{"id":9171,"date":"2023-06-18T02:53:19","date_gmt":"2023-06-18T02:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/swimming-wild-turtles-amazing-island-colours-kandolhu-island-maldives\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T10:03:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T10:03:55","slug":"swimming-wild-turtles-amazing-island-colours-kandolhu-island-maldives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/swimming-wild-turtles-amazing-island-colours-kandolhu-island-maldives\/","title":{"rendered":"Snorkelling With Sea Turtles At Kandolhu In The Maldives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fresh off the high of that amazing Maldivian sunset (champagne-fuelled) cruise<\/a> at the amazing Kandolhu island, we headed off for cocktails by moonlight (which somehow seems even more special than cocktails by bar-light \ud83d\ude09 ), before heading out to dinner.<\/p>\n

I say \u2018heading out\u2019, we must have walked all of 10 steps to the Sea Grill restaurant where we would be having dinner.<\/p>\n

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As you arrive into the restaurant, you get a chance to check out the fresh seafood and ingredients that will be going into your meal before making a choice (not essential of course but it\u2019s always good to know your seafood is fresh).<\/p>\n

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At the restaurant, I made the switch from cocktails to wine in preparation for dinner…<\/p>\n

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There were oven-baked flatbreads, which I actually think it may have been garlic naan breads \u2013 Lloyd ordered, I just muscled in on the order (so you\u2019ll have to ask him).<\/p>\n

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I went with scallops – seared to perfection and Lloyd went with Tamatar Ka Shorba (a seafood chowder) to start.<\/p>\n

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Don\u2019t judge me here (I kinda blame the wine a bit \ud83d\ude00 ) but instead of seafood, I went for an old favourite of mine \u2013 lamb. *In my defence, I got food envy from watching someone else\u2019s order arrived and I\u2019m so happy I did cos that lamb was deeeelicious!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Lloyd did the right thing on the seafood front and went for tuna (which doesn\u2019t surprise me \u2013 he loves tuna) and judging from the \u201cMmmm\u2026 Tayssshhty<\/em>\u201d (or something that sounded like that), it was pretty good!<\/p>\n

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Dessert was crumble for me (and more wine) and a chocolate fondant for Lloyd. A brilliant way to end a brilliant meal before stumbling back to the villas for a well-earned kip.<\/p>\n

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The next morning, right after breakfast (which I didn\u2019t get round to photographing properly but promised to the next day), we set off to go snorkeling properly.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t arrive on the island<\/a> with any snorkelling gear, fret not \u2013 Kandolhu<\/a> has you covered on all fronts and before long, we were splashing around the island in search of the colourful oceanic animals; and particularly keeping an eye out for a particularly exciting one \u2013 wild sea turtles.<\/p>\n

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We can across all kinds of fish (to attempt to start naming all of them now would be an exercise an a half\u2026 and result in a post that would be far too huge to read) before eventually coming across those famed sea turtles.<\/p>\n

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Like I mentioned in my previous post<\/a>, Kandolhu island is a great place for spotting sea turtles (and dolphins, apparently) and it most certainly didn\u2019t disappoint on this morning.<\/p>\n

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The turtles move surprisingly fast and actually let you get close enough to get a photo (though not too close, they\u2019re still wild and can snap at your with their very hard beaks \u2013 plus you really don\u2019t wanna disturb them, that\u2019s be beside the point of snorkelling with a wild animal).<\/p>\n

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Chuffed to bits with our turtle sighting, and surprisingly very hungry, we decided to head back to the villa on time for lunch, a nice swim, right from our water villas and generally just a lazy afternoon.<\/p>\n

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The only other plan of the day was to have a 90 minute massage and just to relax in the spa and that\u2019s just what we did. I may have even snuck in a little pre-massage snooze. The massages were absolutely perfect (I could so be the kind of person that would have daily massages).<\/p>\n

It was just the perfect idyllic day \u2013 the kinda of day the Maldives are all about really.<\/p>\n

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For dinner, we decided to head up to Olive \u2013 the island\u2019s Mediterranean restaurant<\/a>. The view from up here of the ocean is pretty great though my favourite part about this restaurant is dining with the sound of the waves lapping at the shore. It\u2019s one of those subtle details that somehow ends up defining moments like this and thoroughly sets you at ease for the entire evening.<\/p>\n

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We started off with oysters and salmon (not strictly Mediterranean but still very delicious)\u2026<\/p>\n

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\u2026before moving on to calamari<\/p>\n

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\u2026swiftly followed by a culinary trip to Italy with risotto (for Lloyd) and lasagna for myself.<\/p>\n

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For dessert, we headed over to France with a pretty epic cr\u00e8me brulee (soooo not helping my cr\u00e8me brulee addiction but I ain\u2019t complaining\u2026 \ud83d\ude09 ).<\/p>\n

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The rest of that evening was spent listening to those waves, accompanied with a bottle of white wine, or as we say back in Italy (gimme a second, while I google this\u2026) \u2018vino bianco<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n

The next morning was our final morning in the Maldives, and after almost two weeks here, I intended on starting the day as I\u2019d grown accustomed to \u2013 with a breakfast fit for a king!<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t decide if I wanted the eggs benedict or the pancakes so I just decided to go for them both. And yes, I have no regrets here. They were both absolutely perfect. To be honest, if you\u2019re into your food \u2013 this is the island to be, the food here is pretty special!<\/p>\n

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All packed and ready to go, the rest of the afternoon was spent as all good afternoons in the Maldives should be, with cocktails on the beach with occasional breaks between sipping cocktails for a quick dip to cool off.<\/p>\n

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Saying farewell to such an amazing island (and some pretty amazing people) wasn\u2019t easy but leaving with incredible memories from being spoilt rotten kinda helps alleviate that feeling a little. This is after all, one of my absolute favourite islands in the Maldives\u2026<\/p>\n

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On the way back, we had the boat, and then the seaplane all to ourselves (kinda felt like a fitting farewell to the Maldives \u2013 almost like it had been planned \u2013 hehe!) before heading back home from Male.<\/p>\n

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A big reason why I decided to return to the Maldives after having just visited earlier in the year was primarily because the first visit just didn\u2019t feel like enough. We\u2019d cut that first visit into half the time as we decided to go to Sri Lanka for part of that time and I felt like there was so much more I wanted to see and do in the Maldives after our first visit.<\/p>\n

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This\u2019d made you think that this time around, after almost two weeks, I\u2019d have had my fill of the Maldives but that couldn\u2019t be even further from the truth. I already miss the Maldives and I\u2019m so looking forward to returning to this absolutely amazing and utterly stunning part of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fresh off the high of that amazing Maldivian sunset (champagne-fuelled) cruise at the amazing Kandolhu island, we headed off for cocktails by moonlight (which somehow seems even more special than cocktails by bar-light \ud83d\ude09 ), before heading out to dinner. I say \u2018heading out\u2019, we must have walked all of 10 steps to the Sea … Continue Reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,396],"tags":[362,1078],"class_list":["post-9171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","category-travel-journal","tag-asia","tag-maldives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}