Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. On Saturday Jon and I had until noon in our villa, at which point we'd be picked up with our luggage. Our luggage would be stored for us and we had a few hours to hang out around the resort until our seaplane was ready for departure.
That morning we tried to take advantage of the time we had and went for an early breakfast so we had a bit more time to snorkel before we had to leave. Despite not seeing any turtles in the seagrass that morning there was a lot of activity with stingrays and we saw a few large cow tail stingrays and a pink whipray. The size of these creatures will never cease to amaze me, I can't imagine what it would be like to swim next to a manta ray just knowing how big a stingray is.
After we wrapped up our last swim in the Indian Ocean, we made sure all of our stuff was packed and ready to go for the long journey home before heading to Chill Bar for our last lunch. Obviously, I also had to take advantage of the free ice cream one more time. I chose to end on rocky road which was my favorite of the few I've tried.
Around 3:45pm we boarded the boat to head back to the seaplane and started to make our way home. Our flight from Male to Doha was just under 5 hours and felt like it went by pretty fast. We both tried to stay awake to start adjusting back off island time, which was a struggle all on it's own. Finally landing in Doha, we had a 9 hour layover between that flight and our flight to Boston. When we were coming home from Africa we had a similar experience, and tried to wait it out in the airport and lounge but were going stir crazy by hour four. This time around we were a little wiser and booked a room at the hotel in the airport to at least get a few hours of sleep and a shower in between. Good thing too because I was so tired by the time we got to the hotel that, as Jon put it so nicely, I was cranky.
Yet, during the first part of our trip back Jon got an exciting email. The turtle picture that he sent in the day prior was of a turtle they haven't identified yet, and that he got the opportunity to name it! Given that they have already identified over 1,000 turtles around the property this was such a cool moment to end on and be able to keep a little piece of us connected to the Maldives.
Our flight from Doha to Boston was 14 hours and probably one of the longest, if not the longest, I've ever been on. We flew Qatar, which is what we flew on our trip to Africa, and had a great experience again. I watched a LOT of movies, took a few naps, had some delicious food and even got some knitting in (always check with airline regulations before bringing knitting needles on a flight). Back home around 5pm we ordered a quick dinner and were in bed by 7.
On to planning our next adventure .. .
