Male, Maldives, April 17

The Maldives are a string of islands, a bit like Hawaii, strung out in a row, south-west of India.  We are at Male which is both an island and a city, the capital city of the Maldives.  Male island is tiny, 2 km x 1 km, densely inhabited with about 100,000 people, 65,000 permanent and the rest transient.  As you can see, from the ship it looks a bit like a miniature Manhattan.  The boat speeding towards us the pilot coming to guide us into the harbour.

 

The other islands in The Maldives are noted for their beautiful beaches, some say the best beaches in the world.  Some passengers opted for "a day at the beach" tour; we opted for the Male city tour.

Because the harbour is small, we had to use the tenders to go ashore.  Here is a picture of our lifeboat, #5, being lowered down to serve as a tender.  The pilot boat is lurking around to take the pilot back to shore.

The Maldives is a Muslim country so now we are doing Mosques not Temples.  However, we still have to remove our shoes before entering.  The good thing is there was no mud this time, just highly polished marble floors which are very hot in this 95* plus weather.   

George tried to push over a 500 year old Banyan tree, to no avail.

Peggy went shopping at the local market, and considered buying bananas and fish for dinner. The executive chef also was at the market and bought 900 pounds of fresh fish and two garbage bags of mangos.  Yum!!!

The oldest Mosque in Male is made entirely of coral, without any mortar, and it is still in good shape.  It reminds us a bit of the building technique of the Aztec when they built Manchu Piccu.  This is a picture of one of the small out buildings at the Mosque, and a close-up of the masonry with the Sultan's sign.

The old Sultan's must have lived pretty well.  Not only did they have a harem, but they wore neat hats (see below) and got carried around in their personal taxi chair.

Fishing is the main industry here.  The harbour is lined with these fishing boats that obviously double as the family home as well.  Peggy is helping out by protecting the harbour from pirates.

Meanwhile a UN warship is also protecting the harbour and our vessel.  The picture is small; our ship is on the left out there, the warship is on the right.  We hope she follows us around for the next few weeks.

It is very hot today, and the people who went to the beach are returning to the ship early because of the heat.  We are going back to our cabin for a beer!!!