The daily grind, Maldives style

My alarm goes off at 6:45am, although Anna has already been up for 20 minutes in the room the volunteers share. Kevin is next up, and I’m the last to groan, stretch, brush my teeth, and pack up my bag for the day. Our room is non-nondescript, but clean and spacious enough, with a nice patio and the all-important air conditioning. Once we’re all ready go, around 7:00am, it’s off to the canteen for breakfast before the ferry leaves to go to the Conrad Hotel. Our lodgings are on Mandhoo Island, a local Maldive island about 40 minutes boat ride from the Conrad resort’s island, called Rangali. The Maldives are broken up into “resort” islands and “local” islands, which creates a lot of interesting social dynamics since the Maldives is a fairly conservative Muslim country, and the resorts are populated with foreign tourists heavily motivated by drinking alcohol, wearing skimpy clothing on the beach, and occasionally eating a ham sandwich. As an outsider, it’s a pretty sharp demarcation between the islands, and I can only imagine that the local staff who work at the Conrad must feel like they’re living between two worlds.

Staff members recording a whale shark's length using a tape measure

Just keeping up with a moving shark in the current can be tough

Breakfast at the Mandhoo canteen is pretty consistent (or repetitive, depending on how many days you've had it), offering cereal, rice or noodles, spicy or mild curry, toast and jam, and hard-boiled eggs. After mumbled “good mornings” and a quick bite to eat with the MWSRP staff, we’re off to Rangali on the ferry. Depending on the weather, the ferry is a good opportunity to wake up, talk about the upcoming day, chat with the local staff, get a quick nap in the early morning sunshine, or catch up on your reading. It struck me this morning how similar morning commutes are, no mater where in the world or what mode of transportation. The only noticeable difference between the Rangali ferry and the DC metro is the fact that the captain is trolling for tuna on the way. Once we’re on Rangali, some staff might peel off to get ready to lead a guest whale shark tour, but most days, it’s time for second breakfast at the Conrad staff canteen, which serves a much better selection of food.

It's amazing wide the sharks can open their mouths. This isn't even the widest I've seen!

Weather in the Maldives is highly unpredictable, but always impressive

I’m not going to lie, I’m eating a lot of food on a daily basis here. My only excuse is that I’m burning a lot more calories by standing on a rocking boat, moving gear around, and chasing after whale sharks. Also, they serve a lot of food around here, and it’s really hard to say no to free food when it’s pretty good. Both the Mandhoo and Conrad canteens serve breakfast, lunch, “short eats” or tea time, and dinner for the staff, and since the morning ferry leaves so early, it’s possible to add another meal in there too, second breakfast. It’s like a tropical beach version of a Hobbit’s meal plan. It’s not fancy food or particularly diverse (almost everything contains tuna and hot peppers), but there are always four or five different options at every meal and you can make some interesting combinations (the spicy noodles and scrambled eggs wrapped in flatbread makes a pretty tasty breakfast burrito, with or without tuna). So we all eat a lot, and then burn it off in the sun just as quickly.

A friendly blacktip reef shark. Well, not that friendly really, but that's probably because we were chasing him around the reef 

Every day we go snorkeling on our lunch breaks, which means we see a lot more than just whale sharks

Like this Moorish Idol, as seen in "Finding Nemo"

Before getting onto the boat for the day, we all split up to fetch the day’s provisions: towels, water, ice, and sandwiches for lunch (tuna, of course). After loading up the boat, we’re off to the reef for a day’s spotting and swimming after sharks. Cruising along the edge of a Maldivian atoll is like being in every postcard, tourism advertisement, and inspirational poster you've ever seen, all wrapped up in one. At any one time, there are likely to be three or fours bands of brilliant turquoise, cerulian, azure, and cobalt water surrounding white sands, palm trees, and coral reefs as far as you can see in either direction. The less pleasant side of that coin is as a volunteer for the MWSRP, I’m looking at that spectacular view from the unshaded roof of a boat, which happens to be painted white, so I’m being irradiated from all directions at once. With my skin, this results in a type of escalating arms races between me and the sun.

• Day 1 morning: I’m putting on SPF 35 non-waterproof sunscreen every 1.5 hours, alternating between shirt and no shirt.
• Day 1 afternoon: I’m getting pink, wearing short-sleeved shirt and hat.Day 2 morning: I’m pink, wearing short-sleeved shirt and hat constantly.
• Day 2 afternoon: Legs and face are red. Applying water-resistant SPF 60 hourly, wrapping a towel around my legs.
• Day 3 morning: Tops of feet and arms are pink, legs and face are brick red. Draping towel over the tops of my feet, wrapping towel around legs, hat pulled down low, added long-sleeved short over t-shirt.
• Day 3 afternoon: Applying sunscreen under clothing or towels. Nose peeling. Periodically hiding below decks.
• Day 4: Office day, avoiding sunshine as much as possible.
• Day 5: Tan! But raining, so no further exposure.
• Day 6: Tan fading. Repeat cycle.

It's not really much of a contest. Thanks to that white boat roof, for the first time in my life, I know what it feels like to have my lower lip sunburned, the tips of my toes burned, and the back of my earlobes burned. I’m not in agony or blistering, and it is starting to mellow into a tan, but I can say that I've never been subjected to so much sustained solar energy. As one of the staff said “I laugh when volunteers say they want to try to get a good tan during their time. You don’t try to tan here, it just happens, despite all the sunblock you’re putting on.”

One of the MWSRP staff getting up close to check on a shark

The sharks are really beautiful and graceful, in a huge way

One of my favorite things to do is visit the local islands, where we can get good local food, meet friendly people, and participate in fun activities like this drum/singing/dance concert

We're typically out on the boat, cruising the Marine Protection Area for about seven to eight hours a day, with a break for snorkeling on one of the reefs around midday. Data gathering is one of the main components of the day's work on the reef, so we record the vessels we see in the MPA, as well as dolphins, turtles, or other large marine life. The really exciting moments come when one of us spots a whale shark near the surface and we all grab our gear and get in the water to try to photograph the shark for identification and record any details on its behavior and direction. Some day's it's long hours of standing on the roof between sightings, and some days we hardly get out of the water before the next shark is spotted. Occasionally, we even run into a second shark while swimming with the first!

Since we spend so much time together every day, it's wonderful that the staff and other volunteers that I'm working with are all such great people. The staff are friendly and passionate about what they're doing, with fantastic stories from past trips and what they do when they're not in the Maldives, and my fellow volunteers are taking a six-month trip around the world as well, but in the opposite direction I'm going, so we're sharing a lot of tips and recommendations. It always creates a little anxiety to drop a bunch of people together and put them in such close and constant association, but I feel like we all mesh pretty well and are happy to hang out in the staff bar after a day on the boat and just relax.

Sunset on Mandhoo

As the afternoon winds down, we head back to the Conrad dock to return gear and clean up the boat. After that, we can either take the 6pm or 9pm ferry back to Mandhoo, depending on how much internet-accessible time we need, or if the Conrad canteen is serving something special that night. Once we're back on Mandhoo, it's not long before everyone is showered and ready for lights out after a long day before starting up the routine again. One thing about this daily schedule is all the days begin to blur together very quickly, and the weeks begin to disappear shortly after.

Friday afternoons and Saturdays are free time, when we can catch up on emails and watch downloaded movies, or if we haven't had enough ocean time, go for a snorkel or SCUBA. We also have trips to some of the local islands where we can spice up our food selections at a cafe and listen to a little local music and dance. The local islands are really interesting and great places to visit. They're quiet, the people are very friendly, and they have that great "island feel" that just makes your whole body relax and look for a place to sit with a fan, ocean view, and a fruit juice (not a cocktail - Muslim country, remember?). The Conrad is a beautiful resort, but in a lot of ways I prefer the local islands for their authenticity, so taken together it's a very memorable and enjoyable mix of experiences. Unfortunately, it's going by very fast, and my four weeks here are dwindling. I'll try to post at least one more entry on the Maldives before I leave on November 2, but after that it's Southeast Asia, starting with Thailand!