Sea Day – Laccadive Sea
March 9, 2025
We are on our way to the Maldives (pronounced Mahldeevs), a huge chain of islands and their capital of Malé, today via the Laccadive Sea. I sure don’t remember that from 4th grade geography. Regardless, it’s another beautiful day here on the Zuiderdam. The days are consistently in the mid 80’s F. with a pleasant breeze as we scoot along to our next destination. But I guess it had to happen – this has been a nearly perfect trip so far and today we had our first calamity.
Tod’s banging on keyboards in rock bands for the last 60 years finally caught up with him, and last year he had to break down and get hearing aids. Of course, he brought them and all the corresponding paraphernalia on the trip. They require a modicum of maintenance which he would admit he slacks upon sometimes. This morning, he reported that the left one was no longer functioning. We did our due diligence by going to every website and video we could find on the subject to see if we could fix it ourselves. Sadly, that failed so I suggested contacting the local hospital in Malé via email to see if they had any suggestions. It would be our next port stop, and we had nothing in particular planned for our day there. Tod found their email address and fired off an inquiry to see if they could recommend anyone that could assist. We’d wait until tomorrow to hear back.
Other than that, it’s been a wonderfully lazy day. Hanging out on the promenade deck on the lounge chairs has become our favored location to spend sea days. It’s very peaceful, nothing like what happens on the pool deck which tends to have group events in the bright sunshine all day. Plus, up there is a smoking area with several bars and the commensurate activities that go along with that. Nothing against it mind you, we might have been up there with them a few decades back. Now, since we’ve given up those habits, I guess you could call us the “elder statesman”. We prefer the peace of staring at the passing seas in the shade as we listen to books or music without any periphery action.
We’ll see if we get any response to the email tomorrow morning. On to Malé!