Four Days in Rasdhoo, Maldives

Rasdhoo Island

Rasdhoo is a small island, you can get to the other side in ten minutes. It is inhabited by 1,200-1,500 locals. It has a mosque, small hospital, less than a handful of restaurants, a fitness club, a good community recreation area with sportsfields, a few convenience stores, a handful of shops and a number of dive and snorkel operations.

Accomodations are small and family owned. However there is lots of construction going on (smallish buildings, no high rises), because the government changed the building/tourism laws in 2009. Originally the government only allowed one resort per uninhabited island. These became the expensive over water villas the Maldives became known for. Rasdhoo is across a channel from one and we see seaplanes flying guests in & out all day long. 

After 2009 the inhabited islands like Rasdhoo & Ukulhas were allowed to have guesthouses for tourists which set off a bit if a construction boom. Building sites are a lot more laid back than in the western world. Last night, John and I were having supper after dark on the second floor of Lemon Drop Restaurant. With the help of flood lights about six men were working on the second floor of a building across the street laying rebar. No one was wearing a construction hat, gloves or even work boots. They were either barefoot or in flip flops. They weren’t wearing goggles when soldering or using an electric saw to cut the metal bars. No fencing protected them from a fall.

Many tourists here are Russian (the government allows them visas and there are direct flights between Russia and the Maldives). There are also a lot of Chinese tourists and many Europeans. We have met a few Canadians and no Americans. On arrival at the airport we also noted a sign saying that no persons travelling on an Israeli passport are permitted to enter the country. 

People drive around the island mostly on motorcycles or golf cart type vehicles.

There are signs around informing tourists of proper dress when not on the tourist/bikini beach. The call to prayer is broadcast across the island every few hours.

Sharks Need Affection Too

At one of the docks, fishermen throw their leftovers to a huge pack of sharks; larger nurse sharks and smaller reef sharks. Click here for a short video.

When we go back to see the sharks in the late afternoon, no one is throwing in fish, but two nurse sharks have poised themselves on the bottom step at the dock and are letting people pet them. They feel hard. I thought they would feel rubbery. Click here for a short video.

Everyone takes off their sandals/shoes (it is expected) before entering any building: home, hotel or store.

Magic Under the Waves

There really isn’t a lot to do here except hanging on the pristine white sand beach,  snorkeling, diving and water sports. This is the best off beach snorkeling I have ever done. It actually compares to the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef has more colourful coral but the Maldives seem  to have more varied and greater numbers of fish once you swim to the drop off.

John is snorkeling with one fin because he rubbed the skin off a part of one foot where it rubbed against the fin he was wearing on an earlier snorkel outing.

The coral starts shortly after you get in the water. You have to swim out 80-100 meters  before you get to the dropoff and at low tide, sometimes your tummy even brushes the coral. But despite the shallowness, there is still a lot to see; so many bright smaller fish including many Picasso triggerfish (also known as Humuhumunukunuku apua’a in Hawaiian) which I have a special fondness for. I even spot pipefish, which are part of the seahorse family in the shallows but it is the dropoff where the magic really happens.

Suddenly it steeply drops away to deep blueness. The water changes from bathtub warmth to chilly as if there is some kind of invisible wall. And the fish are bigger but smaller ones still mix in. There are literally thousands of fish all around you and too many different species to count.

Every now and then a reef or nurse shark glides silently below, totally ignoring my existence.

We see small sea scallops with bright purple lips in the shallows but their size grows the deeper we go.

Schools of hundreds of fish seem to have their own territories along the reef. Sometimes the schools have two or three different species mixed in.

Unicorn fish swim so close they practically brush my nose. It can be a bit startling at times.

Always in one part of the reef there are hundreds of dark navy, large triggerfish. Their colour is a rich navy that is almost velvety. They dot the depths as far as the eye can see like stars in the sky. The line edging their tails glows neon blue as the sun shines from above. It feels surreal. This is what it must feel like to be floating in space.

There are so many different kinds of triggerfish. Of course there are the graceful Moorish Idols and butterfly fish but so many more kinds that I can’t even begin to identify.

On one of our morning snorkels, we spot a sea turtle. We follow him for over thirty minutes as he goes from coral to coral eating his breakfast. He is so relaxed and not bothered by us. Every now and then he floats up to the surface for air, at one point coming so close that I could have brushed his face. His eyes are so clear and somehow gentle.

There are many different kinds of parrot fish. So colourful and some of them are very large. Largest parrotfish I have ever seen. 

We watch the porcupine fish with its big eyes, it looks similar to a puffer fish. Clownfish swim around in the protective arms of anemones. A manta ray swims by and I spot a huge moray eel in a crevice in the coral. It truly is a magical world under the waves.

We spend over an hour every time we go to snorkel. It is hard to leave.

Leaving Rasdhoo

Our four days in Rasdhoo pass both slowly and quickly. We leave tomorrow at 7:30am on a speedboat back to Male and then fly to  Hong Kong via Colombo.