The Debars Honeymoon Part 2 : Diamonds Athuruga Water Villa

The Water Villas are jaw-droppingly INSANE!!! Again Diamonds Athuruga exceeding all our expectations. The design of them is similar to that of the houses on Theeson Island in Knysna, SA. Since been here I have already started a list of if we were to build our own home what our essential and must-haves would include. The list is already way out of our price range. A girl can dream though right?!

Anyway back to the Water Villas, as we started walking down the board walk to villa 16 sunrise side (this is a story I will talk about later), we were picked up by only what could be described as the limo version of a golf buggy. Which I found totally bizarre given that someone else was transporting our luggage and the walk would be barely be 5 minutes, but Nathan been Nathan said he could definitely get used to this life. Similar to the Beach Bungalows, the Water Villas were pristine and white, not like the traditional Maldivian villas of some other resorts. Our room was huge, we had a walk in wardrobe including towelling robes and also lounging robes, we had a huge king size 4 poster bed, a sofa in our room, a wine fridge with plenty of drink varieties, a MacBook (which is the reason I decided to start posting again on holiday), a shower with a waterfall type shower head and rain-like shower head which had a door to the outside decking so you could shower with a view of the sea. The outside decking was a different ball game, also massive with a 4 seated table, 2 large sofas, a coffee table, 2 lush sun loungers and totally open to the amazing surroundings and obviously steps down to the sea. I'm not even sure my explanation does it justice, but hopefully the photos below will offer a better view.

We proceeded to send the entirety of our first day on the deck, taking photos every 5 minutes of the same view and watching fish jump out of the water. The reason we decided to do 5 days in each room was for the restaurant difference, in the Water Villa we no longer had the buffet restaurant, we had an a la carte restaurant on the water, with the choice of the sitting's set menu or whatever you wanted on the a la carte menu. definitely more my cup of tea.

Beach BBQ

Lobster Tartar

Beef Carpaccio with Truffle & Parmesan Crips

Fresh from the sea Tuna Sashimi

On the Monday we had signed up to do a Manta Ray tour with the resident Marine Biologist Lorenzo and Matt who worked for the Manta Trust and who was a Marine Conservationist, so we had plenty of expertise onboard the board. Matt warned us that we may not see any Mantas at all and the percentage likelihood he gave us was 60% due to only just arriving 'in' season. Nathan and I were hoping for better odds, but been ever the optimists we hoped for our lucky day. We took a 40 minute Dhoni boat out to the Maavaru Lagoon close to the Moofushi Island Resort. Matt encouraged us as we got closer to the location to go onto the roof of the Dhoni and help him look out for the 'fins' (wings) of the Manta. Despite my normally poor awareness, I'm proud to say I spotted the first sighting and it was all hands on deck to get in the water as soon as possible. We felt like luck was on our side, but the Mantas could quickly swim away. However we nailed in, as we managed to see around 7 or 8 different Mantas. Mine and Nathan's first sighting took us by surprise with a Manta coming up behind us, I was petrified but the more we saw them the more we realised that they are gentle giants and would really come up close and personal. The photos don't do the size of them justice, but the females span can reach up to 3 and a half metres. We reckon the biggest size we saw was not far from this. It was another unforgettable experience for us (along with Whale Sharks in Exmouth, WA) and we just couldn't believe how amazing it was. If you ever get the opportunity, we'd totally recommend it!

We feel like we have definitely been more active this side of our honeymoon, with lots more snorkelling, me participating in a sunset Yoga session on the beach and the both of us Kayaking around the whole island and then all the Water Villas, however the amount we have eaten has definitely counter-acted this.

We've drank plenty of wine, very much favouring an Italian Chardonnay, several proseccos and the occasional cocktail, Nathan favouring Pina Coladas and me the Singapore Sling. The food this side of the trip has been exceptional and we've been spoilt and made fat by around 4 course for lunch and then again for dinner. Safe to say we are both going to have a shock to our systems on our return home, when we'll go back to one course for mealtime. We have eaten Lobster tartar, fresh from the sea whole Calamaris, Tuna sashimi (personal favourite), Reef Fish, Rainbow Fish, Red Snapper, vegan spring rolls, plenty of pasta (our chef was Italian) our favourite being an aubergine ravioli as well as beef, salads and lots of popadoms with homemade chutney.

Despite having an incredible and once in a lifetime stay in the Water Villas, the weather hasn't been fully up to scratch. We've had spells of full sunshine but the rest of the days have been littered with showers, plenty of very black clouds and torrential downpours which I have loved swimming in. The weather hasn't made a huge difference though as we are feeling well and truly relaxed and happy and that's all we could have asked for from our honeymoon!

So it's back to reality and time to get planning our next adventure, until next time!

xoxo

The Debars Honeymoon Part 1 : Diamonds Athuruga Beach Bungalows

How crazy has 2017 been? And how are we already coming to the end of it?

I have bucket loads of catching up to do, fully aware of that, in fact I have drafted about a zillion posts on various events/occasions of 2017, but it seems like the app for this blogging site can't keep up with my ios updates and I only seem to have time to do my posts on the app. There will be a summary post coming hopefully before the end of the year, but this post is all about our very own HONEYMOON!

I am now married which still seems like a crazy dream, but we are here honeymooning after getting married precisely 3 weeks and 2 days ago. Inspired by the lovely Eden's blog - 'The World in Summer' (make sure you subscribe) I decided what better time to start than now (an overcast afternoon).

We are in the Maldives, in the South Ari Atoll staying in the beautiful Diamonds Athuruga resort. Thank you to Emma at Kuoni for helping us book our insanely dreamlike honeymoon. 

We flew with Emirates via Dubai and were lucky that both legs of the flight were not fully booked, so we were both able to stretch out and get some proper sleep, pretty much business class right? On arrival to Male, the capital city, the runway was surrounded by sea and from what we could see of Male was a small, yet busy and bustling city with multi coloured rooftops. We were lucky enough that were our island was far enough away that meant we had to take a sea plane rather than a Dhuni local boat, we straight away headed to the sea plane airport and boarded our tiny little plane.

We had a few stops before we got to our island, so it was great to see other resorts before eventually arriving at ours 40 minutes later. People told us before we went that the weather was interesting and that you could be on one side of an island and have rain and the other side would be sunny and scorching hot, that much was true from our plane ride. We witnessed torrential rain, overcast skies, black skies and blue skies and it wasn't a journey for those with travel sickness.

Our sea plane dropped us off in a jetty in the middle of the sea and we were then picked up by the Dhuni local boat and taken around the reef to the pier of our resort.

It paradise from the website and then from the sky, so seeing it in the flesh was incredible. We were welcomed with fresh iced tea and watermelon and taken straight to our first room, number 26 Beach Bungalow where we would stay for 5 nights. It was all we imagined and more, it totally exceeded expectations. Very clean and white, with a beautiful flower display on the bed with 'Happy Honeymoon'. We also, to our surprise had an outdoor shower, which was definitely an added bonus. 

We didn't bother unpacking but grabbed our swimsuits and went for a quick dip before our first lunch. Start how you mean to go on.

The next five days were spent, waking up to palm trees, white sand and clear blue sea, sun tanning, enjoying white wine at lunch, playing too many card games to count and plenty of snorkelling. Highlights were our Teppanyaki lunch at the beach, seeing a few Octopus whilst snorkelling, dinner for just the two of us in a traditional Maldivian hut eating traditional food and another dinner for just the two of us on the beach in a beautiful white gazebo type thing.

We have been utterly spoilt rotten and have now just arrived for our next 5 days in the Water Villa, hold fort for the next post of part 2 of our honeymoon.

xoxo