Day 4 in the Maldives - Good Morning Sunshine ☀️

Good morning sunshine!

Just before 9 o'clock, we wake up the kids. There are 10 suns in the sky outside!!! Yay!

On the way to the restaurant, we see another island rabbit, this time a black-and-white speckled rabbit. There is another black rabbit sitting in the bushes. But it is very shy and immediately runs away. The other rabbit even lets us pet it. How cute 🥰

There is a black-red-yellow lizard sunning itself on the palm tree next to it.

Like yesterday, I start the day with a freshly prepared omelette, while the rest of the family prefers to try the pancakes and waffles with chocolate sauce.

Whether you get tasty fruit is a matter of luck. The papaya is always delicious. Unfortunately, watermelon and honeydew melon are often very hard and not sweet. Too bad. It's the same with the pineapple. But it's funny how 'different' the fruits here look. The watermelons are only as big as pomelos, and the pineapple is also small, slim, and long. Completely different from what you know from the supermarket at home.

The German couple doing water sports described to us yesterday where the best entry and exit point at the reef is. We should stay close to the two yellow buoys near the jetty, and underneath there would be a rope marking the way to the reef.

We're trying that today. Unfortunately, our son is not really convinced about snorkeling. Even the long distance through the lagoon with the thick snorkel mask is not fun for him. But since we want to go on the snorkeling trip included in the all-inclusive package tomorrow, he has to try it today.

We find the rope at the buoy and snorkel along the rope to the reef. Due to the low tide, we can stand everywhere, which gives us some security. I manage to grab the rope and easily pull myself towards the reef against the current.

We pass through several meters of coral desert, then the first coral blocks with many colorful fish appear.

Shortly afterwards, it becomes dark blue and we approach the edge of the reef.

Unfortunately, the first thing our son sees is the blacktip reef shark on the reef roof about 3 meters away from him. He wants to go back immediately, but I can only persuade him with difficulty to look at the colorful fish near the reef with me.

Although we are only a few meters away from the edge of the reef and not swimming along the reef, we see several sharks, rays, and small mantas (?) swimming in circles right in front of us at the edge of the reef. Awesome! In addition, there are many parrotfish, triggerfish, butterflyfish, starfish, and more.

Unfortunately, my old underwater camera gives up after taking today's pictures 🥺😥

My phone doesn't handle the underwater phone case well. It starts jumping around between apps as soon as I hold the phone with the case underwater.

At least my daughter's phone is compatible. Although she can only film, I can at least take screenshots from the videos (identified by the 'portrait' format)

That definitely makes up for the dead corals, which haven't really recovered since the coral bleaching more than 20 years ago.

Yes, the corals are almost all dead, but thanks to the many fish, the reef is definitely alive.

After a while, we swim back to the lagoon along the rope. Our son has had enough for today. He prefers to swim and jump in the waves at the front of the beach.

Speaking of waves: we haven't experienced such strong waves in the Maldives before. We have never had so much wave action like here in Thulhagiri. We expected a shallow and calm lagoon where you can see the bottom everywhere. But here the lagoon is immediately quite deep, and there are some pretty big waves breaking. But well, the young ones enjoy it, why not? Something different, and as long as the waves are not too high at the reef, so we can snorkel, it's fine with me 😛

The beach section from Bungalow 120 to the pool has several wave breakers, not necessarily nice, but since we're only staying to the left of Bungalow 118, it doesn't bother us.

There are big black crabs sitting on the walls everywhere.

After lunch, my daughter and I explore the jetty and the view from the water bungalows to the beach.

Without our son, we make a second snorkeling attempt. This time we want to try the other entrance to the reef, which is marked by a buoy right in front of our bungalows 117/118. Here too, we hang on to the rope and swim to the reef. However, it is much sandier here, and at first glance, it looks like a lunar landscape. There aren't many fish swimming around here either.

We snorkel left and right along the edge of the reef for a while, but then we turn around. The other entrance to the reef was definitely nicer, but the visibility is not good anymore.

In the afternoon, we chill at the beach bar, try a few cocktails before dinner, and watch the sunset. But the funniest thing is still all the Russians posing wildly on the beach in the most adventurous poses. It's ridiculously hilarious 😂

Later at dinner, our son is especially looking forward to dessert: there are brownies!

But patiently, he has to go to the salad buffet first, then to the main buffet, and finally he can go to the dessert buffet. The disappointment is immense when we stand at the buffet and there are no brownies left 🤷🏻😱 Our son gets a chocolate cookie and a piece of mocha cake, but he's still offended.

We are very annoyed at a Russian group consisting of 3 mothers with 4 children. They are just leaving the restaurant, but there are at least 5 plates full of smashed brownies on the table. 🤬🤬🤬

That really annoys me. We try to teach the kids some manners in the restaurant, and quite a few vacationers behave in this way. Unfortunately, it seems that the staff does not prevent it when someone stands in front of the buffet and loads up 20 brownies on their plate.

It's the same with the cocktails. Some vacationers order multiple cocktails at once, following the motto 'it's all-inclusive', take a few sips, leave everything behind, and leave 🤷🏻

Unbelievable...

But well, we're on vacation and don't want to get upset.

We end the evening at the Sand Bar with a Black Russian and a card game.