The one-line summary of our trip:

We had a *fantastic* time :-)

Slightly more details are called for, so here goes:

We set off from Cambridge on 26th December 1999. We flew from London Gatwick airport, with Airtours, and after a re-fuelling stop in Bahrain we arrived in Male, the capital of the Maldives, at around lunchtime on 27th December. From there it was a short seaplane trip to our resort, Kuredu. The seaplane trip was such fun - quite an experience!

On our arrival, as we walked down the jetty towards the island, we saw two of the staff unfurling a "Welcome" banner and another offering us a cold refreshing drink, which was highly appreciated - we were *very* hot and tired by this time! After a quick info session with one of the staff to tell us where we could find the various facilities and so on, we went off to find our villa.

In our villa, we immediately turned on the air-conditioning and collapsed! After a brief rest we changed into shorts and t-shirts and set out to explore the island a little. By about 7pm we were dead tired, so we had a snack in the Tea House and went back to the villa. I stayed up, sitting on the porch and reading, until 11:30pm when our suitcases arrived (they had followed us from Male by boat) while Jonathan slept. As soon as our suitcases arrived I fell into bed and went out like a light!

The next day, and all the subsequent days, followed the same pattern. Get up late, spend ages smothering ourselves in sunscreen, do some snorkelling or swimming or diving, eat lunch. After lunch, repeat the whole process with the sunscreen and then more snorkelling, swimming, reading, table tennis, board games, etc. At 6pm we would make our way to the sunset beach on the Western end of the island, where we could sit on deckchairs on the edge of the ocean, have a long cool drink and watch the sun sink down behind the horizon... very romantic! After dinner we either joined the evening entertainment (staff cabaret, diving exhibition, champagne evening...) or just went back to our room for an early night. We slept a *lot*, very soundly!

Some highlights of the trip:
- New Year's Eve - standing out on the pool deck looking over the ocean as the date ticked over to the year 2000! (Very, very romantic!)
- Night snorkelling - with lamps, we saw a huge (1.5m diameter) sting ray swimming right underneath us. If we turned the lamps off, we saw bio-luminescence from the plankton whenever we moved our flippers in the water.
- Our waiter Hussain - it was Ramadan while we were there, meaning that none of the Maldivian staff are allowed to swallow *anything* (even their own spit!) during the daylight hours. Our waiter was brilliant despite being tired and thirsty. We loved hearing about his wife and children.
- The geckos, crabs and bats - especially "Colin", our resident gecko who loved to sit inside the lampshade of our porch light in the evenings, catching the flies that were attracted to the light.

We didn't want to leave when it was time to go! Unfortunately our flight home was delayed by 17 hours, but we couldn't take advantage of the extra time as our luggage had already gone on to Male. We eventually made it home at 6pm on Tuesday 11th January, back to wintry Cambridge! We are already dreaming about going to Kuredu again.