This Intimate Maldives Resort is the Ideal Place for a Multigenerational Holiday
The Maldives knows how to do wow but it’s also a very special playground for a multi-generational holiday.
Dulux offers more than 200 shades of blue but not a single one of them adequately captures the colour of the water in front of me. Lagoona Teal? Nowhere near bright enough. Oasis Spring? Way too dark. Spritzig? Not even close.
Like everything else in the Maldives – a fantasy land of overwater bungalows and dazzling white beaches – the water doesn’t seem real. My eyes are drawn to it again and again. And how could they not be? We’re literally surrounded by the stuff.
The country’s thousand-plus islands are spread out across about 90,000 square kilometres but the land makes up only about one per cent. It’s a fragile landscape that’s always changing and constantly mesmerising.
The hyper-colours are just one of the drawcards that have brought me back. Seven years ago, tired and in need of some R&R, I journeyed to the west archipelago on my own. This time I’ve returned with the whole family – my mother, my husband and two teenage daughters. It’s the first time we’ve travelled overseas together and I’m busy juggling everyone’s requests, from swimming with manta rays to trying out sea scooters.
With 81 villas, the InterContinental Maldives Maamunagau Resort is one of the country’s smaller properties, giving it a friendly, intimate feel. But this is five-star all the way, starting with the 35-minute seaplane ride from the capital, Malé, to Raa Atoll. From the air, we spot that familiar holiday dream – an arc of bungalows stretching out across the Indian Ocean.
When American hotelier Hugh Kelley and two mates invented an overwater bungalow in 1967 – a $30-a-night room on stilts in Tahiti – they could never have envisaged the three-bedroom residence that’s our home for five nights. A two-storey thatched villa with enormous wings that wrap around the lounge and dining area, it’s the size of a large house and features an infinity pool and unparalleled access to the big blue.
This is manta ray territory and they take the colossal fish seriously here. We happen to be at the resort on 17 September, World Manta Day, and guests gather as the team cuts a manta-shaped cake (although Meera, who works for the not-for-profit Manta Trust, jests that she can’t bring herself to eat a slice).
There are some 6000 manta rays in the Maldives, mostly of the reef variety, and the population in Maamunagau Lagoon “is more than 300”, says Nabs, a Maldivian student who is doing an internship with the trust. “The reef rays can grow up to a 4.5-metre wingspan.” These gentle giants, with skin like sandpaper, are attracted to this region because of its placement and the way it’s been formed, says Nabs, who adds that the Manta Trust is campaigning to have the lagoon recognised as a Marine Protected Area.
Although we’re all desperate to get amongst it, we first want to explore the island, which offers a myriad of land activities, including decadent massages in the overwater treatment rooms at Avi Spa and private family movie nights, where staff will set up a mini cinema on the sand. “We want to curate experiences for our guests,” says Jude, the resort manager. “It’s why we have curators, not butlers.”
Omay, our “guest curator” for the week, is determined to make all our wishes come true, whether it’s a mocktail-making class for the girls at the teen club (“It was so good I’m going to set up a mini mocktail bar at home when I get back,” says my younger daughter, Mila) or a wine game for the adults, where one of the resort’s sommeliers, Vijay, pours us glasses of wine and we attempt to identify the style and region.
We all agree that the food is unbelievably good for a location this remote. There are five restaurants at the resort, from the casual, beachfront Cafe Umi (which does super-fresh sushi and salads and a chicken burger the kids rate as “absolutely amazing”) to The Lighthouse, which sits on the point of the island and offers a rooftop viewing platform along with upscale Mediterranean flavours. Then there’s the adults-only Retreat (which also has a pool) and the Asian-inspired Fish Market.
But it’s the wildlife we really came to see. “We never give a 100 per cent guarantee that we’ll see mantas but we try our very best to find them,” says our guide, Asram. On our first trip to Hanifaru Bay, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, we don’t spy any. We have better luck at a nearby “cleaning station”, where mantas hover and allow small fish to feed on their skin. My eldest daughter, Remi, spies a black mass at the water’s surface. And then it’s a matter of bobbing slowly along, looking for more. “There are three here,” says Asram. “Let’s go.”
We slide into the water as quietly as we can, put our heads down and wait. “Mantas are very sensitive,” Nabs had told us, “and they might feel scared or like they’re being hunted.”
It’s difficult to describe the emotion of seeing a manta in the wild. They cut through the water so smoothly – and seemingly in slow motion – before they fade from sight. “They are so graceful,” says Mila. “Like birds underwater.”
And they’re not the only marine life we encounter. An enormous pod of dolphins – maybe 100 – escorts us back to the resort, leaping out of the water and breaking beneath the bow. On a turtle safari, we see hawksbill turtles, wedging themselves into the coral before climbing to the surface for air.
One night, Asram takes us snorkelling off the beach, an experience both thrilling and disconcerting. Sweep the light and the vast Indian Ocean stretches out, a dark yawn. The fish are sleepy and hang in the water – except for one that swims at me, brushing my face and making me squeal behind my mask.
A pair of lionfish snuggle in a crevice, their bright orange stripes making them conspicuous. A pewter trumpetfish, as long and thin as a whip, floats by. Giant green parrotfish are so pretty that you want to follow just them all night. Asram shines an ultraviolet light on coral that glows a fluoro-green. Then, asking everyone to turn off their lights, he agitates the water with his arms and legs and small flickers surround him – bioluminescence. It’s like swimming with fireflies.
On our final boat trip, we’re diverted by a whale shark. “It’s only the third time this year a whale shark has been seen in this area,” says Asram, as excited as we are. We’re in the water in minutes, even my 76-year-old mother. And there it is – a five-metre whale shark with a zigzag bite mark on its back. It’s the size of a bus and as slow as one, too. I hold hands with my daughters, floating, transfixed.
That’s the thing about the Maldives. For all the creature comforts, the real show is nature itself. On the last morning, I wake up early and go out to the deck, my family asleep in the villa behind me. The moon is just coming off full and there’s a smattering of stars. All I can hear are the lapping waters and beneath them an ocean, alive.
