Maldives
The trip from Colombo to the Movenpick Resort Kuredhivaru involved an hour drive to Colombo airport, a two and a half hour flight to Male, and another forty five minute seaplane flight that delivered us directly to the resort. After the travel and time zone changes, it was 4 pm when we arrived. We were tired and hungry, but welcomed the island greeting of fresh coconuts and a tour of the island on the back of a golf cart from our personal island host. The whole island was only our one resort, and everything about this place was the epitome of luxury. The most impressive part was our room, which was an overwater villa with a walk-in closet, a bathroom the same size as the bedroom, a private pool, and a ladder down in the water so we could jump in for a quick swim in the ocean at any moment. I thought we may have been given an upgrade because this was the cheapest room at one of the cheaper resorts with over water villas, but this is what we booked and it was just great value and exceeding anything we could have imagined.
Our little island home in Maldives as seen from the sea plane.
Sri Lanka was action packed, with a detailed itinerary and everything had to progress in sequence, but as soon as we entered this villa in Maldives, time stopped for seven days until we left. We ate and drank, went diving, and enjoyed many swims, but I couldn’t tell you what we did on any given day. Everything we could see and do in the next week was less than a ten minute walk away at any moment, and we embraced this seclusion to slow down, lose time and relax after such tight schedules and long to do lists over the last couple of months.
We had a slow start on most days, sleeping in and getting those essential ten hours each night. Eventually the first thing we did once we woke up was wander down to the buffet restaurant for breakfast and coffee. We had a ‘Bed and Breakfast’ package that meant this was the only meal we had paid for, and all other meals would be added to the bill at the end of the stay, so we were heavily incentivised to stuff our faces with everything we could fit in. Fresh fruit, omelets, smoothies, pancakes, pastries (gluten free for Millie), bacon, and hashbrowns. They also catered to a couple of different diets with a curry and fried rice station, and some Russian cheese pancakes. We were not there for the cultural food experience like in Sri Lanka, so avoided the breakfast curry, but I tried a Russian cheese pancake (syrniki) and they were a delicious little ricotta cheese pancake that I continued to eat with a bit of honey every morning.
Our view out to the dive jetty from breakfast
This was a huge amount of food to start every day, and we mostly needed some time to sit back and digest after this. We went back to the room and planned what to do for the day, and the first thing was a bit of activity to balance out all the food we ate. There was a nice gym on site with a booking system to ensure we had it to ourselves when we wanted to work out. I was still (hopelessly) trying to maintain some level of climbing fitness, while Millie was more practical, focusing on the cardio, and leg and core strength that will be required for hiking at 4,000 meters in South America. We went to the gym every other day and balanced our activity on the other days with some of the other (free) amenities on the island.
In case you hadn’t picked up on it already, everything on the island was the resort and we had no outside options for food, drinks, or other conveniences while there. They could charge whatever they wanted, and it was expensive for anything not already included in the price of the room. We are on a long holiday, so we were trying to stick to some semblance of a budget, and we tried to optimise where we were spending money. To save, we were skipping lunches and sticking to free activities, but we got caught out on sunscreen. We threw about four bottles of half used sunscreen in the bin on our way out the door in Sydney and arrived at the island with no sun protection. There was a small boutique store where we were able to buy sunscreen, but we had to spend $56 USD ($90 AUD). It was a nice brand, but nothing fancy and not a large bottle. Nothing that could justify charging that much.
The free activities included tennis, where we played a heated and surprisingly even match. I have more power in my swing, but no control of where it goes, and Millie wasn’t hitting any aces, but she had me running back and forth, perfectly painting the corners of the court and making sure I didn’t have time to set up to land a solid shot back. It didn’t help that the court was made from a strange hard plastic mesh. It was the right design for a place that can get bombarded with tropical rain, but it felt very unnatural under our feet. Millie’s ball placement combined with the hot tropical sun had me completely drenched in sweat by the end of the match. They put some cold water out in an esky for us, and I probably went through two liters in that hour. Although I didn’t have much accuracy, Millie was still working hard, and we were both red faced and drenched in sweat by the end of the match.
We also went out for a kayak one afternoon, but the area to kayak was not large, and we didn’t stay out for too long.
Hot, uncomfortable and covered in sweat, we retreated to the air conditioning in the room, and when this wasn’t enough (which it never was) we put swimmers on and jumped in for a dip in the ocean. Our villa was very well secluded from the other villas, and unless someone else from a neighboring villa was swimming, the ocean behind our villa felt like our own private pool that extended endlessly out to the horizon. The water was twenty-eight degrees, and perfectly refreshing without being cold. It was irresistibly inviting, and I couldn’t sit in the room for more than twenty minutes without needing to jump in for a quick salty refresh. Millie likes to joke that I’m a fish because I can’t stay out of the water. This is not wrong when I go to great lengths to swim in Sydney or California where the water much colder and further away, but Maldives was too good, and she joined me almost every time.
Our private deck behind our villa, complete with pool and ocean access.
These swims were so good that I didn’t want to get out, but it was just a shallow sandy bottom within the barrier reef surrounding the island, so there was nothing to see and no waves for bodysurfing. About half the time, a swim quickly inspired us to grab our masks and fins to walk over to the snorkeling reef for our daily snorkel. The resort had its own dive shop at the end of a jetty that extended out to the edge of the barrier reef. They gave us a mask, snorkel and fins for the duration of our stay and all we had to do was walk five minutes across the island to snorkel this thriving coral reef where schools of fish were swarming over the coral bommies, parrot fish biting on the rocks created a constant crackling sound underwater, black tip and white tip reef sharks cruised the shallows and dogtooth tuna cruised the edge of the reef where it dropped off into deeper water.
Our favourite part of each snorkel was looking for the nurse sharks, bundled together and hiding in the coral caves. They moved around the reef at night, and they were in a different cave each day. Only one ever left the comfort of the cave to swim around while we were watching. Mostly they were bunched up, fitting five or six sharks on top of each other in a single cave, only moving to fight for a better position. It was an incredible little reef and I didn’t want to miss any of it, to the point the guy staffed to monitor the snorkelers was a bit concerned how close we were to the edge of the designated snorkel area, and my feet were bruised from the ill-fitting fins by the end of the stay.
The only thing better than the snorkeling was the diving. This was not a free activity, but it would be a crime to visit Maldives without getting a couple of boat dives in. On the first day of diving, we woke up early to get to the breakfast buffet right at opening and ate far more food than we should have before getting on a boat. We went to the dive shop after breakfast to get on the boat, but the weather had taken a turn, and we had to board from the sea plane dock inside the small barrier reef. It was about a forty five minute boat ride out to the first reef off the coast of an island they called KK. This was on the edge of the atoll so there was some small swell, and a current from the water entering the atoll with the tide. The guides had us all geared up and into the water quickly to avoid getting seasick. Then we descended as soon as we entered the water for the same reason. This dive was incredible, the water was warm, and we could see the bottom twenty meters down clearly from the surface. This reef was a bit different than the snorkel reef, and we were able to see some different animals, including a large marbled stingray, an octopus and more moray eels than we could count. I really regret selling my GoPro now because I have no photos or videos of any of these incredible dives to share, and all I can do is try to give them some justice through my descriptions.
While we were underwater for the first dive, a bit of a storm set in and we came up to rain and some larger waves than when we entered. It made for a difficult exit from the water but it was still better than our last diving experience in Fiji, where we came up from our dive into the middle of a rain squall with less visibility above water than we had underwater, and waves that were twice the size of the small open top tinnie boat tasked with getting us back to the island. Despite the stormy conditions, we all made it out of the water just fine and set off for the next dive site while enjoying some tea and a small snack.
Since we don’t have any diving photos, here’s a photo of me walking in the rain on the island during a later storm
For the second dive, we stopped just off an island neighboring our resort. This was better protected from the waves and currents we experienced earlier, and the weather had settled down making set up much easier this time. Once we were geared up, we jumped in and descended. We spent a bit of time at the bottom of the reef, but didn’t see much until we came up to closer to ten meters. This was a great healthy reef, teeming with life, but it would have been a better snorkel spot than a dive spot. It was very similar fish to our resort’s snorkel reef, and everything worth seeing was above ten meters where it’s accessible with a breath hold. We wished we could have seen more on this second dive, but we were grateful that it was only ten minutes back to the island and off the boat after this dive finished.
This one day of diving was enough for Millie, but I needed more. Our first day out had a couple of different groups diving, so I booked another double boat dive a few days later without Millie, expecting to be grouped up with someone else. But when I arrived at the dock the morning of my second dive day, there were just a few of the dive shop staff, and I was the only guest on the boat. This didn’t really bother me because I don’t like having to talk to other people, and we were all expert divers and there would be no limit to what dive site we chose. I was very surprised when we then pulled up off the edge of another resort at a site that looked from the surface like the second dive from the previous trip. But I was too quick to judge because during the briefing, the guide, Tom, explained that it’s common to see a lot of rays, including eagle rays, at this site, and someone had seen a whale shark here a few days before.
When we jumped in, we descended right on top of a small stingray where Tom’s briefing for the site was quickly confirmed. We continued the dive, drifting in the current along this massive wall, looking up down and in every direction for sharks and eagle rays, and it wasn’t long until we saw a pair of eagle rays cruising on top of the reef about twenty meters above us. I wish we had been shallower to get a better look, but I was happy to have another glimpse of these magic creatures flying effortlessly over the reef. Additionally, there seemed to be another moray eel in every cave except the cave with a big mantis shrimp hiding underneath. Tom also pointed out some small translucent shrimp hiding in the anemones with the clown fish, along with a ton of other small crabs, nudibranchs, and reef critters. I’m used to Australia or the Caribbean, where the best, healthiest reefs are remote and far removed from any infrastructure, but it seems that Maldives is already so remote that every reef was vibrant with an abundance of life, regardless of the proximity to developed islands and resorts.
For the second dive, we again motored back toward our resort, but much more slowly this time before we stopped out in the middle of the ocean next to the slightest hint of light blue where a sandy submerged island was hiding a couple meters down. This came with a little bit more swell and current, but it was the type of exposed dive that I was hoping for with the level of experience on the boat. We dropped down along a twenty meter wall and through a cloud of small bait fish to the sandy bottom at the edge of the reef. It was another drift dive, and we swam along the reef with minimal effort, continuously glancing away from the reef toward the open ocean to see if any tiger sharks would make an appearance. One of the divemasters had a water bottle that he was crackling to try to attract some larger open water species toward us if they were cruising just out of view. Unfortunately, this didn’t work, and fortunately it also didn’t attract any tiger sharks, but it was still a great reef, completely saturated in small reef fish, crabs, shrimp and eels. If I could go back, I would want to dive those two sites every day because they have so much opportunity to see so many see unique species on the right day.
Eagle Ray under the villas
Again, because I don’t have any diving photos, here is my grainy night photo of an eagle ray that was feeding off the pylons supporting the villas.
After diving, exercising, or whatever other activity we did each afternoon, we usually started to get hungry again. The breakfast buffet held us over for a while, but our attempts to skip lunch with a large breakfast usually only lasted through to mid-afternoon. We had some fruit in the room that we had smuggled out of the breakfast buffet, but by 4 pm we were craving something more substantial. Conveniently, this is when chocolate hour started where they had a free assortment of chocolates and ice cream every day. To make the most of everything free on the island, we were there at 4 pm every day, lined up with all the Russian children to get our fix of chocolate and ice cream.
This is a good point to bring up the Russians again. In Sri Lanka, we learned that this part of the world is popular with Russian tourists, and this was even more true in Maldives. A German guy on our dive boat had some stats from his island host and informed us that half the guests were Russian. But this must be more of the general trend, because we estimated that at least eighty percent of the guests around us were Russian. We were staying at a Swiss hotel brand under a French hotel group, so we were expecting it to be more like pacific islands we’ve been to with Aussies, Europeans and English. So this drastic of a Russian majority caught us completely by surprise.
Getting back on track, we had chocolate hour to hold us over until dinner most afternoons, but we were quite hungry again by 6 pm after skipping lunch, and had to choose what to do for dinner. The options were between room service, two restaurants on the island, and the buffet. The buffet was great, with professional chefs, too many options, and a full dessert bar, but it was the most expensive option at $100 USD for each of us. We only went for this once early in our stay on the ‘Jungle’ night, where we stuffed ourselves with an assortment of barbequed meats, grilled fish and a couple of veggies. It was great food, but you always lose a bit of quality at a buffet and it wasn’t worth it to go back. We also felt terrible after eating so much and didn’t want to do that to ourselves again.
The two restaurants were a Japanese place and a beach/pool bar type place. Both offered better food than the buffet with a real dining experience, and most importantly, portion control. At the Japanese restaurant I ordered a cod cooked in banana leaf, and Millie had her favourite, agadashi tofu. The cod was the most expensive item on the menu, and both meals were truly gourmet. We would have happily paid this price in Australia for this food, and it still came cost us less than the buffet. This cemented our decision to not return to the buffet and we wanted to eat there every night. The only issue was that it was booked out two days in advance. We were living minute to minute, and booking two days in advance didn’t make sense to us in the timelessness of the island. Instead, we went again for a sushi lunch the day before we left, where we had some fish carpaccio and sushi rolls. It was just as good as the dinner, and it was made even better by the free glass of champagne they brought us when the food was taking a while. We weren’t drinking much while staying here, but we couldn’t say no to some free bubbly.
We also managed to get into the beach/pool bar restaurant for dinner one night where we had another decadent meal of duck and tuna, before we shared a crème brûlée for dessert. This was arguably the best meal of the week, and the cheapest other than the room service. Because we had all the time in the world while stuck in the time loop of island time, it was great to spend the time getting dressed nicely while watching the sunset over the island, then take the time to enjoy our meals in this beautiful setting. Even when we had room service, they came in to make up a little place setting in our villa, and we were able to enjoy a nice meal while looking out over the teal blue water of the lagoon.
Going out also gave us the chance to walk out on the villa jetty at night where we saw a couple of eagle rays feeding on the muscles and other critter that had attached themselves to the pylons supporting the villas. The eagle rays right under our feet added to the whole experience feeling like a never ending dream, but eventually we had to wake up and take the seaplane back out of this bubble they created on the island and back into reality and civilization in Male.
Walking to dinner at the Japanese restaurant at sunset
On our last day, we took the seaplane back to Male where we were spending a night before an early flight to Doha the next day. As soon as we were off the plane, the resort bubble popped and the pace of the city hit us with an instant anxiety about where we needed to be next. We tried to go out for dinner somewhere other than the hotel restaurant, but after walking two blocks, the rush of the crowd and the noise of the street became too overwhelming. It wasn’t just the city, it was back to the chaos of an Asian city, and we quickly returned to the hotel where we had a nice quiet dinner on the top floor overlooking the surf beach and the ocean pool. We needed more time to transition back to real life, or maybe we just weren’t ready to admit yet that the luxury dream of the last week had ended. Millie and I both agreed that if we could just go back to that island every year for every future vacation, we would be happy. It had every amenity of luxury one could ask for, while being completely isolated and remote that the reefs were unlike any I’ve ever seen. We recommend it to anyone who wants to go, and please let us know if you do because we will happily join you.
Mentally, I’m still here in this hammock.
