Sea plane Ride to the Island
I have only seen Sea Plane’s on Television show’s or Movies, it was my first time seeing them in person. It’s a small plane which seats about 15 people and can take off and land on water. The moment I saw them I was so excited and scared also.
The reason I was scared was that this plane was supposed to carry 15 passengers and three crew member along with our baggage. They had allowed a total of 1 suitcase weighing 25 kg per person and a 5 kg hand luggage into the plane
We were the last people to get into the plane, because we were taking photos. We got the best seats , we both got two separate window seats which was awesome. Both of us could get to see the view below and take pictures. My husband took my iPhone 7plus so, he could take photos and video’s of the plane ride. I held onto my Sony A58 DSLR camera.
This is the view inside the sea plane, you can see the two pilots planning to start the engines. My husband, comfortable in his seat.
This is tail view of the sea plane and the place I am sitting in. In the background you could see all our luggage’s packed on one side of the plane and the steward would sit on the other side. So now you know the reason why I was scared about the ride.
I have uploaded the video of our sea plane take off which we recorded through iPhone 7plus. Having dual camera on phone is just amazing.
This is the view of Maldives island from the sea plane after take off. This is one of the big island, were you see a lot of housing. This is the main island called Male with a total area of 5.8 km and is the capital of the country. The airport is on another island by itself which is just across from Male. Currently if any one has to get to the airport they could only get by taking a boat. They are building a bridge from the main land to the airport.
The view of another Sea plane getting ready to take off from Indian ocean.
The sea plane flies at 1500 feet altitude and so, its amazing to see the view below. We saw a lot of small and medium size island on Indian Ocean. I kept clicking away pictures with my DSLR camera .
I saw different shades of blue and green in the water, for the very first time. It was amazing to see such vibrant color on the ocean. Maldives consists of approximately 1190 coral islands.
There were several small island in the water, were I saw several resort and you could see how clear the water is that you could see the floor of the ocean.
They call these as Lagoons. The meaning of Lagoons is a stretch of salt water separated from the sea by a low sand bank or a coral reef.
There were several island which was not inhabited because the ocean had covered the land, but you still could see them through from the sea plane while taking a ride.
If you see some of the photo’s show cloudy skies, so when the Sea plane went through heavy clouds and it started raining heavily, we started feeling heavy turbulence, which was a little bit scary on a sea plane. But for the most part the sea Plane ride was very thrilling.
Just as I started to wonder how the plane was going to land and drop us of at the island. I see a floating platform on the ocean and I start wondering, how are we going to land and how do we go to the island. Then I see a boat coming towards us.
After about 35 to 40 minutes ride on the sea plane, it lands on the ocean close to a moving platform. We wait for the boat to arrive so they could pick us up to the island we are going to stay in for the next 2 nights and 3 days.
Trying to balance by holding the stand in between. There were several other’s who got down at the platform since they were staying in the same island.
Along with us, they dropped of our luggage onto the floating platform and waited to get us on board into the approaching boat. Since this place was in the middle of the ocean it was so windy and it was an experience to stand on the floating device without any support at all.
Stay tuned, In my next part I will cover the Welcome we received, our room we stayed in Milaidhoo Island.