It’s time for us to travel to the second local island on this trip so we’ve opted to stay on Huraa until 1pm when we can catch the very reasonably priced $10 speedboat back to Male and we’ll just have a one and a half hour wait until our public ferry to the next atoll south known as Kaafu.

As far as boat connections go in the Maldives this one was pretty damn good so it wasn’t long before we hopped onto the ferry which cost $1.50 per person for the hour or so journey. It was a rough ride though, as we moved from one atoll to the next the open sea sloshed our boat from side to side. The sea would suddenly vanish from our vision before the boat rocked again and all we’d see was the blue water. Everyone went from chatting and sitting up to laying vertically and trying to sleep to avoid being sick.

The island we were heading to was called Gulhi and it was even smaller than Huraa at just 400m by 225m. Because the islands so small hotel staff picked up their guests luggage with wheelbarrows or carts, it was a little embarrassing when we put our bags on the cart and literally one minute later we arrived at the guesthouse. It was about 4:30pm so we just checked in and freshened up before taking a stroll around the island.

We started with the public beach and walked around the entire circumference of the island where we had quite a shock at the amount of rubbish. It looked like they’d dumped old building rubble along the shoreline to create a sea defence but then they just added other rubbish to it so there were broken parasols, bed frames, sofas, plastic bottles etc. It was disgraceful and as soon as the long pile of rubbish finished the bikini beach started, which leads me onto my second issue with this island…the bikini beach was the busiest one we’ve come across. Not only that but it’s also the first one to charge for beds or umbrellas and they were such a tacky variety that made the beach look so naff.

The beach itself was typical Maldivian style with twinkling aqua water and then there was a drop-off where it went deep blue before another streak of turquoise water was visible in the distance. But it lacked the charm of the previous island where there was usually no more than 10 people on it. I didn’t realise but there’s the option of catching the public ferry from Maafushi to Gulhi early in the morning and returning late in the afternoon. Maafushi is the most popular and overdeveloped local island to visit so you can imagine people staying on there would love the idea of doing a day trip to Gulhi, so that was a downside I hadn’t considered.

Gradually the rubbish near the bikini beach washes into the sea which means the white sand is interspersed with broken pieces of tiles but more concerning was the amount of glass shards on the sand and in the water. Tourists have to pay a $3 per day environmental fee on the local islands that’s $100 a day from our guesthouses alone, there are at least 12 hotels on the island and most of them bigger than the one we’re staying at so that’s a minimum of $1500 per day that goes towards environmental fees and I would love to know how that money is spent. We had the same issue on our previous visit to the Maldives when we snorkelled and came across an area in the water piled up with nappies, bags of rubbish, tinned food etc. Anyway, we didn’t let it dampen our mood, it’s just what it’s like here and an important thing to share online because people can easily just see the beach photos and think it’s total paradise without knowing the realities.

So we continued our walk to the tip of the island where there was a boat yard with locals fixing up huge boats. There was also a stunning section of sand here, like a mini beach that dropped into deep water and was such a fabulous colour. A few locals were fishing at this spot, using a plastic bottle with fishing line as their rod and it worked very well because the guy pulled up a long but thin fish. It didn’t seem worth eating to be fair but he clearly intended to because he flung the fish in the air and slammed it on the concrete floor.

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Moments later we saw our first shark swimming around the island. It’s one of the main reasons I picked Gulhi, nurse sharks come here every evening for fish scraps around the harbour and we wanted to go on a tour to swim with them. All of a sudden a second shark came along and as we stood on the edge of the pier they were gliding right below us, it was such a mesmerising sight.

So we made it to the harbour next where there were even more sharks. They weren’t swimming much here, most of them were just laying on the shallow floor, hoping for any scraps to come their way. There were about 12 sharks which was pretty impressive as they’re big and can grow up to 3 meters long.
Then a humongous stingray, about 2 meters wide casually glided over the sharks in the hope of some food too. So that became our regular spot to go at sunset, some nights there’d be loads of sharks but others there would just be a couple, further out and only visible by their fins slicing through the water.

We ended up finding a nice quiet area of the beach to relax under some palm trees away from all the parasols and noisy people. Everyone seemed to like congregating around the sun beds and near the horrible ‘I heart Gulhi’ swing which to me is such an ugly eyesore but with queues of people waiting to take their photos it seems most people did in fact love it.

Luckily the snorkelling was fantastic here, it was very shallow to begin with but soon we were swimming above coral and surrounded by fish. We passed stripy sea snakes and a stingray in the shallows but it was even better when we reached the drop-off, where the sea turned a royal blue colour and the visibility was probably 20+ meters. I got a brief glimpse of a reef shark darting past but it was mostly about the fish when we snorkelled here with so many varieties. There were huge parrot fish which are my favourites as they are literally painted like a rainbow, but there were also mini versions that I don’t remember seeing before and these ones were really cocky. Most fish dart away if you go too near them but these ones were up in my face, even trying to bite my GoPro, foot and Craig’s lip! But they were very fun to photograph as they were so carefree and cocky.

We spent our days under the palm trees or floating in the shallows, it was paradise. It was a shame to see how vain the world had become though, the amount of girls doing absurdly sexy poses on the beach was pretty sad. One girl came over to me while I was sunbathing and asked me to take photos of her. I feel like there should be some etiquette here, firstly, ask someone that’s walking past, not someone that’s laying down being zen. So I had to get up and walk all the way down to the beach and she was acting like she was a page 3 model. I felt so uncomfortable, then she came back to check the photos before explaining that she would sit down and pose that way – are you fucking kidding me, I am not your personal photographer. A few hours later the same girl came up to me and asked if I could put sun cream on her back! I know the nice thing to do is say yes, but maybe I’m not a nice person because I did not want to rub cream across a strangers back that’s covered in a layer of sweat. I had to think fast and as I was in the middle of a suduko game on my phone I said I was using my phone and didn’t want to get suncream all over my hands. Phew. So that was that, I figured she’d go and ask the ladies who were right next to her sun-bed (who she should of asked originally because they were way closer than I was) yet she went back to her bed and proceeded to suncream her own back – so she was fully capable of doing it herself. Weird.

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The weather was rather unsettled for our 8 days on the island with big storms rolling in. I must admit I love watching storms in the Maldives as you can really see them moving towards you and the big black tunnels of rain pouring out the sky. It’s fascinating to witness.

We were treated to some much better sunsets on Gulhi compared to our first week on Huraa. But there was one really special sunset that blew us away. It actually happened on one of the gloomiest days we had so we almost didn’t bother going out to watch the sunset but I’m so happy we did as it was spectacular! The colours just kept getting more intense and it ended up being one of the best sunsets we’ve ever seen.

We only planned on doing one tour in the Maldives this time which was a half day trip to a few snorkelling sights including swimming with nurse sharks so I’ll share all about that in my next post.