We had one quest for the day: to find a dive shop to take us out tomorrow. As far as we knew, there were two independently run dive shops in Male who target local customers. All the rest of the zillion dive shops are part of private hotels, and the word from fellow cruisers is that the private hotels do not want anyone who is not a hotel guest using their facilities

We took the ferry over to Male at about 0900. The plan was to go back to the Sea House for breakfast because they are a wi-fi hot spot. We could check e-mail while eating. Then we would set out in search of the dive shop and do some sight seeing.

We got off the ferry and headed upstairs. The restaurant was closed until 1330 (1:30 pm). We wandered down a very short and incredibly narrow road walking toward Relax Hotel, noticing that every business on the street was closed. We had heard the food at the hotel was good, and being a hotel, they would likely be open. The menu was huge, with lots of international choices. The food was OK and they didn’t have a wi-fi connection.

Once we were done eating, we set out to do some sightseeing. Male is different from any place we have ever been to before. The closest comparison we can come up with is a very old European town. The roads are paver stone. The main roads, such as the one the ferry terminal is on, can hold two cars. The side streets varied from being one and half cars wide, to one car, to barley wide enough for a scooter. Wider streets have narrow sidewalks along them. Narrow streets have no sidewalk. There are a zillion scooters everywhere. Just about every street is lined from end to end with parked scooters. The few cars on the road seemed to be mostly taxis.

The buildings are literally right on top of one another, with most sharing common walls. There are quite a few low buildings around, more than we had realized from the distance. There were a lot of buildings under construction, too, all of them tall. Since it is the Sabbath, we couldn’t tell for sure if the construction is actively on-going, but we got a definite sense all these buildings will be all completed soon. We could be wrong, but we got the impression that the low buildings are older and that they are slowly being torn down to accommodate the high rises that are predominate around town. It looks like most streets are a mix of residential and commercial. Low rise residential buildings have big walls around them and, in peeking through a few gates, it looks like there are tiny courtyards with several residences within each set of walls. Most of the high rises look as if they are incredibly narrow, and we guess the lower ones must be narrow, too. Many of the streets are lined with mature trees rooted in tiny planters at the side of the road. Most of the shops are small specialty stores, and looking in the windows, there is a definite sophisticated mall feel to the stores, not a mom and pop feel. Every single business was closed. Every one.

There were quite a few people out and about, the vast majority of them men. After wandering the streets of town for a while, we headed to the west shore. There is a man made beach there, with a walled off swimming area, similar to the Children’s Beach in La Jolla. There seemed to be a lot of people swimming, especially kids.

As we continued on, we saw the rest of the shore was covered in funny concrete cones that look like giant jacks. Here is a photo of one that was made into a monument thanking the Japanese for providing the breakwaters for the shoreline.

We passed a park where boys were playing cricket. We rounded the corner and followed the south shore, eventually coming to another walled off swimming area that seemed to be for just men, and a marina. On the other side of the street is the diesel power plant, the prison, and a few more non-descript buildings.

At this point we had been walking for almost two hours. It was really hot. We decided to cut through town back towards the ferry and hopefully spot one of the elusive dive shops along the way. Not too far from the terminal, we asked someone for directions to the dive shops. One of them was close to the terminal, the other the opposite direction. We set out for the one near the terminal. And, boy, was it near the terminal, all right! Directly across the street, in the low buildings we had mentioned in yesterday’s post. Guess we took the long way.

Not surprisingly, the dive shop was closed. We took down the phone numbers, but figured there would be no answer given the Sabbath. We went across the street to the ferry, figuring we would head over to the resort near Kosmos to inquire about diving. Shortly before reaching the dive shop, prayer time had started. We could hear the prayers bellowing from the near by mosque over their loudspeaker. Inside the terminal, we found out that they do not sell tickets while prayers are going on. We waited a half hour for prayers to end, and then asked when the next ferry would be. 1330, when the service was completely over. OK. Now we understand why the restaurant upstairs opened at 1330.

We decided to get lunch upstairs and use the internet before heading to the resort, and we were waiting at their door when Sea House opened. We ordered some food and asked about internet. The waiter looked at us blankly. A local young gentleman sitting next to us explained that the procedure to buy internet time was via your local cell phone. Hmm”¦ we had no local cell phone. After hearing we had no phone, he immediately offered to help us out and bought the time for us using his cell phone. Talk about a helpful person! The wi-fi service is cheap, costing less than $3.00 for two hours, and the speed was OK. Certainly not high speed, but not painfully slow, either. Within 45 minutes, the restaurant was jam packed, mostly with men.

With food in our bellies and vital internet stuff taken care of, we took the ferry back to Hulhumale, then jumped in Kosmopolitan to go to the near by resort. We neared the hotel’s dock and a security guard came over to us. We explained that we wanted to go diving. The guard told us “Not allowed” over and over and made us leave. This came as no surprise to us since it is exactly the way other cruisers report being treated by most of the resorts in the country. On the way back to Kosmos we saw a turtle happily swimming along, but as soon as we got close, he dove deep.

Once on board Kosmos, we called the number for the dive shop in Male, not really expecting them to answer. We were delighted when someone answered and said to be at their shop at 0900 in the morning. Yay! Mission accomplished!