Views from the Maldives

If you ever wanted to make that special holiday, get that special picture or see that postcard view of a beach, you better come to the Maldives. It is not only a place where you can truly switch off (still your mobile will work there), take your shoes off for the whole time (watch out for hot stones) and see all the animals you always wanted (only few are poisonous or attack), but its also a place where everyone hates you in envy if you tell that you are going there. Its simply perfect.

Many resorts on the islands don't even have place to put all the housing facilities on land. Since the atolls are quite big around the island, there is plenty of space to build them in the shallow water over sand without even disturbing nature a lot.
Although there is a rainy season in that region, its not that bad. The thing that is most annoying is that there are almost permanently some dark clouds on the horizon, but it does not rain for more than half day. If you have a clear horizon however, the sunsets can be amazingly beautiful.
The Maldives bring such a strong mix of vegetation, sea life and beaches that make it easy for a photographer to take that perfect shot.
Often, the space between the actual reef where the waves break and the beach is quite far. In the sandbanks between that, you can find a large variety of fishes, crabs and other sea life. For example schools of baby-sharks (about 40cm long) and eagle rays (about 120cm wide)
Depending on the time of the day and which side of an island you are on, or can see schools of tube fish, puffer fishes and poisonous lion fish (they only sting if you annoy then a lot).
Further you can see nicely colored unicorn fishes. At night, you might see larger sharks and stingrays!
Once you start diving or snorkeling, the whole spectrum of fish become very very wide. Sorry that those pictures here are not in a very good quality, but I had only those instant-cameras for underwater. Those here are a lion fish, two baby-puffer fish and two Picasso trigger fish.
At the reef where the deeper water starts, you can see much larger schools of fish, morays and all of that pretty close.
On the left picture here you can see a parrot fish. With their beak-like mouth they scrape moss and algae off the stones so loud that you can hear them underwater. The third picture shows a titan trigger fish. If those are in their nesting time (4 days every month), they can be quite aggressive if you come to close. They are about 50cm large and very fast swimmers.
Generally, the smaller fish are closer to the shore. Some night-active fish like th puffer or porcupine fish stay during the daytime near the shore also.
From really tiny fish (less than a cm) until rally big fish (several meters), everything is here. Some are shy and hide as soon as you approach, some follow you around (like this bat fish in the middle, about 40cm long) and some try to protect their eggs by always bringing themselves between you and the eggs and eying you carefully (like the third picture)
The third pic here is a yellow baby-puffer fish, extremely cute!