I set my alarm for 8am today because Jay and I have booked a tour to a local island by speed boat and it leaves around 10am. I wake up every morning to about 40 texts and 30 emails so I wanted to make sure that I could go through those while it was still a decent time at home (about 9pm home time). I went through them, answered a bunch of texts, had a call with Cindy about 2 client situations and then got ready to go for breakfast.
The girls lost their game vs Lindsay last night but they're still in the Playoffs Round 2 because we are tied vs DW but we won against them which is the 2nd tiebreaker (record vs other tied teams). 1st tie breaker was number of wins and we each had 3, we each also had 2 ties and 1 loss - but they're showing higher on the Standings than us because they had more goals scored during their games..but that's the 3rd tie breaker and we don't get to that point so because we won against them in one of the two games and we tied the other game we move on.
In order to go to Provincials we have to win, tie or lose by less than 2 and that game is tomorrow (March 7th). The team we play for that game is the DW team we just put out of Playoffs and so they'll be gunning to win by more than 2 in order to put us out of Provincials. If we're out the 2nd DW team gets to go which is another reason they'll want to win by more than 2 goals.
Assan told us when we booked the tour that it included a typical lunch so we wanted to have a good breakfast a little earlier than normal. I got my normal fruit, yogurt, croissant and today tried the pineapple jam, which was delicious. Jay had oatmeal and a croissant and that's it surprisingly.
After breakfast we walked back to our room, changed, sunscreened and called Assan to see if he could give us a ride to the dive centre for the tour. He's picking us up at 9:40am. Also asked Maria if she could lend us some cash for tour tips and so she dropped that off on their way for breakfast (Jim slept in this morning because Maria worked until 1am and he kept her company - but he's a night hawk anyway so often up late).
When we got to the dive center Jay had to fill in the waiver (I already did it when I picked up the snorkel gear) and had to write the date March 6th "We go home tomorrow" I said - you should have seen the way his face lit up with a grin. Holy Smokes - is he happy to be headed home. We both love it here, he just has a hard time being away this long - this is the longest vacation we have ever taken, 2 weeks.
The tour is ready to go, we're on it with just one other couple - they're young, from Miami. They were in Canada in January in order to see snow - not a great winter for them to do that, but they went to Tremblant and Montreal so there might have been snow there, and then came to Toronto for a UFC fight and then went to Niagara Falls.
Our tour guide is Pato, he works at JW but is contracted out - he works for Best Dives. He's our local tour guide, he grew up on the island we're going to. It's about a 20 min speedboat ride, Jay asked how deep the water is and he said it's between 15-30 meters between these islands but beyond the Capital (which is where we are going) it gets to 100 meters deep pretty quickly. He said we may see dolphins, if we're lucky, which we weren't. The waves were rolling as we travelled and it wasn't a bumpy ride but it wasn't smooth either.
On the way to the Capital we passed the island Pato was born on. He said there were 200 people who lived on the island with no electricity, his family left in 1996 and everyone else who was left was moved after the tsunami in 2004. 3 islands were abandoned and the government made room for them on the Capital Funadhoo which now houses about 2000 people. There is no more natural room on the island so the government is expanding it by bringing in sand.
We got docked and had to climb up onto the wharf - as soon as we got out we started walking (Jay says this is the moment he knew we had made a mistake, lol). It's HOT. Hotter than hot. Pato started to 'show us the sites' - "this is the police station" walking "this is the school" walking "this is the government building" walking "this is the cemetery"..."this is the mangrove lake" more walking.
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The island is powered by diesel, we walked past the power station and in the trees above us were dozens of fruit bats hanging and resting.
Water is supplied by a combination of fresh water wells and captured rain water. At the beginning of the rainy season everyone cleans their roofs really well and after 3 days of heavy rain they start to collect the rain water into cisterns under the homes.
There is a sanitation plant at the other end of the island where they recycle waste into compost.
We continue walking towards the Airport, there are 3 flights a week into the island. Pato didn't like that you can't windsurf and kite board when flights are expected in because that's the best beach.
I had asked him maybe 5 mins before if there was somewhere to use the washroom - Oh, let me preface this with we were told when we booked the tour that it would include lunch and at this point he said we would have to make a special trip to the restaurant to use the washroom. As we continue walking past the Airport (which also houses the Morgue) Jay said why don't I go to see if there is a bathroom there. Because Pato has a friend who works at the airport they let me in to use the bathroom, it's literally just inside the door. The entire airport area is on a man-made extension of the island.
During Covid the whole island was quarantined for 30 days when one person got COVID, the police would bring supplies to your house. Only fisherman were allowed out so a lot of men took up fishing. It didn't make a difference, he said many people on the island got COVID.
It's so hot - we checked out the supermarket just for the AC. Jay said it really goes to show how much effort and logistics goes into the JW and all the fresh ingredients they have for all our delicious meals because everything arriving here to this island and available in this store is canned, packaged.
It's been about an hour of walking now all around the island (it's not that big) and Pato says "do you want to go see the other half of the island or go back to the port?" There is another couple with us but I quickly say "we're ok to go back if you are, I'm not sure how much more there is to see". This tour was a total bust. It was not worth the $160USD per person for the tour (and I'm not usually a complainer but it was awful so I will likely email about it when we get back to the resort.
We saw lots of people and no one greeted us the way we have been on the resort with a nod and a hand over their heart so finally I asked "is the greeting we get around the resort a Maldive thing or a JW thing?" and he laughs and says "It's a JW thing, same with changing the time by an extra hour, that's not the time it is actually, that's only on the resort" WHAT?! Weird. I decided later that I think that that's so there is more daylight later - the sun set around 7:30pm instead of 6:30pm because they went ahead by an hour.
Jay said when we got back "I thought you might get that hot angry thing happening". It was close, there was very little breeze and very little shade.
It's 11:30am and I sent a text to Maria to let them know that we were coming back (no lunch included) so we can grab lunch together after going back to the room to change, swim and cool off.
We met for lunch at the Italian restaurant, Jay and I just split a pizza, which they make fresh in a pizza oven outside and he had a salad. I brought the 5 Crowns down but we didn't get one of the tables with a fan above it so it's too hot. We each just went back to our rooms - Jay and I went snorkelling but it's a little windy so I didn't want to go past the breakwall because there were waves on the other side of it today.
I do this every time...the last day never gets written properly. Oh well.
We went to dinner, surprise surprise.
Next day we went for breakfast and lunch, haha, Jay and I packed up all our stuff, we did one last snorkel beyond the breakwall - there were lots of fish and it was HOT.
Our flight out of the resort was at 4pm, it left a little later at 4:30pm and was already full with people from the Fairmont who are about 10 mins further.
We had 4 flights to make it home, they all went smoothly and our bags were checked right from Male through to Toronto and actually made it all the way!
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