Happy Halloween. A time for lots of homemade sorcery – carving pumpkins, baking sweets, making costumes. I even crafted my own Halloween montage for a big Halloween party we held last year – “I’m In Love with a Monster”. If you want to make some especially spooky candles, Cora Cora offers a candle making workshop. Perhaps with a pumpkin spice scent.
I already written the about museum on Maamagili, but the work continues under the new management of Cora Cora. The extensive collection of heritage is not just a showpiece assembling a few artifacts for the cultural curiosity of the guests, but instead an ongoing research, excavation, restoration project that continues to literally unearth treasures from the Maldives’ distant past.
The work is conducted at their Collection Centre where they continue to examine and catalogue pieces found on the island. During my visit, experts in ancient Chinese porcelain visiting to the resort with the primary objective of examining the trove of artifacts. The resort is still moving an ancient mosque uncovered during construction and is reconstructing it. In fact, a entirely new bathing tank found and excavated when the Cora Cora property was developed.
Stay tuned for upcoming posts on some of the intriguing details of this archaeological work.
Cora Cora is like a collection of all of our favourite things in the Maldives – small island, fine house reef, cultural heritage, whimsical vibe, colourful aesthetic, progressive management, accessible luxury. One might think that after staying at over 110 Maldives resorts, and having written over 1600 “Best of the Maldives” pieces we would have seen it all by now. So it is delightful to continue our adventure of discovery and find over 20 features to Cora Cora that we hadn’t seen before (or at least not with their twist). Also, it shows that you don’t have to be a super luxury property to be distinctive. I’m not surprised when I come across some esoteric luxury in one of the ultra-premium resorts, but it’s especially satisfying when a resort finds a way to add an inventive touch with creativity as opposed to big budgets. Stay tuned for some colourful delights.