Cruise to the Maldives on the Maha (review)

Hello scuba people,

Here I am back from a week of cruising, early February on the Maha. It was the first time that I had crossed my fins in the Maldivian paradise waters and I was not disappointed by this sunny break in the middle of winter.

First of all, it's not that far! The journey with Emirates went relatively quickly. It must be said that the quality of the programs offered in the huge A380 already allows you to spend an hour of travel zapping to find the film you are going to watch among the 1200 channels. Then, the stopover in Dubai was relatively short since we found some friends who were going to spend a week on the Le Soleil boat ... it was the opportunity to share a few drinks in transit, and to end the night like babies. in the second flight to Male.

Once in Male, you do not have to hit 2 hours of minibus to get to the boat, as the boat is waiting for us at the airport. This is a significant luxury when you feel all sticky after a day of flying.

So we quickly took our marks on the Maha which is a boat that I adored. Boat on a human scale, all in decorated wood, it is airy in every sense of the word. First of all, the places where we live, including the place where we took our meals, are in the open air. Here, we are not in a boat which bombards at the level of the air conditioning, which allows to preserve our small ears. And the sundeck is large and allows those who want to have a UV session or a nap in the shade to find all the necessary comfort. As for the rooms, again the air conditioning is bearable and even pleasant! The mattresses had just been changed, and I slept there like a parrot fish in its bubble!

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The Maha is accompanied by an annex, called Dhoni. In local jargon, this refers to traditional Maldivian boats. This is the space reserved for diving: there are the blocks, the gear and the compressor. The crew has the elegance to go and inflate the blocks a few hundred meters from the Maha, letting the divers take advantage of the tranquility of the sea to take a post-dive nap, without having the purring of the compressor in their ears. .

The crew is lovely, discreet and helpful, you can not ask for more. And the cook prepared us good dishes with fresh fish (hum sashimi all fresh !!!) and recipes of Indian and Sri Lankan influences, to fall.

We liked the convivial moments dedicated to the aperitif, and when it dragged on a bit, we appreciated not being rushed for reasons of timing (that's also the holidays!)

But then, how were the dives? And mantas, have you seen any?

We often come to the Maldives to see the queens of the seas, and one of them was kind enough to welcome us during our re-adaptation dive… it augured for a good week. Then, they became more capricious. We saw them in droves circling the boat while we were fishing at night, but during the day, they played hide and seek., The bougresses! One of them still delighted us during a whole dive. Magnificent. And for the rest, we appreciated the richness of the fauna: sharks, grays, white tips, eagle rays, turtles, moray eels, shrimp of all kinds and even some squiles, crabs porcelains, in short, big and small. The Maldives is a kind of 4-cheese pizza from diving in terms of richness of the seabed.

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As for the diving conditions, it is true that there is sometimes juice and that it is necessary to plunge immediately presto not to miss the spot. Normally, we warn you that you need a minimum level 2 to go to the Maldives and it is not over rated!

We were a group of 12 divers each with several hundred dives on the clock and the dives that we completed in a group group were rare. Our dive guide was more of the “who loves me follow me” type and we may have regretted a few times an additional guide who would have shown us the leaf fish here or the mantis shrimp there. I think we would have appreciated a second divemaster who brings up the rear or takes half the group with him to transform the sometimes marathon diving into a walk where despite the current, we take the time to stop and relax. ecstatic. Finally, after a few days, everyone decided to take their own rhythm in autonomous mini-groups. The good point is that we were all able to get our parachutes out of formalin, rewarding us with moments of anthology ...

In the end, we rather did 2 dives / day versus the 2-3 planned dives, for several reasons: there was no rotation between the empty blocks and the full blocks: the crew had to fill our blocks afterwards. each dive, which required at least 2 hours of inflation. In my opinion, an investment in ten additional blocks could allow the empty blocks to be inflated during the dives and better optimize the number of dives per day. Also, the equipment available on board for night dives, in particular the number of lights, being reduced, we were not all able to enjoy a night dive. So, a tip, invest in your own lamp, it would be a shame to miss the nocturnal hunting scenes that our shark friends are fond of.

We still found an advantage to only dive twice a day! This allowed us to visit the village of Rashdoo, have a night fishing and barbecue on the beach on the last evening, with a table in the shape of a whale shark. Whale shark that we will only have seen in a reduced and plastic model, made in China 😉

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The Maha being quite new to the Maldivian diving ecosystem, I have no doubt that the devoted Jérôme, the owner of the boat, will make the few adjustments that we have been able to share with him, to raise the level of the service of Very Good to Excellent ...

Go ahead, the boat is human-sized and friendly, and for me, this is the real luxury in diving cruises.

Finally, a big thank you to the team Key Largo who as usual had organized a scuba diving trip for us.