Here are a few photos from a vacation I took with Melinda to the Maldive Islands, a group of idyllic coral atolls off the south coast of India in the Indian Ocean, right on the equator.
We flew north by Twin Otter seaplane – an adventure in itself – from Male (the capital) to Kuredhdhoo island in the Fadiffolu Atoll. Our hotel for the almost two weeks we were there was the Kuredu Island Resort & Spa, which took up the whole island.
Our island was teardrop-shaped and quite long but not that wide, taking about 30 minutes to walk from one end to the other but only 5 minutes to walk across it. It had a lovely central area where we dined every night, and had a great pool, deck area and bar nearby. Fortunately the resort wasn’t full of vacationers, so we kinda felt like we had the place to ourselves at times. The snorkelling off the beach was truly amazing: the house reef contained many fish big and small, sting and eagle rays, sea turtles, small reef sharks…
Rugby Club Zurich has a tradition to go on tour every Easter, typically to a city around Europe like Berlin, Edinburgh, London or Stockholm, but in 2002 the club decided to go big and head to Brazil. Some 35 team mates signed up for the tour and our trip was for around 2 1/2 weeks with three matches planned in Rio de Janiero and in Sao Paolo.
Our first stop was Rio and it’s an understatement to say we had a great time there (as most people do…). The routine we got into was that we would go out sightseeing in the afternoon, meet up for dinner, party all night, sleep a few hours and then train for a few hours starting at 10am no excuses! We visited Copacobana and Ipanema beaches (Ipanema was our favourite), went to the top of Corcovado (the big Jesus statue on the mountain) and also up Sugarloaf Mountain one evening.
Wow!!! The view from Corcovado at sunset.
Relaxing by the hotel pool.
We flew from Rio to Sao Paolo and headed to the island of Guaruja off the nearby coast. We stayed in a luxury hotel there on the beach, rented a yacht one afternoon to sail around the islands, and of course still trained every day.
Back in Sao Paolo we had two games to finish our tour. The first was a game again the Sao Paolo Athletics Club (SPAC), the team that was also hosting our visit. We won that comfortably.
The final match on our second last day in Brazil was against the Brazilian National Team, who were in the middle of World Cup qualifiers. They were expecting to find us easy-beats but we really took it to them. With just a few minutes to go we were up 6-3 on penalty kicks but Brazil scored a try to make the score 6-8. The last play of the game gave us a penalty but Tex couldn’t slot the tough kick from 45m out (especially not with a water bottle thrown at him by the Brazilian coach!) to win the game for us – doh!
Rugby Club Zurich vs. Brazil – lining up for the national anthems.
(Unfortunately most of my photos were on film, but I’ll try and get more of them up here soonish.)
I flew from Zurich to Hong Kong to rendezvous with Melinda who was flying in from Melbourne. We spent a few days exploring Honkers – I really enjoyed HK and Kowloon and thought the city had a great vibe, a real “east meets west” feel. I definitely put it in the category of one place I could live in for a few years.
Sunset from Hong Kong island.
We caught a high-speed ferry from Kowloon to the mainland, arriving at a city called Guangzhou nearby a few hours later. We had a day there so we explored the colonial section of the city which was really pretty. We also wandered the craziest local market I’ve even been to – absolutely anything living was for sale!
We flew from Guangzhou to Chongqing in central China to spend Christmas with Melinda’s parents, who have lived in China for several years. My first impression of Chongqing? MASSIVE! It’s a city-state of something like 30 million and the high-rise apartments just go on and on and on. Unfortunately the weather was miserable the whole time we were there – a grey foggy pall hung over the city, I never saw the sun and you couldn’t see more than a couple of hundred metres. Yuk.
We traveled with Melinda’s parents to Chengdu via the World Heritage-listed site of Dazu. This area is reknown for its centuries-old Buddhist caves, and it was a privilege to see them as not too many Westerners get out there. Massive stone sculptures are carved out of the cave walls, some brilliantly painted or covered with gold leaf – wow!
Buddhist Caves at Dazu. Street scene from Lijiang.
We spent a day in Chengdu before flying down to Kunming in the Yunnan province in the south of China, kinda near Burma and Tibet. This was the highlight of my China trip. The ancient city of Lijiang (another World Heritage protected site) was picture-postcard perfect with traditional Chinese buildings and canals running along the streets, and the town is surrounded by some of the massive mountains that make up the foothills of the Tibetan Himalaya. Interestingly, it’s a matriachal society and women definitely wear the pants (literally!) – they run the businesses etc.
We took a few days to walk the Tiger Leaping Gorge, a deep valley carved out by the Yangtze river – I think it’s something like 3 or 4km from the river to the mountain peaks! It was a fantastic walk and when it was very undeveloped, which made it an even more memorable experience. We stayed in some rudimentary “hotels” and farm houses along the way, and went down into the gorge to see the rapids that give the valley its name. I’ve heard things have changed dramatically since the Chinese blasted a tourist road through the length of the valley – what a shame!!
A scene from Tiger Leaping Gorge. Wish I had more of my photos available!!
After that it was back to Chongqing for a couple of days before I returned to HK to do all my duty-free shopping before jetting back to Zurich and – unfortunately – work. To top it off I flew back on my birthday, and was rewarded with a bottle of champagne and some roses from Lufthansa – nice! In all, it was a terrific four weeks or so I spent in China, and I’m looking forward to getting back there sometime in the future.