More Maldives

Some good waves this week. Put in a few 6-8 hour days. Sore ribs, bit of rash....all worth the effort. Thankfully no arc eye's yet - as brough my Oakley Water Jackets with. Takes a bit of getting used to surfing with shades on, and learning to live with a few water drops in your vision all the time, but more than happy not to burn the sh*te outta my eye's. Look like a lekker Vaalie kook with em on, but that's the price to pay!

Surfed a rare left that only lights up in an unusual wind direction. Perfect peeling lefts down a long point. Jeesh, I so wish I didn't suck so bad on my backhand, cos you could get super long rides if you could pump a bit to make the odd section every 100m or so. Even being useless still got 100m rides. Nice flat reef too, so face plants went unpunished. Just us and 2 friendly locals.

Wind switched up again, so back to our favourite spot. Perfect waves for 2 days. Head high to overhead sheet glass perfection. Most of the time just the 2 of us, with just 2 sessions with another 4 peeps. Surfed so much didn't have time to take any shots. Eish.

Caught a few fish trolling between surf spots. Garth picked up a kiff grouper that weighed in at nearly 12kg's. Plenty of dog tuna, and a few red snapper. Freezer is full again. Yebo. Glad to know I'll never starve if my husband has a fishing rod handy!

Waste is a huge problem on the islands, as there's no garbage collection - meaning the islands have to dispose of their own waste. Unfortunately this means a lot of it gets dumped in the sea (and then washed back up onto another island!), although some is burnt too. The locals on this island came up with an ingenious way to use all the plastic cola bottles. They cut em up, painted em, and pieced em together to build a fence for the pre-primary school. Reduce, reuse, recycle! Lekker!

Missed the lunar eclipse cos was early hours of the morning, but snapped a shot of the moon rising instead. Moon phase plays an important part of surfing here, as tides often govern when you can surf a spot - or how much paddling you'll be doing. Many spots are just too dangerous on the low tide, unless the swells really big and you can surf further out on the reef. The tides create some serious currents in and out of the reef passes too, so you can find yourself paddling your meilie off and getting nowhere fast! You only have to try surfing on the wrong stage of the tide just once to learn that lesson! Think of the worst rip you've ever been caught in....and triple it!

Last week here coming up. Charts are slow to start with, then pick up into some good looking surf. Just holding thumbs the winds play ball.....