SundayWe got a bit of an early start on Sunday because I had a 10am reservation for scuba diving (first time!). After our fruit breakfast, I went over to the dive center to get started. Because I had never gone scuba diving before and I didn’t want to do a whole PADI course during my stay, my only option was to do the “Discover Scuba Diving” experience. It was $200 and was part video lecture, part in-pool training, and the rest in the ocean off the jetty. When I signed up, the person at the dive center told me that usually you only end up getting about 30 minutes in the ocean (lame), but when I showed up on Sunday morning, I found out that I was the only guest that had reserved that time slot so I made sure to get through all the training stuff quickly in order to maximize my time in the ocean. The video was 25ish minutes long and I knocked out the pool training part in about another 15 minutes so I ended up getting a bit over an hour in the ocean. It was great to just be one-on-one with the instructor so that I didn’t have to wait for anyone else to get the hang of things.
At first, when they told me that we wouldn’t be going out on a boat and would just be going off the jetty, I thought that it wouldn’t be
such a cool experience, but I was 100% wrong. The ocean floor near the jetty kind of looks like a cliff and while the water is only 10 feet deep right at the edge of the jetty, there’s literally a cliff that goes down on a slant with coral all the way down. The instructor knew the area pretty well so our depth fluctuated throughout the dive based on where she thought the nicest fish would be, but the deepest we went was about 30 feet. Once again, there’s no point in trying to describe the views that I saw when I can just attach pictures. My GoPro was actually on video mode for the entire dive so I quickly went through the video and took screenshots of different parts that I thought were really good. If/when I get around to editing the video, maybe I’ll post it on YouTube and paste the link here. Overall, scuba diving was an awesome experience and for those of you who have never gone, I highly recommend it. It’s pretty easy to get a hang of and after your first few breaths under water, you’re not even paying attention to the fact that you’re breathing in air from a tank and you’re just focusing on the beautiful scenery that’s in front of you. The only bad part was that I got swimmer’s ear from scuba diving but more on that later. Either way, it was worth it and I already told DW that I’ll be ditching her for half a day to go diving when we’re in USM later this year. Without further delay though, here are a bunch of screenshots from the GoPro footage that I have from scuba diving.
While I was scuba diving, DW sat on the jetty and read her book (side point – if/when you go to MLE, bring a book or two to read!). After my dive was over, we went back our villa to eat a quick lunch and then went to the beach to relax for the rest of the afternoon. There’s really nothing like lying back and hearing nothing but the waves crashing into the shore while taking in this view:
Because the beach is right next to the Dusk Jetty, when we started overheating (which happens pretty often in the MLE heat), instead of just dunking in the pool, we just walked out on to the jetty and went snorkeling for a bit to cool off. Why not kill two birds with one stone, right?
We eventually headed back to our villa, washed up and went to The Bar for happy hour drinks. Ameez stopped by to ask us how our day was and we started talking about his background etc. and got into an hour long conversation about what it was like to grow up in MLE and his experience working for Hyatt. It was cool to hear about someone’s experience growing up in a totally different culture and how different our perspectives are. He said that he was already working on the island when it was another hotel and when he heard that Hyatt was taking it over, he had no idea who that was. He happened to Google "Hyatt" and was blown away by how this massive, luxury hotel chain existed and that he had never heard of it. This was just one of the many examples that he gave of how remote and far removed MLE is from the rest of the world. At one point he also mentioned that he once went to Dubai on vacation and after a few days, he needed to get back to his island in MLE because it was too busy for him. Imagine if he visited NYC…
Anyways, eventually Ameez told us that our dinner was hot and ready and asked us if we wanted to eat at the Island Grill for a change of scenery. We of course said yes, so he walked us over and seated us at a table. We got a table in front of a small gap in the trees so we were able to see a bit of the sunset over the beach while we ate our POM meals. On the menu was Boneless Spare Ribs with sides of Garlic String Beans and Onion Mashed Potatoes and Pesto Grilled Baby Chicken with sides of Grilled Portobello Mushrooms and Roasted Sweet Potato. The Spare Ribs were amazing and the Pesto Grilled Baby Chicken was okay but the flavor was a bit weak. We also found it weird that the serving only came with one cutlet. It was a nice size cutlet, but it was still weird and a bit stingy. As for the sides, the mashed potatoes were good but were very watery because of being mixed with all the sauce from the ribs, the string beans were once again amazing, the roasted sweet potatoes were solid, but what really stood out were the Portobello mushrooms – just incredible.
POM Meals:
The Island Grill Seating Area:
Path to the beach from The Island Grill:
After a nice dinner with our feet in the sand, we stopped by The Dhoni to play some Jenga (they had some other games to choose from as well) and then eventually made our way back to our villa, exhausted, to get a good night’s rest after a full day in the sun.
The Dhoni:
Inside The Dhoni:
To be continued...
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