A sunny day

Hi all,

We’ve had a great first full day here. After I posted last night, we headed down to the Dhoni Restaurant for dinner. There is a buffet here that is included with our accommodation for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I had my doubts about the food as I had seen some average reviews, but I don’t know what people were on about. There is plenty of variety and the food is pretty tasty, particularly considering we are on a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Throughout the four meals we have enjoyed so far, we’ve had lots of variety including pasta and pizza, paella, salads, veggies, seafood, ice cream and lots more.

We slept fairly well, but as expected woke up pretty early due to jetlag. I think I first woke up at 3.40am, but then dozed on and off and eventually got up at 6am. Rob and I then went for a walk around the island which ended up being about 2.5 km long. It was a lovely time of day to walk – not many people around, nice and quiet, no hot sun. We walked out to a sandbar where we saw two manta rays and lots of hermit crabs. The sand was beautiful, smooth and white. Then we headed around to the opposite side of the island to where we are staying which was very windy and the ocean choppy. We ended up in front of the gym and water sports centre at an ocean swing. We had breakfast and then headed back to the room for a bit.

I had an ingenious idea today – I secured the inflatable I brought from home (thanks Kmart!) to our ladder into the ocean using my luggage strap (thanks again Kmart!). This way I can sit on it and drink and/or read and not float away to Sri Lanka. It was all going well until Rob started a sentence with “I don’t mean to alarm you, but…” which of course alarmed me and I thrashed about and jumped out of the water. Apparently he saw a reef shark. I started the day feeling a bit worried about them and manta rays, but as the day wore on I decided to stop caring or I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the water. So unless one actually swims on to me I’ve decided not to care. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen…!

We also used Rob’s snorkel at this point and explored a little near our room. It turns out there is some marine growth around the pylons holding up our water villa, and therefore there is a little ecosystem of cute fish. The prettiest one was a yellow and blue fish that unfortunately disappeared before I could photo it with my underwater camera.

It was a lot sunnier today, and as a result the water sparkled even more so than yesterday. It’s pure paradise here. I’ve never really been a “lie around and not do much” type but the beautiful water here makes it so easy to sit and read a book or sit and stare off into the distance. There is plenty to do here though if you wish to. We headed to the pool at 11am and enjoyed some pina coladas at the swim up bar. I then dragged Rob to a midday pool fitness class. It turned out to be really lame, and poor Rob got dragged up the front with two other men (one from Lebanon, one from Portugal) to dance with the people running it. I laughed away while he looked at me as if to say “I’m only here because you made me come!”, but I thought he coped well with dancing in front of 100 people considering. I was glad they didn’t pick me!! We then visited the water sports centre and booked a jet ski tour for Thursday and a snorkelling excursion for Sunday, before having lunch and then going to the gym. Rob stayed for a lot longer than me, annoyingly I did something to my right knee in the days before we came here, so I can’t do too much at the moment.

I headed back to the room and read my book on my inflatable for quite a while, and then Rob eventually came back too. Annoyingly we both got burnt a little bit despite slathering on sunscreen. I suppose we will reapply more often from now on! No one around these parts seems bothered by sunburn though. In fact, many Europeans at the resort seem to be getting their whole bodies absolutely scorched on purpose to tan. This horrifies us as Australians. I am grateful at home that we have good campaigns warning people to use sunscreen etc.

We watched the sky change colour from our deck’s sun lounge (in lieu of a sunset as it was covered by clouds) and then headed to dinner. Now we are in the room watching some TV.

Love to all
Claire
Xoxox