June : 22-27 Maldives Eriyadu Resort , North Male US$ 800 excluding flight
A Long weekend in the Maldives.

The Trip:
A long weekend in the Maldives on Eriyadu Resort in Northern Male Atoll

The Resort:
Eriyadu Resort is situated in the upper most section of northern Male Atoll
which took an hour’s high speed boat ride from Male airport.
The main reason for choosing Eriyadu is for its small size (50 bungalows).
Being the low season there were not many guests so it felt like being on a
private island.
The resort’s bar even provides punchy cocktails and ice cold draught beers.
What more can you ask for???

The Dive center:
Werner Lau runs the resort’s dive center. They also have other dive
operations in Bali,Red Sea and Yap. Here you dive Nitrox for free.

Being a European style operation this can be a bit of a culture shock to
Thai divers who’ve been spoilt by top end Thai dive operators. Here you
have to take care of your gear from assembly to cleaning and even
lugging gear off the boat. I totally agree that divers should take care of
their own gear but diving around southeast asia can really spoil you!

You also have a choice of being guided or dive in a buddy team.
We decided to go for unguided dives so we can do whatever we want
but stuck to the rules of 60 minutes bottom time and no deeper than 100 ft.

The Dives:
At Eriyadu you can do 2 boat dives a day and unlimited house reef with
free Nitrox if certified.

Most dive sites are within an hour’s boat ride from the resort and we were
quite lucky that the weather held out. By the time the south westerlies
came in late afternoon we were back at the resort snorkeling or drinking
cold beers.

The first dive of the trip was at a site called Blue caves which had many
caverns and over hangs filled with blue soft corals.

The high light has to be the dive at Woshimas Tila. We got down to 81 ft.
holding on to rocks facing the current and spent over 40 minutes watching
inquisitive grey reef, white tip sharks and other pelagic checking divers and
chasing prey in the current. Thumbs up for Nitrox!

Even the house reefs offered good visibility and small critters like nudibranchs,
flat worms and pipe fish.

The verdict:
It was great fun doing a long weekend trip in the Maldives with minimum number
of dives but maximum pleasure enjoying the resort life. Another successful
Sea Trek trip!!