A sequence of events led us to having one more holiday of freedom (as we liked to call it) before having kids and we decided to spoil ourselves and go to the Maldives.
This trip has remained one of our all time favourites and something we talk about regularly and cannot wait to go back. It might not be the fanciest of rooms but in every other aspect it is out of this world. The staff were always friendly and ready to help out with anything, the food was buffet and we never went hungry, in actual fact we ate way too much and gained quite a few kg’s.
The highlight for us and the reason why we will return again and again was the snorkeling, you could walk straight out your room into the water and be surrounded by the most beautiful reefs and all kinds of fish, you never got tired as there was always something new to see or something happening.
The first day we flew in on our seaplane and arrived quite late in the afternoon so after seeing our rooms we went down to one of the bars to have some sundowners. There was some activity going on in the water so we went to have a look and they were feeding the stingrays , lots of straggly fish coming for leftover pieces but otherwise lots and lots of stingrays. We never made it to sundowners again as we made sure we were in the water about 1 or 2 hours before the feeding as the stingrays would start coming up and swimming around, we never tired of it and swam with them everyday. I had done so much research on Tripadvisor before booking as the options in the Maldives were endless and i really wanted a fabulous house reef so we would not have to go out on expensive, uncomfortable boat trips every day. the reviews of Chaaya Reef Ellaidhoo were really great and quite a few people mentioned the titan trigger fish as being quite aggressive and causing some trouble so we did watch out for them while snorkeling but they minded their own business until our last day! We were leaving late afternoon and were obviously trying to get in as much time in the water as possible so we decided to go out further than normal and for some reason my hubby must have gone too close to a nest (not knowing of course) or the camera was a problem but that Titan Trigger was furious and really had it in for my hubby. He never stopped chasing him for about an hour and we were all almost drowning from laughing too hard through a snorkel, we have a sequence of photos that we take out every now and then for a good laugh.
for a well priced holiday (even coming from SA) to a beautiful island then don’t think twice about visiting Chaaya Reef Ellaidhoo in the Maldives.
Chaaya Reef Ellaidhoo – Maldives
