What goes better with chocolate than peanut butter (“two great tastes”)? And LUX North Male Atoll makes its equally homemade version right in front of your eyes with their WeNut Butter machine.
Best of the Maldives: Homemade Chocolate – Six Senses Laamu
“If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it.” – Willie Wonka
Six Senses Laamu has its own caffeinated concoction from homemade from the bean – its own signature chocolate. (thanks Paola)
- “Six Senses Laamu has started to produce handcrafted chocolate bars. 100% organic Criollo beans and brown sugar from a Sri Lankan are turned into a new Laamu chocolate. Their chocolate alchemist Alvina produces different flavors including Maldivian chili, lemongrass, cinnamon and dried fruit.”
With this post, I’m adding a tag for “Chocolate”, appropriate with the Maldives being the quintessential Bounty Bar destination.
Best of the Maldives: Cold Drip Coffee – LUX North Male Atoll
LUX* North Male Atoll’s “LUX Café” features a non-electronic way to start your morning detox after a night of a few too many pina coladas – cold drip coffee. Cold drip is a technique where coffee is immersed in cold water and left to ‘brew’ over a number of hours. At LUX, water drips through for 6-8 hours to make one 1 litre (also 14 hours for 3 litre version). The result is a concentrated coffee where more of the flavour is preserved with a richer fuller body. It is especially good for preparing ice coffee – Lori’s favourite.
Best of the Maldives: Kids Electronic Detox – Dhigali
Sometimes resorts are distinguished not by what they have, but by what they don’t have. Especially, in the “get away from it all” remoteness of the Maldives, people are often on an escape from civilization. While so many properties have striven to provide all the creature comforts of home and then some, some times a few well chosen omissions are lauded by guests. One particular area is refuge from technology that has engulfed our modern lives. One of the most popular “back to basics” design features are those villas with no televisions in their rooms.
Dhigali has gone whole hog at least for the younger generation (arguably most at risk from digital drowning). Their kids club offers an “Electronic Detox”. It has no TV, but also no electronics of any kind no are any allowed in (and if you try to smuggle in that iPhone, the wifi is disabled there). Just analogue, real-world games and activities to thrill and distract.
Best of the Maldives: Frog Toilet – Joali
Best of the Maldives: Jungle Walk – Dhigali
One of our favourite Maldives rituals is our pre-crepuscular circum-perambulation of the island (yes, I did enjoy writing this sentence). That’s a pre-sundowner island-rounder in layman’s terms. Typically, takes about 15-20 minutes for a small resort. Dhigali has brought the charm and adventure of an island walk to the interior with their “Jungle Walk”.
Dhigali has carved out an intimate footpath weaving through an extensive portion of their thick, tropical palm-canopied undergrowth. In addition, they have enhanced it with some signs feature fun factoids about this inner landscape you are exploring as well as with a few seats to just sit down and take in a part of the island that is all too rarely savoured. It is also lit so you can take a romantic midnight walk along it as well
Best of the Maldives: Longest Local Island Bridge – The Residence
While the Maldivians have traditionally scurried from island to island by dhoni and more recently motor boat, funds from tourism have provided the resources for more permanent connections with bridges. One of the sights of our recent tour was to see the completed Male to Hulhumale bridge, one of the Maldives’ largest infrastructure projects in its history. On a more modest scale is the The Residence’s new connection to its adjacent sister property The Residence Dhigurah (and to reduce confusion, the original “The Residence” now is going by the name “The Residence Falhumaafushi”). I’ve already posted about the jetty’s charming little deserted island that flanks it at about the halfway point, but the jetty itself is also distinguished as the longest resort-to-resort jetty in the Maldives at half a kilometre (nearly twice as long as Conrad Rangali’s jetty between its two island).
With this post, I’ve added a tag for “Bridge” for all the various bridges that occasionally link the scattered islands.
Best of the Maldives: Sandbank Lagoon – Hurawalhi
One of the most accessible lagoons is in one of the most inaccessible places in a sandbank off the island of Huralwahi. I love the charming combination of these two distinctively Maldives features. (Photos courtesy of Shahudan Ibrahim)
Best of the Maldives: “Peter” Diving – Faarufushi
[NOTE: This offering is no longer at the resort…an opportunity for a “not yet seen again” feature for some resort.]
Despite its fame as a diver’s paradise, we didn’t dive in the Maldives until about our fifth year of going there. Lori’s sister did diving and Lori decided to get certified to join her when the sister came along with us one trip. Even then, I stayed up on top snorkelling with the kids. I remember one day, the kids and I were just finishing with the morning house reef snorkel when Lori was just setting out on her dive. She had to get the gear ready while we just threw on our fins and masks and jumped in. When she got back, we asked what she had seen on the dive. Sharks, morays, colourful fish, sting rays. It was all the stuff we had seen snorkelling. I continued to question why bother with all the equipment and faff of scuba diving when so much can be seen so close to the surface.
Since those days, I have succumbed and gotten my PADI Advanced Open Water and done over 60 dives there. And they have all been delightful. I still make a point to snorkel every house reef and there is still something alluring about the simplicity of snorkelling – no encumbrance, the ability to pop your head up and talk to your buddy, the sun on your back.
But I will admit that you do have to deal with the nuisance of seawater sloshing into your snorkel and being limited in how long you go underwater before you have to return to the surface for a breathe. Faarufushi’s “Peter” breathing system provides the unencumbered simplicity of the snorkelling experience with the underwater breathing freedom of a scuba system. Instead of the air supply being strapped to you, it floats on the surface and follows you through an extra long regulator tube.
Another benefit of the Peter is for giving people a stepping-stone taste of the scuba experience. Many dive centres offer complimentary “Try Dive” sessions. You put on all the scuba gear and have a little underwater swim in the safe confines of the shallow lagoon. But the Peter sessions are even less effort and might serve to ease more people into the underwater experience.
The “Peter system is also featured at Sun Siyam Irufushi and Kandooma resorts, but at Faarufushi it is included in their AI package.
Best of the Maldives: Reef VR – Carpe Diem
While still many “not seen yet” possibilities, my research is uncovering “finally seen” features I’ve proposed ages ago. Like Carpe Diem’s (also at the Raa atoll but didn’t get a chance to stop by this tour), house reef VR (which I proposed in Haven’t Seen #11 post, #4 a couple of years ago). The resort is doing more than just providing a sexy view of its underwater seascape, but is actually using the footage to assist with its reef conservation efforts:
- “Carpe Diem Maldives is excited to expand on the Dive with a Purpose marine conservation programme this September in collaboration with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the United States of America…Using innovative imaging and data technologies to archive reefs digitally and watch how populations change through time. Recreational divers joining the cruise will learn how to take their own reef images to recreate a virtual reality of the dive using special software. During the Dive with a Purpose week on Carpe Vita from September 9th – 16th Dr Brian Zgliczynski, Project Director of the 100 Island Challenge will present to Carpe Diem’s guest divers the research work involved in the project and go diving with the Carpe Diem Maldives team and guests to lesser-known dive sites in Raa Atoll as they accomplish conservation tasks.”