Because of the nitrogen in your system after you scuba dive, you have to wait at least 24 hours before flying. This meant that Jon wasn't able to do any dives on Friday so he scheduled two for Thursday morning, one for 8:30am and another immediately following at 10:30am in hopes of getting in some last minute under the water wildlife sightings.
While Jon was out diving, I decided to join the 8am Power Yoga class. The gym and yoga studio are tucked away down a little path surrounded by palm trees and local fauna. The yoga studio is open air on the second floor overlooking the ocean, a pretty picturesque view if you're going to work out on vacation. The difference of what Power Yoga is compared to regular yoga, is that power yoga focuses on one movement to the next in a bit more rapid succession than normal yoga. It's fairly face paced and you repeat the movements as you would reps in a set. By the time 9 o'clock rolled around I was tired, and hungry, enough so that I took advantage of both the breakfast buffet and menu.
With some extra time to spare I decided to jump into the ocean to get in a few snorkeling sessions, one around the seagrass behind our villa and one at the house reef. There wasn't much activity in the seagrass which is what pushed me to head towards the house reef. There I saw schools of fish and another black tip reef shark. I went back to the room to quickly change and meet Jon for lunch because we had more water activities that afternoon!
That afternoon we boarded a boat to take a short 15-20 minute ride away from the resort. We were going on a turtle safari.
Turtles are a big part of Six Senses Laamu. There are over 1,000 unique turtles that they have identified and named around the resort. Each turtle has a different pattern of spots on its face, similar to our fingerprints, which is how they are identified. You can often see them swimming in the seagrass where they eat, or on the reefs resting. Six Senses is one of the few resorts in the Maldives that does not pull up their seagrass from around the area since it's such a large food source for turtles and other marine animals. Many resorts do for aesthetic purposes because the water appears clearer, bluer and cleaner without it. Seagrasses also provide invaluable ecosystem services by acting as breeding and nursery ground for a variety of organisms and help produce a significant amount of oxygen into the air. Six Senses protected their seagrass areas in 2017 and were able to get 30% of Maldives resorts to do the same.
Back to the turtles ..
15-20 minutes away we're at our first stop in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We put on our snorkel gear and fins and hopped right in the water. There were around 8 of us, with a guide leading us and one following behind just to ensure no one got lost. We were in the middle of the ocean with nothing else around so I appreciated the extra set of eyes.
At our first stop we were able to see beautiful reefs in front of us with hundreds of fish swimming about. Just a few minutes into our safari we saw a large green turtle swim along the sand below us and shortly after saw two more. One was just resting on the reef, to which they blend in really well. After about 20 minutes of snorkeling and following turtles we swam back to the boat to go to our second stop.
Our second stop was a bit trickier because there was coral closer to the surface we had to be careful not to touch. One of the first things Jon and I saw below us was a white-tipped reef shark! We've seen black-tip all week but have yet to see this one. It was another animal to check off our checklist!
One turtle nearby was hiding so well on the reef most of us swam right by him, but Jon with his scuba experience now in looking for wildlife was able to point him out for everyone to see. One more turtle sighting before we swam back to the boat and head back to the resort.
That night we had a delicious dinner at Chill Bar and went back to the villa to have a glass of wine on the deck while pointing out some constellations. Not too shabby of a day.
