If you prefer simpler activities on the water’s surface, then at Jumeirah Vittaveli you can actually walk on water! I would tell you how it’s one, but a conjurer never reveals his secrets.
Magic!
Best of the Maldives: Water Slide – One & Only Reethi Rah
One & Only Reethi Rah has its own fun “nursery water feature”, though this one has more than just water cascading down it and its own host of young blossoms to lend it vibrant colour.
Best of the Maldives: Nursery – Kurumba
Another enclosure of vibrant colour is the orchid nursery at Kurumba. Except to hard-core horticulturalists, nurseries are often about as interesting as a pair of old wellies and a dirty spade. Usually, they are an example of the whole being less than the sum of the parts. In this case, the parts being hundreds of fragrant blossoms. But all packed into a tedious and cramped barracks.
Kurumba has turned this explosion of hue and scent into a feature itself. Not just by welcoming guests into it, but by investing in make the nursery itself a real attraction. The centrepiece is the water feature which is a dramatic fountain adorned will all manner of vegetation.
Horticulturist and Garden Manager, Upul Kumara, commented that the Orchid Nursery ‘is completely natural and uses coir rope, bamboo and a pond with a waterfall has been used a centre piece of the garden. This will definitely be a new attraction to all our guests and not only that, the space will be suitable for a romantic dinner, a private yoga session or a relaxing stroll.’ He added that in nature, orchids have humid environments with near-constant air circulation. The water pond not only adds beauty, but also helps take care of the orchids. For those who have enjoyed the nursery in the past, we are sure the renovation will be greatly welcomed. With the following addition we hope it imprints to guest a lasting impression on the varied experiences while seeing the Maldives in Full Colour at Kurumba.
Soon, the resort is going to start offering guest dinners in there. A delightful blend of culinary and floral aroma.
Kurumba is not alone in featuring bounteous blossoms and this post has convinced me to add a new category tag for “Flowers”.
Best of the Maldives: Free Range Birds – Nika
From flyboarding to free birding.
This post is also a contendor for “Most Nostalgic for My High School Years”. First, “Freebird” was the Ipswich High School Class of 1979 “Class Song”. Second, me and my buddies were big Monty Python fans (perhaps shades of my eventual UK life) and one of my favourite skits was “Albatross.
While I had parroted the “Albatross” sketch endlessly to pubescent tittering, I had never actually seen one. Until I visted Nika. Lori and was even more mesmerised by him, and his goofy wing-flapping walk, than I was I think. We dubbed him “Albert Ross” (my adolescent sense of humour has matured that much since high school).
Nika has its own bird sanctuary. But not in a cage nor in a segregated section of the island, but right in one of the main thoroughfares are the two main pathways converge in front of the dining area. All of the birds roam freely around the island, but they tend to congregate in this area where they are fed and they have some shelters.
A truly diverse bunch too. Bandito the peacock (see above), exotic dove, hens, parrots (see bottom) and ducks.
Maldives Menagerie!
Best of the Maldives: Flyboarding – LUX Maldives
What shooting up in the air faster than a lottery winner’s bank balance? Higher than the Chinese visitor stats? The LUX Maldives flyboard!
This activity had been in my draft of “Even More What I Haven’t Seen” until Dolores dropped me a line. It didn’t surprise me though that it would be LUX pioneering with such a rad adrenalin activity. LUX really stands out for its spirit of innovation and adventure. But also, LUX Maldives is a perfect location for it. Their sprawling size means it can be conducted on a discreet part of the island without disturbing other guests. Mind you if I was at LUX, I might shy away from trying it out, but I think it would be a fun thing to watch.
“Designed for active guests, Flyboard combines the excitement of motorized water sports to the, otherwise limited, liberty of movements based on the body balance to ultimately achieve the exceptional sensation of flying over the water. Flyboard has only been recently launched worldwide by the France-based Zapata Racing Team. By literally wearing a pair of boots connected to a board, the resort’s guests can be lifted to heights of up to 10 meters thanks to the water jets placed under the board allowing them hover above the surface or to perform spectacular water figures. Taking the concept of luxury holidays on a lighter note, LUX* Maldives continues to look for original yet daring ways to surprise guests of all ages. ‘Being a water sports fan myself, I immediately recognized the potentials of Flyboard as the wide lagoon around LUX* Maldives is ideal for our guests to enjoy this innovative sport that makes you fly like a bird or swim like a dolphin all in one’ says Dominik Ruhl, the resort General Manager.”
Rocket man with lots of splash down.
Best of the Maldives: Culinary School – One & Only Reethi Rah
Eid Mub?rak!
Yesterday marks the end of the Ramandan and the start of the three celebration of Eid ul Fitr. After 40 days of fasting, you can imagine that the celebration at the end has quite a number of long-anticipated feasts.
If you want a bit of coaching help on creating the most sumptuous and resplendent feast, the One & Only Reethi Rah’s Culinary School is where you need to enrol…
“Classes will be available in a range of culinary styles from around the world such as Maldivian, Chinese, Italian, Indian, Arabian, Japanese ‘Washoku’, Thai cuisine or French desserts and pastries. The experience starts with a guided visit to the chef’s garden where the culinary team will demonstrate how to select the finest and freshest products while guests hand pick organic ingredients for their chosen course. Upon return to the culinary school, One&Only Reeti Rah’s master chef will guide pupils through an epicurean selection of the finest cooking products and condiments from around the world including wines, vinegars, oils and olives. Then guests can prepare exquisite dishes with expert guidance and enjoy their own creations in a sumptuous lunch. They leave the course with a certificate, recipe card and their very own One&Only Reeti Rah apron and chef’s cap. Courses cost run daily for between two to four people and cost $180* USD.”
Lori and I visited it in July and it is a truly lavish set up in its own climate controlled area with access to the finest tools in a lovely surrounding. It has gorgeous bas-relief on the wall depicting an ocean sunset with a Mayan-esque boldness of form (see bottom).
Reethi even have a junior cadet offering as well (see below). With this post, I’ve added a new category tag to the blog for “Instruction” which has all of the posts on the best “Schools” and “Courses” that the various resort offer for those so academically minded.
All it takes is an “E” (Eid) to turn a “fast” into a “feast”.
Best of the Maldives: Shark Feeding – Sun Island
To feed or not to feed. That is the question.
Perhaps one of the many questions that might get addressed in this week’s infamous Discovery Channel “Shark Week”.
The feeding controversy rages across the online travel forums. The opponents tend to start from the ‘take only pictures, leave only footprints’ ethos of minimising interference in nature which is certainly a valid and sensible principle. To compound the protests are the quite serious health damage that can accrue to many fish when fed a number of human foods (most commonly breads). But there are also behavioural and other impacts to fish feeding practices. Even relatively safe foods fed from hands can make fish ‘aggressive’ to humans as they get thinking that any human will have some food to offer them.
Still, fish feeding remains an entertainment staple at many resorts. The most innocuous practice is to scoop out the large quantity of fish scraps that accrue from so many seafood dishes in the resort kitchens. These scraps are exactly the diet that the scavenging fish like sharks and rays eat anyway. Still, the dogmatic environmentalists will protest even these practices.
I have been torn on fish-scrap feeding. For the past year, I have contacted a number of marine biologists and posted on a number of forums to try to identify specific harmful impacts to fish populations of fish-scrap feeding. To date I have been unsuccessful in finding any bona fide harms to fish-scrap feeding.
I’m sure it is not ideal. It is certainly not all ‘natural’. So why would I even consider supporting the practice.
It might be that there is a relatively small downside impact to the practice, but a rather substantial upside. That benefit would be the classic ‘zoo argument’. The notion that having zoos or feedings or other contrived (but controlled for animal welfare) practices that bring humans and animals closer together is good for both humans and the animals. In our manufactured, processed and urbanised world, one of the biggest threats to nature is mankind’s distance from it. When people don’t have strong and deep connections to these creatures, as they are just tasty filets on their plate, then they lose the political will to raise funds for their preservation and pass constraining laws for their protection. By offering guests these feeding events, it gives them an opportunity to witness up close these animals and their inspiring qualities.
The more interactions we can foster between humans and nature, the most admiration and connection we can foster to them, I am convinced the more the world will muster up the resources, understanding and interest in investing in their welfare.
I have seen many of these events at resorts and Sun Island was by far the most mesmerizing. You have the regulars like the rays and the jacks, but the star attraction at Sun were the sharks. Every island has an array of reef sharks. While some get to be quite sizable, few are over a metre in length and most are pygmy-like pups not much more than a foot long. Sun had these, some bigger than I have seen in the lagoon waters, but they also were visited by a collection of nurse sharks. These fellows are quite sizeable and have the peculiar behaviour of ‘sitting’ on the ocean floor. Before the feeding started, Lori and I had arrived early and noticed these and we couldn’t tell if they were really sharks or just shark-shaped rocks on the ocean floor.
The Sun Island shark feeding does respect a number of parameters which do minimise any deleterious effects. First, dietarily, they only feed with fish scraps which would be consistent with the shark’s natural diet. Second, they are feeding from a pier and not from hand (as some sting ray feeding is done and as now stopped diving excursions have done in the past).
Whatever ever your perspective on this healthy debate, enjoy the frights and insights of Shark Week so that everyone can respect and support these wonderful creatures.
Best of the Maldives: Wooden Groynes – Baros
One irritation to the most discerning Maldive aficionados are the “groynes”. Water defences that extend perpendicularly to the shoreline to impede erosion. The purists feel that such structure detract from the natural beauty of the pristine beach and the azure waters. And certainly and beach without them is nicer than a beach with them. But in many cases, a beach without them would be no beach at all. The natural currents would have washed them away.
In addition to their island preserving utility, they can also have certain charms and other benefits. They can be a handy way to enter the water for snorkelling, sometimes right at the house reef “drop off”. They serve as reefs themselves attracting an array of colourful sea creatures (we have often found lots of moray eels hiding in the crevasses of these structures. They can also provide a handy romantic dining spot right over the water.
Baros has taken the extra step of making the structures themselves a bit more aesthetically pleasing by investing in wood cladding. It does give them a bit more style and visual appeal. And for some (see photo above), they too have embraced their silver linings by setting out deck chairs and making them a feature not a bug.
Best of the Maldives: Recycling – Kurumba
Lori and Jason Kruse, Kurumba GM, with ground glass
With my emphasis on discovery it took some big stuff to lure back to Kurumba for the third time when there were so many unseen resorts to hit. But I must say that the detour was worth it with quite possibly the most inspiring “Best of the Maldives” discovery of the entire trip.
To date, most resort eco-initiatives have fallen into the following categories…
- Reducing energy use (eg. solar heaters)
- Reef regeneration (eg. reefscaping)
- Awareness and education (eg. symposium and programmes)
But as anyone who has ridden by Thilafushi will attest, the sheer volume of waste and rubbish is a massive challenge for the country. Most resorts are looking at packaging and waste reduction initiatives. But Kurumba is leading the way with a strikingly comprehensive recycling programme.
And investments they are. First, Kurumba has shelled out some serious capital to get some advanced machinery to process the waste. But more so than that, Kurumba is experimenting with these gadgets and tuning them and the processes around them to get the most out of them.
- Bottles – Ground down and used in cement
- Coconut Husks – Ground down into “choir” which is used to make ropes and a range of building materials. Also, using coconut husks to fuel their BBQs. They found out that the husks burn hotter than the charcoal used previously so they have had to adjust their cooking.
- Green Waste – Shedder composter which mixes heat+air+bacteria for accelerated decomposition. Material basically broken down in 3 hours and then let sit for 40 days (it was supposed to be 10 days, but experimentation has shown 40 to be ideal for the best soil creation). Going through 1700 kgs of kitchen waste per day.
- Styrofoam – Shedder to make filler for things like beanbags. Not working properly, but still experimenting to get it right.
Kurumba is sharing its expertise with other resorts now and hopes to pioneer a drive to zero waste in the Maldives. If successful, Thilafushi could itself be relegated to the dustbin of history.
Plastic and Styrofoam recycling
Green waste mulching
Green waste accelerated composting
Shredded coconut husks
Best of the Maldives: Swiss – Maafushivaru
The Swiss have long sought the refuge from the altitude in the low lying Maldives and until recently were the 10th highest country in terms of visitors. And the ultimate Swiss resort seems to be Maafushivaru. For a long time, a resort fully owned, operated and marketed by the Swiss-based Kuoni company primarily for the Swiss market. Despite the fact that Maafushivaru is now available to a range of markets, Swiss are still as much as 50% of the guest population.
The residents and management are not the only Swiss qualities. Maafushivaru is one of the smallest resort islands. It also really struck me for its sparkling cleanliness with carefully groomed beaches and paths. Its sand especially is as plushly soft and blindingly white as an alpine snow drift.
Gueti Reis!