Choosing the right place to stay and dive in the Maldives is a balancing act. It’s a trade-off between affordability, luxury and, crucially for me, the quality of diving. This applies to all destinations but in the Maldives you’re particularly exposed as there are so many resorts and all advertise some form of diving.
Let’s call it the travel triangle. You could choose to dive on a liveaboard: potentially a high scorer for the quality of diving and affordability but unlikely to be as comfortable or luxurious compared to a resort. Conversely, you could have a luxurious resorts that offers limited diving tailored to beginners.
Vilamendhoo Island Resort & Spa offers a great balance: a single island resort, not ludicrously expensive and a dive centre catering to all abilities of divers. The concern I have going to a destination like the Maldives, where you have no choice of dive centres, is the diving could be basic. On Vilamendhoo it was excellent.
Euro-Divers
Euro-Divers have a collection of 10 dive centres across resorts in the Maldives and is a well respected outfit. The centre on Vilamendhoo was rigorously organised and its routine built around the daily sign-up sheets.
Morning, afternoon and all day trips were available that made it easy to pick the type of diving you wanted to do on a given day. Don’t fancy getting up early? Well then, it’s an easy afternoon dive on a local site. You get my drift. A big plus is they offer unguided house reef diving, in my view the best way to dive.
The quality of guiding underwater was good but between dives the guides, particularly the non-Maldivian, whipped off their kit, took dive details and retreated to the bow to sit on their phones. There was a weird vibe and I got the impression some were about ready to end their stint of idyllic island isolation. Though professional, I certainly didn’t leave Euro-Divers feeling any sense of affinity with their staff (which I normally do).
Their pricing structure though clearly presented was not particularly intuitive. The costs for dive packages are based on shore dives and additional surcharges are then added for boat dives – these all reduced based on the number of dives done over a stay.
It was a slightly nerve racking experience going to clear the bill when you haven’t been able to mentally track how much it’s going to cost. However, averaging at around $75 USD per dive it’s about the price you pay for diving in the Maldives. It would just be nice if it was clearer.
Diving Highlights
We managed 14 dives during our trip to Vilamendhoo. South Ari Atoll has some of the best diving in the Maldives and you have a very good chance of seeing sharks, turtles and manta rays (possibly all on the same dive). If you haven’t dived in the Maldives you may be surprised that the diving contrasts with the quiet idyll of the resorts.
It’s fast moving and exciting. Strong currents, mixed visibility and occasionally rough surface conditions can make the diving challenging. However, the results of these conditions is the excellent marine life on offer.
Kuda Rah Thila
The premiere dive site in South Ari Atoll is not famed for sharks or manta rays but for a far humbler fish – the blue striped snapper. The sheer quantity of this small yellow fish was if anything slightly disorienting.
The huge shoal of snapper dominates the pinnacle. They begrudgingly move for divers or the bluefin trevally that stalk the reef but otherwise they’re a permanent presence. There’s meant to be plenty of excellent macro life at Kuda Rah but I didn’t bother looking. There was enough going on.
It’s a must do dive.
Whale Shark National Park
We decided to roll the dice and sign up for a whale shark dive trip. I don’t normally enjoy going on dedicated trips to see a particular species. If you’re unsuccessful it can feel like you’ve wasted a day that could of been better spent. I’m also famously unlucky.
The national park is at the south tip of South Ari facing the open channel and a couple of hours by dhoni from Vilamendhoo. Visibility was reduced for the three dives we did. Reduced down to a gloomy green of under 10m, which added to the anticipation of potentially seeing one of the locals. However, as noted above we didn’t have any luck. It’s a cat and mouse game of dropping into the right part of the reef hoping a whale shark will intersect your path.
It’s worth adding it’s a busy area and there were at least 10 boats with exactly the same plan as us. So if you have a low tolerance for busy dive sites this may not be for you.
Vilamendhoo House Reef
My favourite dive site of the trip. Vilamendhoo is well organised for its excellent house reef. There are numbered entry and exit points along the island prepared with kitting up benches that allow you to take your kit and meet a full tank ready where you want to dive.
The pure simplicity of walking into the water, without a guide, is the most enjoyable way to dive. The site has so many small points of interest that you can return too. There is varied macro-life of anemones, octopus, sand eels and boxfish mixed with the constant passing of blacktip and whitetip reef sharks in the blue.
Vilamendhoo – The Island
The island is approximately 400m long running east to west on the eastern edge of South Ari Atoll. The position at the edge of the atoll gives it good access to the most interesting channel dives in the area. Its small size and palm lined beaches give it an appropriate small island feel.
The resort has a variety of restaurants though some are gated to certain accommodation types (like the upmarket water bungalows) but the main buffet was excellent and provided a wide variety of different cuisines.
Our adjoining bungalow was slightly set back from the beach but it gave us easy access to the sea to snorkel or swim. The shallow waters around Vilamendhoo appeared to be a popular nursery for juvenile blacktip reef sharks.
Getting There
The cheapest way to get to the Maldives (from the UK) is with a stopover in either Doha or Dubai. This will save money but it does add a decent amount of time, at least 3 hours, onto your journey and the additional faff of having change planes. When direct flights are around 10 hours it’s a sizeable increase in overall journey time. British Airways and Virgin offer direct flights during peak seasons (Nov-Mar) and this was the option we took.
Male airport still has a chaotic charm. Outside the arrivals hall is a collection of small kiosk with crowds of resort reps waiting (and shouting) to get you to your resort. I’m about 80% sure I knew what was going on as we were led to the seaplane check-in desk and then shuttled to the seaplane terminal itself.
Having to make your transfer by seaplane does add to the overall cost but it’s worth it. Taking off from water, barefoot pilots in shorts and the idyllic views of atolls is a unique experience and something everyone should do once.
Our seaplane operator was Trans Maldivian and they advertise their hand luggage allowance as only 5kg, which may be particularly problematic for underwater photographers. However, this seemed to be ignored as my heavy bag made it through without an issue.
Other trip ideas to the Maldives:
