on it. At this point, I had jumped in again without any fippers since my toes needed a break.

Then we headed back and Liam was starting to act very tired. We took him back to the room and he had a 100.5 degree fever. We went out to lunch and then rested for the rest of the afternoon. Then we went out and had one of the people from the hub who was a photographer (a boudoir photographer actually) take some family pictures of us - all G rated. Unfortunately, she didn’t bring her camera, so she was doing it all on her phone. She was very nice, spending more time with us that we thought we were going to spend.

When Liam is this snuggly, it could be a sign that he is sick.

That night was a farewell beach barbecue. There were sand sculptures of mantas and whale sharks (unfortunately, this was the only whale sharks we saw) and lights were hung over the tables. It was a great way to eat our last dinner at the hub. Then the people who ran the hotel came out and played some island music and had us dance. Then they gave us some necklaces as a thank you. It was a great night, although I stepped on something and hurt my heel.

It was a beautiful setting for a dinner.

The girls brought Liam back to the room. Liam had perked up with some medicine, but was flagging again. Megan and I went to a couple of souvenir stores to see if there was a shirt for Liam. Most of the cute shirts had whale sharks on them, but since we hadn’t actually seen a whale shark, we felt like those wouldn’t work. Eventually, we settled on a manta shirt.

Then we went home and packed since we had to be up by 6 for breakfast before the boat to the airport. Luckily I remembered that we were supposed to be taking malaria pills for our India part of the trip and we all took them (except Lily who had proved allergic to them last time).