Coca Cola Island and the Big City

 We finally made it to an inhabited island where, with a bit of work and begging, we were allowed to go ashore. Thulusdhoo is a half hour ferry ride north of the country's capital, Male. Cruisers sometimes refer to it as the Coca Cola Island, as they can't pronounce it anyway and it has the country's only Coca Cola bottling plant. The plant is supposed to be the only Coke plant that uses exclusively reverse osmosis water. The island supports about 1,900 people and is a hotspot in non-Covid season for the backpacker surfing crowd. There are two nice breaks, Hens and Coke, just outside the cut.

(not my picture, it was small when we were there: http://www.cokesbeach.com/surfing-thulusdhoo-maldives/)

We didn't actually anchor at the Coca Cola Island. We went in a small cut just north of it to a decent anchorage in front of a resort being remodeled (4*23.02N, 73*39.925E, 35 feet in sand).

First thing I did was get a cold one

While one of the many local island cats watched me

Kind of a self-explanatory sign

It looked like most people got around by walking or motorbike, but I liked this classic bicycle.

The traditional boats in the Maldives have this high, back curving bow. The outboard is not so traditional.

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Next we headed into Hulhumale. This is the manmade island built to help deal with the overflow conditions in the capital, Male. It is non-stop construction of residential high-rises and along with some parks. We're back to wearing facemasks and being extra careful around the locals. Many of the locals are pretty leery of us when it comes to contagion. The Maldives has had a medium amount of Covid-19, with the majority in the populated areas of the country, which means Male. They've done an excellent job of getting out vaccines in the last couple of months and the greater Male area case load is starting to decline.

This is the China Friendship Bridge that connects Male and Hulhumale. Built and partly funded by China.

And Male itself

The fishing fleet tied up in Hulhumale

The airport runway ends at the harbour entrance

The dinghy dock. You have to use an anchor to hold your dinghy away from the dock, as it is in constant use for loading and unloading.

And just in case tourists are not aware of the social mores here, a quick, multi-lingual reminder

Shopping and provisioning is good in Hulhumale. Most all of the fresh fruit and vegetables are flown in from Sri Lanka, with the eggs coming from India and the oranges from Egypt.

You can get most anything you need here -- perhaps more than what you need from this Covid-19 Essentials store.

We got to eat out a number of times in Hulhumale, which was a treat. But more important was a surprise party for Chris' birthday on our buddy boat, Time Bandit, with Stuart and Anne along with Michael and Priscilla from Hylite

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Deep down inside almost all of us are the same

Paul

Abandoned Resort

 

We spent a week in the atoll known to cruisers as the Abandoned Resort - Dholhiyadhoo to the locals. (anchored at 05*59.543N, 73*13.315 E in 38ft sand). The resort was never actually finished after investors dumped in 10's of millions of dollars. It is now bank owned. I suspect it was casualty of 2008/2009 financial crash. One of the nice things about this destination is that we can go ashore and walk the island. So far pretty much all of the inhabited islands have been off limits to us. The island has two Bangladeshi caretakers who spoke little English but were friendly enough and made it clear we were welcome to come ashore when we wanted.

I don't usually include videos in the blog -- they suck up too much bandwidth, but here's some drone shots from our buddy boat Time Bandit of the abandoned resort. By the way, for us$50 million you can buy the island, the atoll waters and what's left of the buildings.

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Having spent a lot of years cruising the tropical regions of the Caribbean, South Pacific, Asia and the Indian Ocean we've seen a lot of coral reefs. In many places we've seen areas of dead reef, but there's always been enough healthy, colorful reef close by that we could ignore the dead part. You just can't deny it in the Maldives. The coral bleaching that is caused by ocean water heating is everywhere. The Indian Ocean has been subject to a number of heating events that have decimated the reefs. Think Global Climate Change. The last big heating event was in 2015-2016. It has left huge areas of the reef's corals to be turned into dead, grey rubble. If you are interested in some of the technical details, here is a very technical article on the coral bleaching in Chagos, about mid-Indian Ocean Coral bleaching impacts from back-to-back 2015–2016 thermal anomalies in the remote central Indian Ocean

 

To go along with the coral bleaching the plastic trash on the beaches is overwhelming at times. This picture is of fishing gear remains.  If this was all there was on the shorelines it wouldn't be too bad. Every beach that faces the ocean side is covered with plastic bottles, along with lots of glass ones, and other plastic trash. The glass will eventually break up, have its corners rounded by erosion and then be turned into jewelry by aging hippies. The plastic is pretty much forever, it breaks down into microparticles and becomes part of the biome-- permanently.

Left sandals(Jandals for Australians, Flip-flops for Floridians) and plastic bottles as far as you can see.

While I'm on an environmental rant might as well address ocean water rising. The Maldives islands are rarely more than a few feet above the high tide mark. Above you can see some locals who stopped at this sandy beach in the early morning to collect sand. The bags are stacked on the boat as it sits low in the water. Basically they are sacrificing this small, uninhabited island to shore up another, populated island. You see this small time movement of sand ala over the islands. At times you see it on an industrial scale with large diggers loading barges. 

We are currently anchored in front of a resort that is closed for remodeling. Remodeling includes bringing in huge mounds of sand in.

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To finish this blog on a more upbeat tone, how about a Unicorn (fish)? 

Some reef struggling to provide color.

And the ever present weather we deal with. It's thunderstorm season! 

Paul