Maldives with wheelchair

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mhanky

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Hi

I just became a member of this forum because I have a question. I didn't receive a lot response on a dutch forum so my quess was to try it here. Together with my girlfriend and 2 friends we are planning a dive trip to the Maldives in beginning of next year. Our main reason for the trip is to see mantas and whalesharks

One of the two friends needs a wheelchair, she can walk short trips but most of the time she is stuck to the wheelchair. We want to know if someone knows if it will be possible for her to go to the Maldives. Are there resorts without sand(so with paved roads)? Second question, does anyone know how strong the flow is on the Maldives?

Regards a dutch diver who got his advance open water today (yeaaaah)
 
Welcome to ScubaBoard. I hope you'll get all the answers you need.

In the meantime, I can tell you that I stayed at a resort in Maldives that is wheelchair accessible. The resort is called Paradise Island and is quite near the island of the Male airport, so no ultra-long boat transfers or sea planes are needed to get there. There are paved pathways throughout the resort, and I actually met my first wheelchair-bound diver while diving at that resort. The house reef is lovely and quite close to the entry point they used to lift the diver into the water. Hope that helps!
 
Any of the Handicapped SCUBA Association (HSA) www.hsascuba.com Instructors or Dive Masters listed on the HSA website then click on FIND MEMBER and type in MALDIVES under Country and you will find a list of several Adaptive Dive Instructors or Dive Masters who live there and will be able to best answer your question above diving there.

Handicapped SCUBA Association, the first adaptive SCUBA certification agency has trained these instructors in adaptive diving and they also have survey forms on what to look for in an assessable hotel (bed height, door widths and how the door opens etc).
 
thanks for the comments so far!

First of all, she can dive (already having her advance open water for a few years) so that's no problem.

I have contacted the IAHD for info and they informed me to contact the resorts for more info. So I will start doing this

Can you give me some tips about good places to go, specially for manta's and whalesharks. I do understand that there is never a guanrantee that we will really see them.
 
Last weekend we came back from a very nice holiday on the Maldives. I got some very good tips on this board so I thought it would be nice to inform you about our trip.

We did al kind of research to find the best place to dive in the Maldives and the best island for our friend who needs a wheelchair. Eventually we found some good info about the Vilamendhoo Island Resort.
This Island is completely rebuilt last year and reopened in February. We contacted them and they informed us that it would be possible to use a wheelchair on the island. There will be sand but most roads will be paved.

Extra benefit was that we could book a trip to this island by a Dutch tour operators. Also the island is located in the South Ari Atoll, as far we know one of the best location to dive on the Maldives.

On Friday 18th of March our trip started. We had to drive to Dusseldorf because we used Airberlin to fly to Male. The reason for this was that we could have a direct flight to Male and the cost for extra dive luggage was cheap. The trip to male went fine, we only had to wait a few extra minutes before the elevator was at the airplane so our friend could exit it.

After we had our luggage we went to the water plane airfield which is next to the Male airfield. This trip is by bus, our friend had no problem to enter the bus but if you are completely paralyzed then the bus can be hard to enter. The same applies for the water plane. The stair to enter and exit it is very small. If you can’t walk with crutches this will be very hard and maybe impossible.
The trip with the water plane took 30 minutes. The plane lands on the water (duh  ) next to a pontoon and a small boat from the island was came to pick us up. Entering the boat was not that hard but again if you are completely paralyzed and can’t walk with crutches this might be difficult.

The island was very nice but offcourse there was sand. On some places the sand was very loose. Our friend is small and light-weight so we had no problem to push the wheelchair through the sand. This can be hard if the person in the wheelchair is a bit heavy.
It’s a good idea to get a house close to the reception because the sand was not that loose over there. Entering the bar and restaurant is not hard because there was not that much sand. Outside the ground is covered with shelves and it’s possible to have a table over there

Diving was very nice. Everyday there are boat trips to different dive side’s. There are 3 different types. All level, easy (but still nice) dive which can be done if you have not much experience or if you are an open water diver. The advance boat trip can be heavier. It’s possible that you need to do a negative entry. The third boat trip is for experience divers. The current is often heavy.
The Maldives are known for the underwater current. I do need to say that we had only one dive (from the 22 we did) where the current was heavy. We choose to swim against it but it was also possible to turn around and stay in the protected area.

As said diving was nice!! We took a trip to mantapoint and saw a lot of manta’s. After this dive we had a whale shark next to the boat. If I compare the Maldives with Egypt then there is more underwater life, there are more fishes and they are less scared. The coral is very nice, if you are a coral lover you really should take a trip to “Coral Heaven” or “Camel Rocks”

The last 2 dive days we had problems with millions of teeny jellyfish. We fist saw them on the house reef of island but we also had problems with them at the end of our dive, during the safety stop.
 
Well I think that ( if Eurodivers are still in Villamendhoo) they run a very precision dive operation. You wouldnt have issues with safety or support. I have a question out of curiousity did your friend in the wheelchair make it on the boatdives?
 
Eurodivers is still the divecenter on Vilamendhoo. And you are correct, they run the divecenter very nice.

Our friend liked the boatdives more then the dives on the housereef. This is because on the boat she was simply thrown in to the water. On the housereef she had to "walk"to the water. As i said she is able to walk a short time with crutches but it's hard for her.

On the boat she setup her equipment. When she was ready the boatcrew first put her in the water and after that her equipment (bcd+tank).
 
Thanks for coming back and posting a great report. Too few people do that. I'm happy that you got to see what you wanted too.
 
We have stayed on Vilamendhoo twice, in 2007 and 2008. Eurodivers are a very good organisation- we're diving with them again this year, and depending on how much renovation has been done recently, our experience was the paths were sandy, either a couple of cm, or deeper. We have a friend who is a wheelchair user, but not a diver and we feel that most of the island would have been accessible to him (not the beach by the Sunset Bar!). He cannot walk at all, so we thought that accessing diving boats for him would have been problematic. With a few steps, and depending on the height of the tide, the dive boats will probably be ok.
Good luck and enjoy it!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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