The photos of me in the blue shirt are for a very special cause. Jake is the nephew of one of our friends. He was killed in a freak accident in 2009, and 5 people received different organs from him. His mom is a speaker and advocate for organ donation now. In memory of Jake, the family started a "Take Jake" program. You take a photo of Jake with you, take photos with him, then post them to facebook. We took Jake with us to Mexico, and I made Jake's mom and aunt a full scrapbook. It was really cool. They really, really enjoyed it. Now we've taken Jake to Maldives and Hong Kong.
We also spent a lot of time taking "I so desperately want to remember every freaking detail of this place" photos.
Additionally, we decided to brave snorkeling and underwater photography again, one last time. We rented the camera for half a day...and headed over to the house reef. This time Eric took charge of the camera since I had the melt down diving the other day and threw the camera at him underwater. :) We got some nice shots and Eric took some great video (which will ONE day be on our youtube site!).
At 6:45pm we headed over to Vilu to get photos with the crew there. We were served by them everyday at breakfast, at the happy hours, and at dinner the previous night. We really wanted to remember them!! It was like magic watching them all come out at the same time to line up for the photo! They must have done it before--a thousand times!
After Vilu photos, we headed over to Mandhoo for our last "dinner" time meal. We had a big lunch, so decided to just order dessert. This did not sit well with our servers. :) They decided that we would indeed do dinner there--a main course!! They brought out a beautiful prawn and greens salad....YUM! The Chef made it for us special!! (Thanks, Mandhoo staff!!) The Chef came out and spoke with us a bit, too. It was great. After that we ate our desserts and the restaurant gave us mango sorbet (our very favorite!). We exchanged facebook and email acounts, and took some photos! It was awesome. These people are so nice, helpful, giving, and really warm. We are going to miss them greatly! We're facebooked with a few of them, so that should help!
Oh, I forgot to mention, we were visted by sharks and EELS at dinner!! Sharks are pretty common, but we saw three in the same area, and got to see one of them hunt! The eel was interesting, too. They are fairly common, but not necessarily in that area all the time. It was magical!
After dinner and desserts, we walked over the lit bridge to see if we could spot manta rays! HOLY COW DID WE SEE MANTAS!! MAGICAL! MAGICAL! MAGICAL! Eric video recorded and photographed them. He fell to his stomach so he could get as close to the creature as possible. We both ran up and down the bridge for half an hour, waiting to see the next one come up. There were three swimming around. This night, unlike the first time we saw them, they came up and OUT of the water to feed. To eat they do flips and open their mouths...well, this night they did that out of the water! IT WAS MAGICAL! (Yes, I keep using that word!! But that's how it felt!)
We finally decided that we'd had enough luck with the mantas and went back to the villa to hot tub. The hottub in our villa had colored lights!! Different colors, with different programs! I turned the hottub on and it was solid green. Turned it off and back on and it was red. Then purple and light blue...WOW! After turning it on and back off, again, it cycled through the colors slowly. Turned it off and back on again and the colors cycled faster...and the next time even faster. The final stage had the colors blinking! Really cool. Eric eventually joined me, and we shared a glass of champagne, under the stars, looking out at the Indian Ocean, listening to the waves break, while sitting in a blue lit hottub. It was very special. Our last night......
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