Meet Carla Virgos, an ocean safari expedition leader and entrepreneur who is changing the way people travel to the Maldives and reminding everyone how to be green, even when exploring the azure blues.
Picture this: clear blue waters, remote resort islands, overwater bungalows, floating breakfasts. That pretty much sums up the idyllic Maldivian getaway, right? Well, not entirely. When the tourism policies for the Republic of Maldives changed in 2009, allowing local islands to build guest houses and welcome foreigners to their land, it opened up an opportunity for visitors to get a peek into the daily local Maldivian way of life – an opportunity that was not open for foreigners before. And the said peek into the local way of life is not only limited to the Maldivian residents on land, but also those underwater.
The island nation of Maldives boasts of some of the healthiest tropical marine life in the entire world — a fact that has long been common knowledge amongst the scuba diving community. But for non-divers, chances of interaction with marine life have long remained restricted to “feeding points” or areas near the shore where marine life such as sharks and sting rays often gather in large numbers because they have grown accustomed to onlookers throwing pieces of bread at them. As if the mislabelling of sharks and sting rays as man-killing monsters by the media wasn’t enough, now these creatures must have their hunting skills stripped away by such unnatural feeding practices.
Meet Carla Virgos
However, Carla Virgos, a Spanish-Mexican woman currently based in London is trying to change the general perception that people have of the Maldives — and of its sharks and rays. “I booked my first solo trip to a local Maldivian island in early 2021. I was unhappy with my finance job in London and wanted a change of scene for some time.” Her 10-day-long visit to the Maldives is what brought about the idea of starting her own travel company, Kandu – which means ocean in the Dhivehi language. “When I was there, I booked a lot of excursions. While these boating excursions are the main income source for most local islands, it all felt like a big money-making machine. There was no briefing before going in the water. The boats would not mind their speed in areas around the animals, and I just didn’t find the love and passion for the ocean in the companies I went with.”
Through Kandu, Virgos’ vision for her clients is as educational as it is recreational. “Education is the only way forward; it changes lives. But education shouldn’t be limited to schools and science. There is a possibility to learn something new in every aspect of your life and I want to help people realise that when they are travelling to the Maldives, through educational tourism.”
Virgos curates her trips with the mission to help people have a respectful, responsible and safe way of interacting with the ocean’s creatures. “There are no tricks to make them come to us. We are in their home and that fact is always respected.”
Before each journey into the sea, guests are given complete safety briefings about best practices when in close proximity to these animals. Along with her team of local Maldivian experts, Virgos also makes her guests aware of shark behaviours and how to conduct oneself in their presence. Through her educational briefings, she is able to turn hesitant guests scared of jumping off the boat into people who come out of the water knowing that like any other animal, sharks mind their own space and only attack if provoked – a fact that her guests not only hear of, but also experience for themselves while swimming in the same waters as some 30 odd nurse sharks around them.
“Nurse sharks are my favourite marine animals,” Virgos reminisces. “They were my first shark encounter and I’ll never forget realizing that everything I knew about sharks until that point in my life was in fact, a lie.” Apart from nurse sharks, Virgos’ guests also get to swim with stingrays, manta rays and even whale sharks, the largest known fish in the ocean.
Mindful in the Maldives
Even when outside water, Virgos prepares mindful experiences for her guests. Since all Kandu trips are based out of local islands, there are opportunities to interact with the local culture – especially through food. Local Maldivian food is a huge part of Virgos’ trips and how she serves this food is equally important. “Even though single-use plastic is banned by law in the Maldives, every single travel company I have seen here so far uses single-use plastic.” Virgos is trying to change that. All meals provided throughout the trip are served in degradable wheat straw lunchboxes and water is served in steel flasks.
Carla Virgos realises that her practices are all but a grain in the sand. But it comes from a place of sincere love for the ocean. “I just want both tourists and locals alike to understand that the health of these marine creatures directly affects them. If we don’t stop these harmful practices right away, tourists won’t have access to that sense of adventure and locals won’t have an avenue to earn money from. And that’s just in the smaller scheme of things. In the larger picture, damage to the ocean means irreversible damage to our entire planet.”
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