Arrival in the Maldives...

Waiting for take off at Male Airport in the seaplane

OK, arriving in the Maldives will be in two parts: arriving in the Maldives itself, and arriving at the resort, which was the really impressive experience!

Male airport isn't the most interesting place, and I was seriously ticked off when my bottle of gin was confiscated! Because it's a Muslim country, national laws don't allow the import of alcohol, or any pork products, and local laws say no dogs (no idea why...) - other Muslim nations (i.e., UAE - Dubai) allow you to take alcohol in, but it must vary from place to place.

Barefoot Pilots!

Anyway, after a brief growl about getting my Bombay Sapphire swiped, we were met by a representative of the hotel, the One&Only Reethi Rah. We were expecting to be transferred by the resort's luxury yacht, but it was out of action so we were to be taken by seaplane! I was so pleased - I'd been to the Maldives with my parents a few years before hand and the transfer was seaplane because it was WAY too far to the other One&Only (Kanahura) to go by boat...it was such a superb experience I'd hoped Mark and I could go to RR this way, but it was going to be SO expensive because we'd basically have had to charter the plane ourselves, so we were pleased we'd not paid to go by air!

You get a completely different sense of the Maldives when you fly into a resort - you can see the atolls, the shape of the reefs, and the colour of the water varying in depth shows up really clearly. It was great flying into the island as well because we got a real sense of the size of the resort.

As we landed with a bit of a bump and took our earplugs out (seaplanes are really noisy!) we could see staff from the hotel waiting on shore for us, with a fleet of golf buggies.

We'd arrived!