I was just nine when my parents brought me to the Maldives. Of course I was too young then to fully understand how lucky I was to visit one of the most beautiful countries in the world, but I had seen from the brochure the travel agency had given us that the hotel (actually sort of a little village for tourists) occupied an entire island and we were going to live in these fancy little wooden houses right on the beach, surrounded by coconut trees.

I remember landing in Male (the capital city-island of the Maldives) and not being too happy: it seemed to me we had arrived in a regular city with ugly buildings and traffic, of course my memories can’t be that precise now (it’s been 16 years), but I was certainly glad to hear that it was not going to be our final destination. We were going to Ari, a paradise-like atoll not too far away from Male itself. But how? Certainly by boat, I thought, being an island!

Nope. No, no, no.

We got into a minuscule seaplane with huge propellers that scared me to death, particularly because of the unbelievably high noise it started to make once we had taken off. As a child I had a thing for drama, I started praying aloud until my mum told me to stop being silly. With no more pretended desperation to distract me, I started enjoying the view: small, green and yellow islands randomly dotting the azure Indian Ocean below me in a sunny, warm day. It was wonderful. Spectacular.

Maldives Beach PIC: JG

And I was so happy because I already had so many things to tell my schoolmates back home.

After some time, it may have been one hour but I honestly have no recollection of how long the flight actually was, we landed in the water next to a wooden platform on our island and were shown the place. There was this big, round, central building which was a kind of common area (and included the restaurant) and then a number of those small houses I just described at various distances around it, a bit hidden between the forest and the beach, one of which was going to be ours. I felt a bit like I was in Jurassic Park. An Italian guy, I believe his nickname was something like Tommy or Toby, was working there and arranged games and various activities for us, I recall him with affection, he was funny and nice with us kids.

Maldives Beach PIC: JG

Anyway, I was 9 and I was on holiday alone with my parents, and thus in desperate need of a friend to play with. I found this friend in a boy my age whose name may have been Mattia, but I can’t be sure (I never met him again after those 10 days together in Maldives). We would play together, swim together, and he was from Rome so he taught me some Roman dialect (which is very funny to speak and to listen to, take a look here if you dare), but my mother wasn’t so happy to hear me talking like that so I had to quit my language classes), and our parents became close so we also used to have most meals together, etc… He left a few days before me and we were supposed to exchange letters (no Facebook back then, folks!), but I wrote the first one like two years later and he never replied, so that was it.

I stayed and waited, enjoying what I had around me and trying not to think about the shark ten meters below (but constantly glancing at it).

JG

But besides Mattia, I had a couple of interesting adventures involving the sea (I mean, the Ocean).

One night we went on a boat trip to fish. I was really excited, I had almost never fished before and it seemed like it was easy so I went, totally determined to rock it. After all one of my grandfathers was a fisherman, so I must have it in my genes, or at least so I thought.

Maldives Plane PIC: JG

Well, obviously it wasn’t that easy and my genes didn’t apparently help. For hours I just stayed there and waited, actually showing considerable patience for a 9-year-old. Just when we were going to go back to the island I felt the wire attached to the reel stretch (we didn’t use fishing poles, probably for lack of room on the boat, or because of the risk of people hooking each other while launching) and, my excitement raising sharply, I started pulling hard. Then very hard. And even harder.

Maldives Boardwalk PIC: JG

After a while I was pulling so hard (I don’t know how the wire didn’t break, but it was much thicker than the usual one I had seen before) that a sailor came to help and, instead of grabbing the reel I was handing him, he took the wire itself. He was pulling so hard that soon his hands started to bleed (I know you won’t believe me but I swear it’s true) and at last half of a big and long fish (if I remember well someone said a barracuda) emerged from the depth of the sea and… and the same thing (with the other half of the fish) happened on the other side of the boat. Apparently we (me and another amateur fisherman) had both caught the same fish (although he somehow got the tail) and pulled so hard until we sawed it in half underneath the boat. I can only guess how much he must have suffered (along with the sailor who made his hands bleed) before dying.

I still feel sorry for him, although he was served at dinner that same night.

Maldives Boardwalk PIC: JG

A few days later I risked sharing the fate of the barracuda.

My father, who in his youth was a professional scuba-diver, and I went to swim quite far from the beach, lonely and at the limit of the coral reef. At that point there was a kind of submerged ravine, we could barely see the bottom and many people experienced dizziness getting there, but we were much more interested in the fishes and coral all around us. We saw a mighty Lionfish, the first I had ever seen in my life, and we stayed like that for a while until, from the bottom of the ravine, we saw… A shark!

Maldives

Now, it wasn’t a big shark like this, but still it was a f****g shark! And I was a 9-year-old swimming with his father in the middle of the Indian Ocean, hundreds of meters from the beach and scared to death. I had no idea what to do. My father pulled my head out of the water and told me, very calmly, just don’t do anything and it will go away, stay calm and mind your business. And that was more or less it, there wasn’t much I could do anyway, so I stayed and waited, enjoying what I had around me and trying not to think about the shark ten meters below (but constantly glancing at it). And we came back safe, so one more story to tell my friends.

After so many years, I can still recall the most memorable parts of that holiday in the Maldives. I’m not sure how faithful my memories are, I guess time always works its magic and makes the past look a bit better than the present. But I had a good time there, of this I’m sure.

Also check out Tahaa, French Polynesia.