Day 15: Under The Sea

January 3, 2025

This morning started a little bit differently than most of our others - it didn't begin at a breakfast buffet. We slept in this morning and by the time we got up we knew we wouldn't have time to make the long journey over to breakfast. So instead we took it slow and had some coffee on our villa's back patio while I blogged. It was another cloudy and dark morning.

We didn't have any big plans scheduled for the day, until an early dinner reservation at 5.8, the resort's undersea restaurant (yes, you read that right), so we decided that after a light lunch we would take a walk around the entire island and bring the fancy camera for the stroll. Just when we were getting ready to head to Junk Food Kitchen, it started to rain.

A brief sidebar from Emily: Hello! This isn't my blog day but I had to jump in here. In the spirit of full transparency, this is the moment where I totally hit a wall with the weather. We were now on our second full day in the Maldives with no sun whatsoever and when it started raining again I simply lost it. Our resort is beautiful but when you are trapped in the room there is LITERALLY nothing to do. Room service is not included and laughably expensive (despite it being "all inclusive" - a further rant on that is probably coming later) and we are too far away from the main resort spots to pop on over to the spa, game room, or gym.

It was all really starting to hit me: just how long we've been away, how expensive this place is when we can't even take advantage of it, how we haven't seen sun in 3 days, all of it. Cue the waterworks-- and not just the ones coming from the sky. I think I was also feeling some level of pressure with the super high expectations we'd placed on this part of the trip. The Maldives are SO special, SO glamorous, SO adventurous and remote... and we were having a just-fine time. It's hard not to compare our experience, while nice, with the insanely beautiful pictures we are used to seeing on Instagram. I know it's the definition of a first world problem. To be stuck in the most gorgeous place in the world because of a little inclement weather is certainly not the worst thing that could have happened. But it was starting to feel like a waste and I think I just needed to get it all out. I probably said "this sucks" 20 times before the rain let up. Luckily the ever-patient Max let me weep my worries away and by the time the rain stopped we were ready to head over to lunch. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

We were off to lunch! A promising sign for our nature walk was our first shark sighting on the long walk from our villa to the main land. After a quick Googling, I learned that it was a juvenile black tip reef shark! They get shockingly close to the shore to patrol for bait fish, but are not dangerous to humans, thank goodness.

At JFK, Emily got a pina colada and I got a Corona that was served in a little ice bucket. For lunch we had a seared ahi tuna salad and a crispy chicken wrap - the perfect amount of food to tide us over until dinner at 6. Then, it was time to begin our island adventure. As you read from Emily's aside, today was another cloudy, humid day, but the rain had hopefully passed for the day and we were getting antsy to get out of our room. Our room came with a couple of big umbrellas so we had brought one with us on the off chance that we'd get caught far from our room in a bigger storm...

We started around the island, walking by villas that weren't on the long pier where ours was but rather with direct beach access instead of a snorkel staircase. Then we turned the corner and came upon a little tide pool where as luck would have it, we saw another shark! This shark may have been a sign of less good fortune though. From this side of the island, we could see some dark and extremely foreboding rain clouds rapidly approaching.

We frantically put the camera away in a watertight bag and opened our single umbrella just in time for the skies to open up. I know we've mentioned this a few times now, but it is quite the hike to get to our villa and this time we truly could not have been further from home. As you can see in this screenshot from Emily's Oura ring that tracked our walk, we turned around at the toe of the foot-shaped loop of a walk and made our way back through the middle of the island to the red dot out in the water.

It was now fully monsooning. The umbrella turned out to be effectively useless as Emily walked back in her bathing suit and my back got soaked since I was using the umbrella to protect the camera and our phones. It was raining comically hard. Good thing we were in bathing suits! Finally, we made it back, drenched head to toe.

We dried off, donned our robes, and sat down where we could only laugh about how unfortunate the weather had been. We had just enough time to finish watching our wedding video before we had to get ready to head back out for our dinner.

Even though it was no longer raining, a golf cart ride was arranged to drive us all the way back across the island to where 5.8, the underwater restaurant was. The restaurant is called 5.8 because it sits 5.8 meters below the surface. 5 inches of glass, cleaned twice daily, keep you dry and able to see all of the fish (and sharks!) that are swimming by to check us out while we dined on a 7 course menu of their fallen brethren (we both had the sea food prix fixe menu).

After a brief description of the restaurant, we were asked to remove our shoes and socks as we would be dining barefoot this evening. We descended 41 steps below the surface and walked out into the restaurant. Immediately we were both amazed by how clear the water was and how many fish were already surrounding us, but also a little overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that was happening all at once - loud conversations from tables nearby despite being told to keep our voices down; a woman's phone camera shutter sound was on full volume while she took a billion pictures, etc. At our table, they gave us both the menu as well as a fish guide, which I referenced constantly throughout our meal.

I'll dedicate about two sentences to the food, which was pretty good and for 7 courses was a reasonable amount of food so we didn't feel too stuffed by the end. They were really into adding foam to each dish, which at first was cool but then after like 5 foams we were like, we get it, you can make stuff foamy. You can see the menu above and we can discuss individual dishes as needed. Just know that the foam dispenser got a real workout in the 5.8 kitchen.

The real star of the meal was the scenery. I am, of course, talking about my wife! Beyond and around Emily were countless fish of all kinds. We saw snapper, grouper, trevally, and a massive school of surgeonfish (which seem to be the most popular fish in the Maldives from both our snorkeling and underwater restaurant experiences). There were also all kinds of smaller, more colorful reef fish like angelfish and bannerfish that mostly hung by our tables. In the distance we caught a quick glimpse of a couple of eagle rays, but didn't get a close look at them.

Then, after around 4 courses, the sharks started to make their presence known. Unlike the juvenile sharks we had seen patrolling the beaches, these sharks were much larger and certainly looked like they would pose a threat to humans if we were not shielded by 5 inches of glass. You could tell one was about to pass by because the fish that were peacefully hanging around the tube would abruptly dart away well before we could see the shark.

It was a really wild experience. The food, while fancy and pretty good, was very much a second thought to what was happening all around us at all times. They could've served us pretty much anything edible and I would've been a happy camper. I also obviously took a zillion pictures, so the ones included here are only a small sample and a full album can be made available upon request.

After dinner, which did sadly have to end at some point, we ascended those 41 steps and put our shoes on to head back to the room, but not before making a pit stop at the hammock / giant swing area!

While the weather certainly put a damper on the daytime activities, the dinner did remind us what a special and unique place this was and how happy we were to be here together.

Here's to hoping the weather improves a bit for our last full day of the honeymoon before, sadly, we have to start making our way back to the cold in New York.

Love, Max