For those who missed out on a draw in the Water Polo World League starting this week and want to soothe their disappointment in tropical paradise, then Olhuveli offers regular water polo matches in its pool.
Vilamendhoo used to have it in the lagoon which sounds great and reminds me of some Italian seaside towns which hold water polo matches in the seaside harbours (but they have not had matches for a while now).
100th Chelsea Flower Show, one of the bellwethers of sunshine and blossoms in climate-challenged England, opens today. To mark the occasion we have our own online exhibit of botanical curiosity. Mirihi not only has it’s very own blossom, but it is its namesake. GM Martin Vossen describes, “Mirihi is named after the flower! 🙂 I think it can be found on other Islands as well, but I have never seen it anywhere else and I would not be aware of where else it can be found, so it is really quite unique.”
Luxury + Seaside = Lobster
Wherever you place luxury next to the seaside, at the top of the restaurant hierarchy will always be lobster. It pretty much defines the pinnacle of seafood cuisine. Today being Lobster Day, perhaps a few of you with be donning the plastic bib and wielding the nutcrackers and silver picks.
So no surprise that lobster dinners are pervasive throughout the Maldives. Especially since they do live in profusion just metres away and just about any diving or snorkelling excursion will stumble upon one or more hiding under a crevice. But if you don’t want to get wet checking out these crustaceans in their native environment, then check out Kandooma’s lobster pen. Set in the resort’s lagoon by their pier, they have set underwater fencing in an area about the size of a pretty ample swimming pool and they keep their lobsters there. No piles of lobsters crammed on top of each other in a restaurant lobby fish tank. Their final days awaiting their dining table fate is spent in a spacious and natural home environment.
It also means that you can get some pretty big boys into the pen. The specimen in the photo above is about as big as my thigh (and my thigh is not small). And the number to choose form is just as large as we counted several dozen when we sat observing them crawling about.
I’ve never found any variety of lobster to be as tender and sweet as the famous Maine Lobster from where I grew up, so I don’t splurge for these delicacies very often in the Maldives. The most tempting preparations are those dishes prepared with a bit of local and gourmet flair that bring something extra to this exquisite ingredient. Kandooma’s luxury restaurant specialises in lobster dishes offering a broad range as well as a very tempting Lobster Gourmand Menu. It also offers a number of lobster dishes as part of its ‘Fishermans Market’ event held every Wednesday.
Free range lobster!
Maldives Complete also doesn’t do boats in its profiles or ‘Best of’ reviews. I’ve shied away from getting into the whole ‘Live Aboard’ segment of Maldives holidays because, like Guest Houses, I’ve never been on one so I wouldn’t know which criteria to feature or how to write about it.
But, this post’s distinction is sort of a resort/cruise hybrid so it just passes. It’s sort of the ultimate water villa. A mobile water villa.
We have always fantasized about taking a cruise boat actually as a way to see lots of nooks and crannies of this mystical archipelago. Having been to many resorts and enjoying the discovery of new gems, the notion of touring along a stopping at all sorts of little islands off the beaten path and then retiring to the ultimate in ‘water villas’ sounded entrancing.
We can see the appeal of such a floating holiday…
Well, any of these have crossed your mind, then the Four Seasons has an offer for you with their Four Seasons combo offer on the exquisite Four Seasons Explorer offers a brilliant option.
Another possible title for this post is “Billionaire for a Week”. Like my “Billionaire for a Day” post. The price of chartering the Four Seasons Explorer is $16,000 per day (last I checked) for whole yacht. For 22 people that’s a bit over £500 per day which isn’t exactly billionaire price bracket. But it certainly is the billionaire lifestyle.
I don’t do Guest Houses, but I do do Snorkeling.
I’ve shied away from adding the new Guest Houses in the Maldives to the Maldives Complete database for a few reasons. First, I’ve neverstayed in one so I have no real first-hand experience to understand the key characteristics to profile. Second, there is less information on them on the web for me to research. They are often small mom-and-pop operations and comprehensive websites are not often provided.
But I have been a big advocate of Maldives being the best place to Snorkel in the world. And from that perspective (and in the spirit of ‘Best of the Maldives’ distinctives and uniques) I just had to add a post about the Keyodhoo guest house’s new ‘Power Snorkeling’ activity…
“Power Snorkeling – Only available at Keyodhoo. If you like snorkelling, you’ll just love Power Diving! With Power Dive’s free-floating Power Snorkel, you can dive to 6 metres with a friend for more than an hour on the 35 a/h battery. There are no tanks to carry, wear or refill and, after your dive, simply recharge or exchange the battery and do it all again! You don’t need a dive ticket to use it. View video in sidebar. $35 per couple, or $20 per person.”
Not a person in sight.
What most of the prospective visitors on Forums ask about is the lowest population density. Perhaps burnt by crowded beaches and resorts elsewhere in the world, they are drawn to the Maldives by the tranquil seclusion. Relative to these other sardine seasides, even the highest density Maldive islands we have visited always seem sparse by comparison. Seeing fellow guests on the beach and around the island is always a bit of a rare event. I often ask ‘where is everybody’.
But if you want the ultimate in Robinson Crusoe human isolation, then Soneva Fushi is the expanse for you. Unlike most resort profile pictures, the pervasive natural landscape is evident from its aerial shot (see above). Mathematically, Soneva has 65 rooms on a 688,500 square meter island which is an agoraphilic 10,592 square metres per room. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ‘Population Density’ filter was suggested by a friend (Mark Richardson) who happens to be a Soneva Fushi devotee.
In my ‘best of’ filtering, I’ve excluded resorts that are not on their own island (eg. Equator Village on Gan, Traders Hotel on Male) because even though the ‘rooms per hectarage’ is small, there is lots of other infrastructure and ‘residents’.
To be low in density, the trick is to (a) be rather large in size (the numerator in the equation), (b) not have water villas (which add rooms beyond the land area). So for some who prefer the smaller more intimate islands and the luxury of a water villa, a low density is not a big appeal.
And if that density is still too crowded for you, Soneva has their distinctive picnic island (see below) where the density drops right down to nada.
One trick to SEO is ‘keyword density’, ie. packing each page with the words ‘Maldives Resort’ every where. I didn’t think you folks would appreciate such gratuitous, self-serving clutter so I’ve avoided such contrived measures.
One trick to ‘Population Density’ (ie. rooms per square metre of island) on a Maldives Resort is lots of water villas. And the new leader is the new kid on the block. Safari Island now wins hands down in the ‘Population Density’ stakes. Maldives Complete has all the population densities of all the resorts. The previous king of cozy was Jumeirah Vittaveli with 91 rooms on 14,000 sqm for 154 sqm per room. Safari has 84 rooms on 8,000 sqm for 95 (!) sqm of island per room. Another relative newcomer has also opted for the jam them in approach, Centara Ras Fushi (140 rooms on 29,000 sqm for 215 sqm per room).
But on the horizon is a resort that Dutch Docklands is building whole resorts in lagoons with no island at all. Mathematically, a population density of infinity (that’s what you get when you divide by zero). Actually, the other Maldivian Jumeirah, Dhevanafushi, already sort of has an ‘all water villa’ feature with its complete detatched ‘Ocean Pearls’ villas set out in the middle of the ocean (see below), and Gili Lankanfushi pioneered the boat-only water villas with its collection of residences.
“W” is for “Worker” on today’s International Worker Day. And in the Maldives,”W” – as in ‘W Retreat’ – is for workers too. According to the definitive source, the Maldives Resort Workers themselves…
“MRW congratulates W Maldives for being the best employer in 2012 and urge other resorts to make a fair attempt to get the title of the best employer in 2013. For most of the resorts, it’s just a matter of coming clean through accounts to give a fair distribution of service charge to the staff, which is by law entitled to staff.”
This ‘Best of the Maldives’ accolade was actually already awarded to W Retreat back when Maldives Complete first started in 2009. But this updated and comprehensive survey provides both quantitative validation and fresh recognition for W Retreat’s enduring focus on this area.
Today’s post has also prompted the addition of yet another Category tag for the site – ‘Management’ (which is actually a bit of a pet subject for me).
Most of the special events in the Maldives take one down into the water (like Six Sense Laamu’s Water Wo/Men event). But equally as sparkling as the turquoise lagoons and shimmering reefs is the firmament of stars above. Usually at least once during our Maldives visits, we lie down on the warm sand after dinner to gaze at the night sky packed with stars with a flourish of Milky Way across the middle.
Resorts are catching on to this night time showpiece with increasing numbers offering telescopes, beach star gazing sessions, eclipses, observatories and special events. In fact, today’s post has prompted me to add a new category tag – ‘Astronomy’.
Gangehi is going a step further with an entire ‘Astronomy Week’ devoted to celestial celebration. The line-up includes…
As it happens, tomorrow we enter the ‘Lagu’ period of the ‘Seed Moon’ which is Celtic for ‘Flowing Water’ (!). The Runic Calendar of Nordic traditions, which is governed by half months rather than full months, divides this moon of the year by Man (Human) from April 14th through April 28th, and Lagu from April 29th through May 13th.
If you are interested in marking other big astronomical events in your diary, then check out this handy reference chart for 2013 of "13 Must See Star Gazing Events in 2013".
Star attraction!
Another sanctuary for the airbourne is Sun Island’s Kovelivaa park, the biggest bird sanctuary among the Maldives resorts.
As it happens, today is Audubon Day established on the birthdate of the world’s leading ornithological illustrator, John James Audubon. Sometimes, Audubon Day (celebrating wild fowl) and Arbor Day (celebrating wild foliage) are celebrated together by planting trees in bird sanctuaries like Sun’s.
There is more to the Maldives fowl than herons (it seems as it every resort has its resident heron who combines stalking the lagoon shallows for fish with posing like a fethered statue for hours on end to charm the guests). Two lesser seen examples of Maldive bird life found on Sun Island are described below by the resort…
White Breasted Waterhen (Amaurornis phoenicurus) – “These white breasted waterhens are very calm and like to go along doing their work silently, unnoticed. As the name suggests, these birds are the water counterparts of normal hens and can be seen mostly near edges of water bodies. In [Sun Island’s] IIT, the best places to see them are the lake behind SAC and IITG lake. When no one is around, they are bold enough to venture on the roads, so watch out for them! Local names: Assamese”
Asian Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea) – “Asian Koel is a large cuckoo which feeds mainly on fruits and berries in trees, feasting on the ripe fruits. It also consumes insects and caterpillars. Adults often frequent orchards.”
Megatick!