Final day and thoughts:
On the final evening we settled our bills for extra dives, nitrox and alcohol. We did manage to consume most of 2 bottles of Bombay Safire. At 45 us$ each that was way cheaper than the 35 us$ bottle of wine, but I’m not drinking any more gin this year!
Tonic was 2 us$ pr can, so if you like gin/tonic try to bring some tonic if you have room in your luggage.
The crew found out husband did his dive no 600, and made a cake to celebrate- Nice touch
They also were so kind to call our hotel in Male (Airport Beach Hotel) about picking us up the next day.
We had breakfast, packed our things and checked out at 11 am the next morning. We could stay till 2 pm and have lunch, but really I wanted to get some hot food.
Transfer was easy: at the harbour the van was waiting for us, and it was less than 10 min drive to the hotel. Our room was ready - it was new, nice and clean, but small. The worst part was the “air fresheners” in both our room and the “lounge”, it was awfully strong. Both SIL and I are allergic to perfume so took antihistamine straight away, still got a bad headache. The internet was good and there’s a lovely roof top area with a small pool.
We decided to take a walk along the beach front, the beach itself was nice and some of the small cafes looked cute as well, but there was trash lying around and not just small pieces of ice cream wrap etc, no: old plastic chairs, broken microwave ovens and office chairs. A real reminder, this is a 3rd world country with big garbage handling problems.
After our walk we decided to have lunch on the roof top terrace. Pizza was nice and hot, we had brought some “tonic” from the boat, so we shared that and had a short nap, before our 4 pm transfer to the airport.
All of us had a great time in Maldives and would love to return