Satellite
  • Day 91

    Male, Maldives

    March 15, 2015 on the Maldives ⋅ ⛅ 30 °C

    I can't believe I missed "Pi day" yesterday (3.14.15). I did have pie though so I should be okay with the math gods. :-)
    Today we sailed into the town of Male in the archipelago of the Maldives. A string of hundreds of islands in the Indian Ocean southwest of India. The island is a very interesting one that is not what you might think of an isolated string of islands in the middle of the ocean. The main city of Male is the lowest point in the lowest country in the world and will soon be gone due to sea level change that is accompanying global warming. The island though is chocked full of people. It is the most densely populated city in the world. The island that Male sits on is about a mile square and has about a block of green space and every other foot of the island is taken up by a building. Everything else in the country sits on outlying islands. Some of them manmade to house a population that is growing instead of decreasing as you would expect in a dying country.
    The politics are crazy and the country is becoming more conservative in it's Muslim beliefs. This is really putting some of it's people at odds with it's entire economic structure which is built around the tourists who come and stay on the 91 resorts that are built out over the atolls in the area. They are housed with people who like to drink alcohol and wear little skimpy swimsuits while the country has a prohibition on alcohol and no bikinis are allowed on the beaches. :-) It will be very interesting to see whether religion or the 1 billion dollars of tourism money wins out in this little experiment but I suspect it won't end up well if the little glimpse of the street protests and the military/police that were stationed waiting for the protesters today were any indication.
    The battle will probably be fought out in a city the lucky tourists never even see as their seaplanes or fast boats take them right past the city to the island with the airport on it, which looks much like you would expect an island with an airport should look. :-)
    We did enjoy a ferry ride and walk through across a manmade island to a beach for a bit of light snorkeling which was fun. The manmade island was higher then the other islands so maybe they are making themselves a place to go as the water rises. We didn't make it out to any of the fancy resorts as we couldn't find a boat and they probably didn't want us anyway but we did get a little twinge that it could be fun to come here and stay out on the huts over the water in the middle of the ocean with the glitteratzi but for now we will just plod on to the Seychell's having mixed feelings about this interesting country that is a contradiction in many ways.
    Pictures to follow.
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