Honeymoon Recaps - The Wildlife

I don't think I have ever been to a place that had as much free-running wildlife as the Maldives! There were birds and reptiles and of course water creatures. So I thought it only fitting to give them some attention here, since both Mr. Milk and I gave them a ton of attention while we were there (what can I say, we are both animal lovers). 

This grey heron really got around! We saw him everywhere. And every evening he would fly off, not sure where he was heading, but sure enough the next day he was back on the beach.

I fell in love with these little guys! They were just so adorable shuffling around in the sand, ducking their heads in their shell whenever you would walk past.

Now these ghost crabs were amazing. They would come out at dusk and spend the entire night digging holes in the sand in search for food. 

It took a whole lot of patience and standing still in order to get some pics. 

We were even able to capture some video of them but Mr. Milk accidentally deleted it :(

Stingrays were everywhere.

As you can see, this little guys (it was a baby stingray) was right along the shore. His eyes are even popping out of the water here. 

Here's a bigger one, further into the water.

What you can see hanging onto the tree is a fruit bat! Those things are huge! It looks like a medium sized bird with bat-wings. 

Here you can see it in mid-flight. 

And these guys were by far my favorite. I small family of birds that hung around our villa every day. We felt like we had adopted them.

I love this photo. The mommy bird is feeding the chicks some coconut. 

There was a bunch more underwater wildlife that we saw while we were snorkeling, but unfortunately we didn't have an underwater camera to capture it all. But as one of the hotel staff said, you could see the entire cast of Finding Nemo in there!

Honeymoon Recaps - My 30th Birthday

One of the other reasons we decided to splurge on our honeymoon with a trip to the Maldives was that it was a double celebration. While on our trip, I would be turning 30. Some very good friends of us have a "tradition" of doing something big on big birthdays, and we really liked this idea and decided to steal it :). For Mr. Milk's 30th we took a week long trip to Kauai, and it was one of the best vacations we had. 

So my day started off with a surprise from my hubby: he had arranged for a private breakfast on our patio. 

While we were still sleeping, the lovely hotel staff started to set up our breakfast table outside

By the time we got up and ready, our food was out there waiting for us. We had fruit, waffles, pancakes, omelets, hashbrowns, toast, croissants and other pastries, juice, and coffee. It was delicious!

Mr. Milk had asked the staff at the hotel for some flowers, and since there is no store on the island, they arranged to have a bouquet brought over from Male (the capital) the evening before. 

We spent the day by the beach and then after lunch we went for a couples treatment at the spa. We had our own over-water bungalow treatment room and both got scrubs and massages. It was so relaxing. Unfortunately we didn't take a camera so I have no pics of that :(

For dinner we went to the teppanyaki restaurant that was also over the water.

We ordered sushi to start off with...

...and then some veggies, rice, shrimp, and lobster! Our chef was great and the food was amazing!

I love how vivid these pics are! 

And of course no birthday is complete without birthday cake! Mr. Milk was able to arrange to have a small chocolate cake made just for me. As you can see, I turned 2 ;)

Again, we were having such a great time with the food that we forgot to get a picture of ourselves that day! Oh well... 

Honeymoon Recaps - Around the Island

Like I said, our island was tiny. Mr. Milk and I spent most of our days in the Maldives being lazy! And that is exactly what we wanted! Our days therefore looked very similar (with a few exceptions): we would wake up in the morning, go down to the restaurant to have breakfast, come back to our room, change into our swimwear, grab a book and other beach necessities, and head over to our beach loungers. At some point before lunch, someone would pass by with cold towels and skewers of fresh fruit rolled in coconut, yum! Since we were staying on a half-board basis, we would grab some snacks and a drink around 2-3pm and then would have dinner at around 8pm. In the meantime we read, swam, snorkeled, walked around the island, and just spent time with each other. 

So here is a selection of photos from our trip. We took about 1500 and I managed to narrow it down to about 50 for this post, and I still think some of them are repetitive! The scenery was just so stunning that we kept taking photos of it over and over and over again!

Near the bar and pool area

Towards the spa

More over-water bungalows. We thought about upgrading to one of these but loved our beach villa so much that we decided to stay put. 

Dinner our first night there.

Mr. Milk's sand-art

My sand-art - our wedding date

The newlyweds :)

Waiting to watch the sunset

One of the many gorgeous sunsets we saw

Fresh coconuts right of the tree! It's great being at the right at the right time!

Mr. Milk lookin tough :)

None of these are photoshopped by the way! Just taken with a good camera.

Mr. Milk took a scuba lesson and loved it!

Another gorgeous sunset

I love how the sun looks like its melting into the ocean

On the last day I get a little photo nuts, snapping everything in site in an attempt to take a small piece of the Maldives back home with us.

Hubby

The Chill bar

The island resort opposite ours

Doesn't this look like a postcard!?

The teppanyaki restaurant we ate at a few times

What we would walk through every single day!