Join Yves de Contades as he explores a seaplane safari through the Maldives – a fine way to arrive anywhere, and this one delivered him to Le Méridien Maldives Resort & Spa by Marriott, thirty minutes north of Malé on the island of Thilamaafushi in the Lhaviyani Atoll.
Le Méridien occupies a kilometre of pristine white sand, beach villas along one side, overwater villas along the other, nine hectares of lagoon and reef busy with rays and turtles. The greeting at the dock told me everything: most of the three hundred staff turned out, all smiles and genuine warmth, and across the stay that warmth never once slipped into the rehearsed. Guest numbers are kept well below capacity, so you often get the beach and sea to yourself.
We had the Sunset Overwater Villa with pool, and here I must pause and gush. A great bath sat beside a terrace with nothing on the horizon but ocean, into which one could lose an afternoon. The minibar was all inclusive, which is dangerous.
An overwater villa’s true genius is the water ladder: straight into a shallow lagoon, then out across the reef into proper snorkelling territory. Eleven room categories in all, from beach villas to the family sized Thilamaafushi Villa, and choosing between them is impossible.
Our first evening we dined at Tabemasu, the Japanese restaurant, and nearly did not leave: sushi and sashimi impeccably fresh, mocktails inventive, champagne cold, Italian red excellent, Michelin starred cooking with a whisper of French haute cuisine. Then came something I will remember when I have forgotten my own name: two bicycles, ridden through the jungle at night along a desert sandy island, stars glimmering overhead.
Morning brought the jet ski safari and we set off to find dolphins. The swell was up and our sports master had one speed, full, so cresting each wave produced a one to two metre drop at sixty miles an hour, spray blinding you on landing, the machine slamming down hard enough that I expected the Yamaha beneath me to come apart. I hold my own watercraft licence, so I was in my element, though the sensible traveller can ask their guide to ease off.
An hour and a half of wild, salt stung fun.
Lunch was at The Riviera, the Spanish restaurant, Catalonian cooking on the beach: my two favourite culinary cultures, Japanese and Spanish, both here, and I took shameless advantage. The rest of the roster rewards indecision: breakfast at the Turquoise Restaurant over the sea, Velaa Bar and Grill for grilled fish and whisky leaning Islay and Japanese, and the adults only La Vie by the pool at night, named for the maxim la vie est trop courte pour boire du mauvais vin: life is too short to drink bad wine. A philosophy I try to honour.
Then padel with Rupesh, who deserves his own line. A lovely chap and an excellent teacher, but his real gift is rarer than technique: a genuine desire to share the joy of whatever he is doing.
He runs dancing and a dozen other activities, all of them huge fun, and lured me, a man whose natural habitat is the warm sea, out of it to join him. Charmant does not quite cover it.
My scuba dive with Judit and Floren at Sub Oceanic Le Méridien confirmed something I have long suspected: a dive operation reveals its quality in the first five minutes. The moment they clocked my Nitrox certification, they swapped my bottle without fuss and we were off, sea flat, visibility excellent. We drifted the house reef, barely a hundred metres out:
a black tip reef shark, the largest moray eel I have seen, two giant turtles grazing sea grass, beside which I settled in near religious calm, and a stingray half buried in sand. After forty five minutes, a third of a tank still in hand, we surfaced. Always too soon.
The knots earned on the jet ski were worked out at The Explore Spa: an hour of couple’s Balinese massage from Lxamo and Sokxan, given while I watched fish and the occasional baby shark through a glass panel in the floor. I am aware this is an absurd sentence. An absurd, wonderful hour.
Dinner was at The Harvest Table on the beach, beside the greenhouse, our own private chef and waiter, sand washed in warm orange light, waves lapping near our feet. Across the island, a young man knelt to propose to his wife–to–be, ringed by pyramid lanterns, beginning a new life on a sandbank in the ocean.
Hidden behind the bushes at the island’s centre is the largest hydroponic greenhouse in the Maldives, tended by a chap called Fabio, supplying kitchens and spa alike. Eating something rooted forty metres from your table an hour earlier was one of the trip’s thrills.
Le Méridien is a genuinely natural island, lush with vegetation, home to lizards, fruit bats and comical long legged chickens strutting like small dinosaurs with somewhere important to be. The entry to the sea is soft sand throughout, no shingle, no coral, no water shoes needed, a small miracle for parents.
The last word belongs to a child I never met. Standing on a sandbank thirty metres out, the water no higher than their knees, a small boy looked around at the whole shimmering improbability of it and announced, to nobody and everybody, “This is the best day of my life.”
The villas are gorgeous, the sushi sublime, jet skis fly, but the staff, Anna and Judit and Floren and Lxamo and Sokxan and the three hundred others who say hello and mean it, are the reason a beautiful island becomes an unforgettable one.
Même au paradis, ce sont les gens qui font tout: even in paradise, it is the people that make it.
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