All oved-up in the Maldives,
It’s honeymoon central but we still fell hook, line and sinker for the Maldives
YES, IT is blindingly obvious but sometimes the obvious is just the ticket. What I mean is that if you Google ‘honeymoon’, ‘paradise’ or ‘islands’, you are bound to end up with the Maldives.
Which brings with it a pressure all of its own. So here we are (me and my wife Lauren) on the first day of our honeymoon on the 150 m x 200m Kandolhu Island, a comparative freckle atop the coral that is Ari Atoll to the west of the capital Male.
Our j ourney had i nvolved a seaplane (first tick on the holiday list) and now we are having a candlelit dinner (tick number two) on the beach, trying to look exactly as couples do in the brochures.
Not that choosing Kandolhu was easy, because the Maldives consists of 1,192 sandy beauties basking in the warmth of the Indian Ocean and each seems as honeymoon-friendly as the last.
We have unashamedly gone for the ‘ honeymoon package’. Well, when else can you j ustify staying in a duplex villa that is a mere hop between your own pool and the beach?
Only 30 villas encircle the island, eight or so out on a pontoon, each adorned with either its own pool or hot-tub and complete with a wine chiller, home to 28 different bottles: rose, sparklers, whites and reds, old world and new.
One day, eight of us converge on the dive centre, including German couple Jurgen and Helen. ‘ We’ve done so many dives around the world, but the Maldives is j ust in a different class,’ says Jurgen. ‘I don’t think there’s anywhere better to see the manta rays; they’re incredible.’
A short boat ride from the island we find ourselves at Manta Point. We are taken to the thrall 60 ft or so below, where the mantas come for a clean courtesy of the wrasse. We descend, hook up to a rock and wait.
Waiting for the mantas is akin to being among rush-hour tropical traffic as clouds of blue-striped snappers, surgeonfish and masked banner fish pass through. Our instructor points out other nautical neighbours from the flamboyant (but deadly) lionfish to parrotfish, giant clams and clownfish. Soldier fish, fusiliers, trumpetfish — there’s an entire army down there.
When the mantas arrive from the depths for their spruceup, they do so with no small amount of grace, narrowly, yet effortlessly, soaring past you. They fly so close with their giant sea wings, you can feel the ripple in the water.
We stay anchored to our viewing spot until the wrasse have finished their work and the rays head off to be gloriously majestic elsewhere in the Indian Ocean.
The boat trip back to the island is possibly the only time you genuinely converse with the other guests guests, everyone as excited as each other about what they had just seen.
Once back on Kandolhu, every couple returns to honeymoon formation, eyes only on each other. It’s not that anyone is being rude or anything, it’s just the way it is and, indeed, should be.