Maldives

Our business visa requires us to leave India every 6 months for a few days.  The advantage of this is it's like a mandatory vacation for us.  So this time, we went to the Maldives.  It's usually outrageously expensive, but we found a great deal at a surf hostel and had an absolutely wonderful week.  The pictures don't do it justice, and it was hard to choose only a handful to post, but here they are:

This is what we saw when we stepped out of the airport.  The capital island, Male, is across the water.

This is the typical ferry we took from island to island.  We spent the first night on the airport island, then took a "3 hour tour" to the island of Guraidhoo, a tiny island with a population of 1500.

The view from our hostel, "Riptide Vacation Inn".  It was a very basic but clean concrete block house with an open, sand-floor dining room, large AC bedrooms, and a live-in cook who prepared 3 great meals a day for us.  Talk about feeling spoiled!  And we were the only guests there!

The view from the harbor to some other islands.

Last week, hospital - This week, paradise.  Such is our life!

This is Cora's dream:  a great climbing tree with a swing on a tropical beach.  She had a blast the whole week.

Just in front of the hostel was a great place for the kids to play while we sipped tea made by our personal cook.

This bird was someone's pet, but flew freely around the island.  This is a typical road on the island - no pavement and ocean views out both ends.  Cora went barefoot the whole week.

Evie enjoyed climbing the trees, too.

When we decided to move to India, Cora said, "Yea, I'll get to climb coconut trees."  She soon found out that was harder than she thought.  Here she finally found one slanted enough to climb.

Watching the sunset with Daddy.

If you're cute and you know it, do like this.

Aside from climbing trees, we also snorkeled (including Evie), surfed (we left that up to Jay), swam, explored deserted islands, and collected shells.  Can we go again in 6 months?