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
QI: What Exactly Is It??
Q: What are those things swimming around the reef?
A: Fish?
Q: Buzzzz…there’s actually no such thing as a fish.
That’s the conclusion of eminent natural historian Steve J. Gould (small world coincidence – Lori sang in the same choir as him years ago). There are all sorts of creatures dubbed “fish” and yet they all exist on all different branches of the species taxonomy – jellyfish, cuttlefish, crayfish, shellfish starfish. There is no one Order or Genus that contains all or even the vast majority of species that people popularly refer to a “fish”. As a Telegraph piece describes: “Unlike mammals and birds, not all the creatures we call fish today descend from the same common ancestor. Or put another way, if we go back to most recent common ancestor of everything we now call fish (including the incredibly primitive lungfish and hagfish), we find that they also were the ancestor of all four-legged land vertebrates, which obviously aren’t fish at all.” (at least in the Maldives you can be pretty sure that the “fish” you are dining on is actually the fish they say you are eating which is not always the case elsewhere).
On a similar note, Bird and Moon flippantly points out another aquatic “Animal With a Misleading Name” – the Peacock Mantis Shrimp. They look like a walking lobster tail where the claws and long legs have been removed (but they’re not even Lobsters either). Mantis Shrimp are their own distinct order of “Stomatopods” (which falls under the Subphylum of Crustaceans). But their mendacious moniker isn’t the only curiosity of this colourful creature. In fact, the Oatmeal, illustrated a complete portrait of the bizarre life of the mantis shrimp (“my new favourite animal”) with such factoids as and they can move their limbs so quickly they can supercavitate the water (like boiling it), they can accelerate as fast as a bullet, their limbs are so resilient that the cell structure has been studied for the development of combat body armour, they can’t be kept in aquariums because they tend to break the aquarium’s glass.
School Time
Summer break is over and it is back to school time. So an apropos for us to go back to the schools of the Maldivian for some splashes of vibrant colour…
Blue-Striped Yellow Snappers [ABOVE]
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)
