Marilen and Marc
From this website we like to welcome you to our Dive Safari Trips on the Maldives Islands, this small and exotic country where we landed 15 years ago and on wich we remain as we feel like our second homeland.
Both Spanish, from the island of Mallorca, Marilen from Sóller valley and Marc from Deia, both villages on the Sierra de Tramontana, bathed by the blue Mediterranean Sea.
On april 1994 Marc opened OCTOPUS, a Dive Center that he has managed during 14 years togheter with Marilen, in Port de Sóller, Mallorca.
After 2 years "waiting for the summer" we decide winter time is perfect to travel and discover other waters in 1997 we travel to Sri Lanka, where we run a dive center for a while before travelling to the Maldives, landing in Male airport November 1997.
On a first season we work as dive instructors on Club Med Faru resort , where we contact french Safari Operators, working for them during 1998 and 1999, and in 2000 hand to hand with Dive Agent ABANDO and our friend and partner Jesus Arto we start our independent OCTOPUS Safari Maldives using our first Safari Boat NASRU ALI (which means in arab Luck Light).
With the Nasru Ali boat wich we operated during following 4 seasons till the newborn Project of Maldivian sees the light in , a brand new safari boat built in Velidhoo, Noonu Atoll, a boat codesigned with our local partner Abdullah Naseer and following plans of local naval architect Ali Hassan, with our financial support (OCTOPUS-ABANDODIVE).
After 18 months of hard work she finally starts operation in October 2005.
Professionaly we have been running Octopus Dive Center in Mallorca (summer) and Octopus Safaries in Maldives (winter) during 10 years , and in 2006 we decide to sell the center in Spain, wich was bouht by Jane and Tony, and focus 100% on the Maldivian Safaries, extending our operation season to summer.
Togheter with diving, our hobby and passion, UW photograpy & video, nature, navigation and travelling are our preferred activities, and we have a project of sailing around the world on a sailing ship as a retirement - but this will be really later as we have in mind many more years cruising and diving on the Maldives paradise.
At the present time we live between Maldives, Mallorca and Sri Lanka.
