Maldives for the first time
The million visitors who quadruple the country's population each year are still discovering the new hostels for independent travelers (and the regular inter-island ferry service) and continue to overwhelmingly choose the resorts. With their inner or sustained villas on the water, they each occupy an island. Here they give you everything done. Mainly the sun, the sea and the sand, the basics of Maldives that remind you forever that the world is also this. And the entrance that gives access to all this show is to take off your shoes.
YOU SEE FLYING FISH
Of the many almost fantasy encounters with which Maldives welcomes you, the one with the flying fish takes first prize. Or the flying goal. You are moving by boat from island to island and suddenly a colorful torpedo, the flying fish, overtakes you at 60 kilometers per hour and up to a meter above the water . One is stunned seeing those rectilinear surprise flights up to 200 meters away.
It is not that it is endemic to the Maldives (it also lives in other warm-water seas), but seeing it always becomes a slightly supernatural encounter, whether it is the first or not. The nearly 40 species of flying fish that exist have developed the ability to shake tail 70 times per second to emerge and get away from its many underwater predators. Once out of the water the birds could be a problem for them, but in reality their main enemy are the fishermen that capture them at night with lights that attract them like hares.
UNDERWATER DINING
Having a lobster dinner with an audience can be a bit awkward, but if it's the lobster's cousins who look at you, things get dramatic. The Conrad Rangali Maldives hotel has a restaurant, Ithaa , located 5 meters below the surface of the Indian Ocean and whose roof is a curved glass cover.
That in the Maldives means fast and constant whirlpools of fish of all colors and sizes. And that in Maldives also means many little white sharks , the miniature of those who frightened us as children. And also many ghostly rays floating majestically . The time with the best visibility is from December to March, but the rest of the year is not bad either.
Ithaa Undersea Restaurant
WANT TO FLY
Maldives manages to turn flights into another of the visitor's pleasures. To begin with, arrival at the airport on the island of Hulhumale (just a boat ride from the capital) can be done in the Business class of Qatar Airways , which has accumulated awards in recent years as the best business class in the world (and with the best catering) and the best airline in the world.
Get there by stopping at the Doha Premium Terminal (the only terminal in the world dedicated exclusively to the gift life if you travel in the superior air classes) and intensive use of pajamas and the wine list What the airline offers in Business is to start before arrival the "barefoot vacation", the typical product of Maldives. Try to get a window seat - The postcard of atolls, rough ocean and overwater villas that brought you here is right at your feet. The plane gives you one of the best views that can be found on Google Maps (that is, on the planet) and some photos that always look good even through the windows.
The other air transport that you are going to take is the seaplane that takes you from island to island and that offers some of the most magical and hilarious moments of the trip. In the hands of various companies, with a line bus interior design and unnumbered seats (get on early and sit in a front window), the first thing you discover when you get on is that the riders go barefoot . Try not to worry: if they are that comfortable, everything is going well.
seaplane to paradise
YOU ONLY STEP INTO NATURE
The asphalt here is immediately a distant memory . Going barefoot is serious: the islands you're on have sandy or wooden paths and from there you go to the sea to go on excursions or dive. If you take them, you will hardly ever know what to do with the shoes. In the resorts there is a continuous variety of plants that swear they are indigenous . As for animals, the most striking on the surface are the flying foxes, hermit crabs and all that bunch of lizards of all hairs and colors, the local insecticide.
vegetation everywhere
YOU DIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME
It does not matter if you have dived before or not: unless you have been very lucky or you are more than an amateur, diving here will always seem like a first time . To get started, you just have to take a few steps outside your villa and look out on the shore to find an underwater life of a Times Square type racial variety on New Year's Eve.
There are times when, floating or diving over corals, one is unable to find two identical fish. The ones that make the most bulk are the turtles, whales, manta rays and sharks . In the resorts they are in charge of feeding the last two at a fixed time and near one of the bars so that they are easy to see. And yes, they have nemos too.
Diving in Maldives is like doing it for the first time
YOU MISS THE STREETS IN MALE
It is not very common to stay in the capital if you are on vacation. The city is a bigger eccentricity if put in context. The context is the sea, which even in Male it is still turquoise and the city are tall buildings, paved streets, not very beautiful institutionalized palaces and a lot of traffic and bustle. It is the mercantile heart of the country , where all the imports arrive, which are many and very necessary here.
Getting lost in the streets will not bring you much joy , but it will help you better understand a fundamental and real part of Maldives. If you have a moment lost visit the market of the Leisure port, sports port , if only to see the variety of fish spread out on the ground. You can also give the National Museum a try, full of curiosities in keeping with the troubled local history. There are pieces of everyday life and military and religious objects. They also have the lacquer boxes that are the most famous local product and a marine collection in which a complete skeleton of the rare Longman's beaked whale stands out.
Male
YOU OPEN A HOTEL
If Maldives is full of all that feeling of cleanliness exhaled by deserts and islands, imagine adding the premiere of a hotel in which everything It is brand new and it seems that the villas on the sea have been made for you.
You can get this on Kandolhu Island, a small round hotel island with 30 villas, of which a long dozen of them are located on the water. It opened in January and belongs to the Universal Resorts group, which owns some of the most successful and exclusive hotels in the atolls: Kuramathi (the longest hotel island and most recommended if you are looking for privacy), Kurumba (the historic first resort of the country), Velassaru (a minimalist and contemporary luxury, with infinity pools and innovative cuisine), Baros (small, romantic and aimed at couples and honeymooners) and Maafushivaru (which can be walked from end to end in 10 minutes and is completely surrounded by coral).
Premiering infinity pool
You will open a hotel
YOU KNOW PEOPLE OF PRINCIPLES
sonu shivdasani , the owner of the Soneva Fushi , is a visionary and, moreover, a man of principle. That's why he dedicated part of his fortune to pursue zero carbon dioxide emissions in his hotels (Six Senses) and ended up selling all but two: Soneva Fushi, the jewel in the crown, his right eye and his first hotel, and Soneva Kiri, in Thailand.
At his resort in the Maldives he has not stopped exploring new possibilities linked to the relaxed philosophy slowlife which is the house brand. One of his novelties for this year is the Childrens Den, an exploration park with a high ecological content that opens in the fall in the center of the island. They have also started the crossings of the Soneva in Aqua, a sailboat furnished and decorated with natural materials ( brown leather, hardwoods and organic cotton) and which will tour the northern atolls of Maldives starting this year.
Also, in the renovated Soneva, an area of large family villas which includes a nine-bedroom, the largest in the Indian Ocean. And that's not counting the house Robinson Crusoe style tree present in many of them.
island slowlife
Shivdasani's other project in the Maldives is the ** Gili Lankanfushi resort, ** which continues the concept of the Soneva, but without so much obsession with its environmental impact. Still, it has a interesting project for the repopulation of corals (all hotels try to take care of them, but their way of doing it is especially careful and organic) as well as the installation of an air conditioning system that reduces energy consumption and respiratory diseases associated with these devices. The accommodation also has Mr Friday, an informal butler who eliminates the formality of the reception. The idea, also by Sonu Shivdasani, has been imitated by other hotels, but the Gili already came as standard.
DISCOVER A LAND OF UNUSUAL RECORDS
Maldives is the easiest country in the world for climbing: its highest peak is 2.3 meters above sea level. But in addition to being the flattest it is also the most mountainous, since the islands are the peaks of a submerged plateau 5,000 meters high. As for surface, It only has 298 square kilometers of mainland spread over 1,190 islands. . It has only the same number of inhabitants as the capital Córdoba (328,000, and 31 percent in Male). As if there were few oddities, it only had two presidents of the republic in 38 years and began its path to democracy in 2008 . In addition, in the last five centuries it passed successively through Portuguese, Dutch and British hands and its independence is only 50 years old. And a note for the cautious: In a couple of years Maldives will celebrate its fourth decade without shark attacks.
*** You may also be interested in...** - The 50 best beaches in the world (international envy)
- 15 bungalows over the ocean
- Body and mind in a bain-marie
- All the articles of Rafael de Rojas
Repopulation of corals and... good life