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Ocean Fantasy: The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands

ocean villas on an island in the middle of the sea

The Ritz-Carlton, Fari Islands, in the Maldives

A new resort complex in the Maldives seeks to combine ocean exploration and conservation, extreme luxury, sustainability, and a cultural vibe the islands have never seen before. Candice Tucker checks in

Fari Islands in the Maldives has been created by its developers, the Singaporean Kwee family, as a completely new type of destination for the region. As well as the usual beach and island isolation, the islands, which include three hotels, have a small cultural and resort centre called Patina Island, aimed at providing alternative distractions and activities.

I am staying at The Ritz-Carlton, on one of the islands, which is proud of its programme combining social and environmental innovation. There is almost no plastic used on the island and, increasingly, energy is generated from solar power. The ocean villas, designed by the late Kerry Hill, were built with sustainably managed timber, from sustainable European forests. The most impressive initiative is Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ambassadors of the Environment programme. Guests can watch marine biologists at work, led by Cousteau, scion of the celebrated ocean exploration and conservation family. As part of the programme you can help search for plastics and ghost nets in the ocean, and work on ecological restoration around the island. Combining luxury with purpose, it is a harbinger of holidays to come.

A bedroom leading to a swimming pool that leads to the sand on a beach with plants and trees

One of the hotel’s beach-pool villas

It helps if you understand the undersea world, and for that I set off, on my first day, on the Ritz-Carlton snorkelling experience. After a short boat ride, we stopped far out to sea. Surrounded by nothing but blue water, the hotel diver said, “This is where we jump in”.

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Imagine being transported to another universe. Rainbow fish, turtles, guitar sharks (their name comes from their shape) and colourful corals of pinks, purples and oranges. I had arrived on the film set of Finding Nemo. Watching the hotel divers remove abandoned nets, without harming sea life, brought home the delicate balance between observing and protecting this precious world.

A room with two massage beds overlooking the sea

A treatment room inside the Polo mint-shaped spa

Personalised luxury is the new buzzword in the travel industry, and I found it here – or, it found me. One day I commented innocently on the quality of the chocolate cookies at dinner. The next day, on returning to my room, I found that a bath had been prepared, with coconut bath oils – and a plate of the chocolate cookies on the side. And waking up each morning, pressing a button next to my bed and seeing the uninterrupted view of the turquoise Indian Ocean, became a daily ritual I couldn’t tire of. The décor in the room was a mix of light browns and whites, reflecting the colours of the island, leading to a private infinity pool and round sun lounger, offering complete privacy to enjoy the view.

At the centre of the 39 ocean villas is a Polo mint-shaped building, which is the spa. The only noises you can hear are the wind and sometimes the splash of a flying fish. Now, imagine walking round the inside of that Polo with a view of the sea on the inside and scores of treatment rooms on the other, each with the same tranquil vista.

A a white and light brown bedroom with a bath overlooking the sea

Ocean-pool villa

The beach, carpeted in powdery white sand, and the occasional hermit crab, meets the turquoise sea, which becomes increasingly transparent the closer you peer. When I was feeling more sociable I visited the buzzing Patina beach, the social centre of the islands, with its pool bars, art galleries and upscale food trucks. However, as an urban dweller, I was more tempted to spend time back at the Ritz-Carlton relaxing, where palm trees hang over sparsely spaced sun loungers, spread across the white sand, making you feel not isolated, but rather exclusively pampered. The only interruption was the occasional offering of fruit sorbets and beverages. For me, it was the perfect spot to read, and dip into the sea when I felt like it.

The Tum Tum food trailer, serving up Asian street food, at the Fari Marina

The social centre of Patina does allow for a wider variety of cuisines and styles of dining than you might get in most resorts. Arabesque, an Indian-Arabic fusion restaurant, a link to the history of the Maldives, demonstrated the cultural crossroads. I recommend the Goan fish curry, cooked with coconut, tamarind and local reef fish.

In fact, the Fari Islands offer seven restaurants. One evening I dined at Iwau, the Ritz-Carlton’s Japanese restaurant, at the chef’s table under the stars. The tasting menu was presented as abstract art, an explosion of colour on each plate. The slow-cooked buttered salmon teriyaki, with asparagus and avocado cream was the highlight.

a vegetarian pizza on a wooden cylinder tray

Vegetarian pizza at the hotel’s beachfront Eau Bar

The Italian at the Ritz-Carlton, La Locanda, is a hub for all-day dining. Guests can order off-menu. On a whim, I asked for pasta with seabass and tomatoes, which the chef quickly prepared to perfection. Warm focaccia infused with garlic was a satisfying starter.

The resort’s operators are fond of saying that the combination of art galleries, beaches, restaurants and cultures mean Fari Islands has a hint of St Tropez to it. That may be true, but in terms of marine life, conservation and space, it offers rather a lot more.

Ritz-Carlton cinema

The Cousteau Connection
At the heart of the Ritz-Carlton is JeanMichel Cousteau’s Ambassadors of the Environment programme. This is personally run by the 84-year-old celebrated veteran of ocean exploration and film making. The programme introduces guests to ocean conservation through education and interaction. Activities range from using ocean drones to spot sea life and searching for ghost nets to collect, to learning to pilot a submarine. Scuba diving (for anyone from the age of 10) and snorkelling allow guests to witness the rich marine life along the reefs.

Cousteau also says the involvement of Ritz-Carlton is crucial, particularly in the Maldives. “When I was diving in the Maldives, I was surprised to see the number of dead corals. We need to do everything we can for the corals, because they are a very important part of the protection of the coastlines. Corals help to feed hundreds, maybe thousands of species, and we need to conserve everything around the Maldives. Ocean Futures’ approach, which I created to honour my father’s philosophy after he passed away, is if you protect the ocean you protect yourself, and if we protect what’s around the Maldives we will protect the people there, and we want to help as much as we can.”

Find out more: ritzcarlton.com

This article appears in the Summer 2022 issue of LUX

Reading time: 5 min

Latest Stories, Travel

Hotel of the Month: The Anam, Cam Ranh Bay

Beach front villa with private pool

Why should I go now?

Monsoon season is one of the most beautiful times to go to Vietnam. The landscape is lush and green, and whilst the showers are fierce, it makes the periods of blue skies and blazing sunshine even sweeter. Nestled within a forest of palm trees on a peninsula of white sand, The Anam is a vibrant, tropical paradise.

What’s the lowdown?

Image by James Houston

The Anam opened in April this year as the first and only World Luxury property in Vietnam, and whilst it should still be in the teething stages, there’s very little to suggest this is a new face in the luxury world, apart from a few bare walls where local artworks are due to be hung. The design is colonial with traditional Vietnamese detailing, handmade lanterns and ornate, tiled floors with columns allowing the cool sea breeze to flow through the spaces.

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The food, in all three of the restaurants, is superb, but really exceptional at the recently opened Indochine Grill. It’s European fine dining, intimate and elegant with a live pianist creating an almost Parisian mood. We tried the taster menu and each course was as delicious as the next. During the daytime, there’s a complimentary activity schedule of yoga, kayaking, fishing, volleyball and mini tennis tournaments or you can just lounge on the beach or by one of the three swimming pools, which are open all hours, so that at night you can float on your back whilst listening to live music in the Saigon Bar.

The Indochine European fine dining restaurant.

Getting horizontal

Our villa opened out onto a manicured lawn leading straight down to the sea; lying in bed we could hear the calm, continuous rolling of the waves and glimpse a sparkling line of blue when propped up on pillows with the curtains open in the mornings. Interiors were bright, homely and simple with dark wood furniture contrasted against white walls and linens. The bathroom, at the back of the villa, featured a light well with tropical plants growing up alongside the bathtub. It was quietly luxurious, but in no way overdone, allowing the view to take centre stage.

The Anam. Image by James Houston

Nitpicking

The Anam is everything you could possibly want from a beach resort. Where so many resorts fail, it manages to blend the highest-level of sophistication with a laid-back island kind of attitude. The villas are hard to compete with so the the hotel building at the back of the resort inevitably falls short in comparison. Whilst the rooms here mainly have sea views, the multilayered building feels dark and imposing where the rest of the resort is bright and elegant.

Rates: From USD $215 (approx.€200/£150)

Millie Walton

Reading time: 2 min

Future Luxury Issue, Travel

An unexpected paradise off the coast of Africa

On the south side of an island off the coast of Africa, yet pleasingly accessible, the Ritz-Carlton Abama is one of the most dramatic resorts in the world, as DARIUS SANAI discovers

A perfect storm in the luxury travel world has meant the world is unrecognisably smaller than just 30 years ago. We have seen a combination of escalating numbers of high net worth individuals, a global burgeoning of high-quality airlines and operators (and private jet-friendly airports), rapidly developing destination countries and destination management organisations, spectacular new hotels and the internet to make it all transparent. And it means that what was unspeakably exotic a generation ago – Thai beaches, or hotels on stilts in the Indian Ocean – is mainstream now, and what was unimaginable – bareback riding to the Angel Falls, hikes to meet isolated villagers in Papua New Guinea – is quite feasible.

There is one destination I visited recently that could belong to both the ‘hot discovery’ category and the mainstream category simultaneously. I could write that I spent a week on an island mountainside, on a cliff above the ocean, facing a volcano across the sea on a quasi-uninhabited island off the west coast of Africa. That Charles Darwin took inspiration from, and wrote about, the natural wonders of the volcanic island I stayed on; that its climate is preternaturally sublime, never too hot, cold, or wet; and that stargazers congregate here for its clear, pollution-free skies.

I could also write that I spent a week in a luxury resort with seven swimming pools, three highly acclaimed restaurants (with a total of three Michelin stars), a golf course and a private beach – in the Canaries, one of the prime mass-market destinations for the people of industrialised northern Europe. Both stories are true and are, in fact, the same story.

As a child, I missed out on the Canary Islands boom, my parents preferring to take me to mainland Europe for our holidays. They became synonymous with a certain type of package holiday, so it is with some skepticism that one arrives in Tenerife. Then, in the rental car from the airport, you notice that the whole island is in fact one vast volcano rising from the sea bed. The height of the peak, far above, is 3,718m – high enough – but the whole mountain, from ocean floor to top, must be vast: it would dwarf Mont Blanc, western Europe’s highest mountain. That means you are always at some point on its flanks, whether driving along the motorway or sitting on a beach.

The Ritz-Carlton Abama is a cacophony of pink stone on the edge of this mountainside. It sits alone, and from the moment you enter the gates of the resort, the broad view in every direction lacks any of the overdevelopment of other parts of the island.

The balcony of our suite faced out over some gardens planted with subtropical flora; the gardens stopped at a cliff edge, underneath which was the hotel’s private white-sand beach (most beaches on the island have volcanic black sand). At night, sitting back on a lounger, sipping local Malvasia wine and dipping papas (tiny black potatoes, intensely flavoured, grown in volcanic soil), the sky was a ceiling, not a void. A hemisphere of stars rotated slowly, noticeably: constellations would move across the ceiling at set times every evening. Occasionally a marine bird, flying through the banana plantations that flanked the resort, would break the silence.

To get to the beach at Abama, you walk down through the gardens to the edge of the cliff, where you have two choices: a funicular lift with glass walls descending the mountainside, or a zigzag path through cacti and tropical flowers. Once at the bottom you are presented with a perfect semi-circle of beach, within the embrace of a sheltered bay. Directly in front of you is the volcanic island of Gomera, a national park, protected and wild. It is a big, green, upside-down cone rising out of the ocean.

There is no fighting for sun loungers here(we were there at peak season); you take your pick along the extensive sandy crescent and then swim in the sea (quite chilly, very clear, plenty of small fish for company) or go jogging along the beach, a few hundred metres from cliff wall to cliff wall.

El Mirador swimming pool - Twilight.jpg

Abama is dotted with very classy cafes and restaurants, the beach area being no exception. They all have the distinction of feeling like stand- alone, individual places with their own identity, destinations in themselves rather than outlets in a resort. The bartender at the beach cafe said he would never work elsewhere in the resort. “Here we can just see the sea, the sun, the island,” he smiled, laying down a mojito and a bowl of green olives. We sheltered from the sun under the palm trees planted along its terrace (it’s only a terrace – no indoor tables at all), sipped our drinks, watched people strolling on the beach immediately below, and then went for a stroll of our own.

Adjacent to the beach to our left, we had seen children and adults diving off a rocky outcrop. Wandering over, we noticed that the other side of the outcrop featured several rockpools, perfect for wading through, and then turned into an extraordinary ancient lava field: smooth, black rock, almost soft to the touch, slipping into the ocean and home to hundreds of blue crabs of various sizes. Typically they were the size of an adult hand, but some monsters were twice that size; they would cling to the rock as a wave washed over them, oblivious, and then scuttle along at alarming speeds.

Dining that evening, we visited a restaurant called El Mirador, situated by the little funicular at the top of the cliff, surrounded by gardens and a long pool, and with even more dramatic views over to the island of Gomera. El Mirador’s speciality is local seafood and paella, something frequent visitors to Spain may be wary of, as it is the mantra of many a mediocre establishment. Our interest was piqued, though, by the fact that the restaurant runs its own paella- making school, replete with lessons on types of rice, and that the chef has been acclaimed in the media all over the country.

On the terrace of El Mirador, under the ceiling of stars, unidentifiable fledgling birds chirping in a nest to our side, we were given a lesson in paella; not how to make it, but how it can taste. During a fairly lengthy wait (which we were warned about: “a great paella cannot be rushed”), we enjoyed some starters of langoustines and some Azuarga red from the Ribera del Duero – red wine with a seafood dish may seem a curious choice, but a fruity, fresh, powerful red matches well with highly flavoured fish and rice.

The paella came in a big black pan, its rice brown, long-grained and al dente. Atop were mussels, lobster, a local white fish called, strangely, bluefish, and clams. There was a slash of umami about everything, hints of parsley, white wine and a kind of bouillon of fishy herbaceousness, and no sign of the oiliness that blights so many examples of this dish.

Food is more than an incidental part of the Abama experience; it is one of its showcases. Apparently the owners (one of Spain’s leading media owners) wanted, when they built the hotel, to show that their favourite island could host restaurants on a level with anywhere else in the world. The next evening we went to Kabuki, the Abama outpost of the celebrated Michelin-starred, Madrid-based Japanese restaurant. The restaurant is within the main part of the hotel, its view out to the gardens behind. Decor is cleverly done so you step into Japan – Kyoto, perhaps? – as you walk in along the long sushi bar.

The cuisine integrates local fish and other touches of the area in its menu: nigiri of locally caught bluefish and local tuna caramelized with a blowtorch were memorable and delightful; wagyu beef sashimi wonderful. This was Japanese fusion cuisine at its most powerful: giving you a sense of place in terms of where you were eating, while still evidently very strongly rooted in Japanese tradition. We chose a blanc de blancs small grower champagne from the excellent wine list – evidently the pride in sourcing extends to more than just the food. It was only halfway through the meal that we learned from our waiter that the Kabuki at Abama has also been awarded a Michelin star. Such an accolade, for a restaurant on the far side of an island a long way from the mainland of Europe, and a Japanese restaurant to boot, is quite an achievement and more than deserved. The ambience was relaxing but correctly Japanese and ordered; you felt you were somewhere else entirely, so much so that walking out towards the suite through the hotel lobby was quite a surprise.

The architecture of Abama means you get lost, deliberately. The sweeping, organically shaped reception area looks out over a labyrinth of carp ponds, out to the island of Gomera, and to an amorphous cluster of shapes that turn out to house rooms or front pools. There are no straight lines at this Ritz-Carlton. The main pool, beyond the carp ponds, must be 50 metres long and twists and turns under bridges and rock formations, surrounded by children enjoying ice cream and looking for butterflies, and parents on sun loungers facing the ocean and the omnipresent island.

There’s another pool beyond a cool wooden hut housing yet another restaurant and another one on the roof of the main building, with a dramatic view of Mount Teide, Tenerife’s volcano – this is a part of the resort it could take you weeks to discover. Within the gardens are a couple of rows of nicely integrated villas, each with its own snake-shaped pool. There’s another beautiful, precipitous, panoramic pool by El Mirador, this one for adults only.

Above one of these pools is the hotel’s spa, which as you would expect of a Ritz-Carlton spa, allows you to luxuriate amid an entire ecosystem of treatments synthroid tablets. One morning we ventured up the steep mountainside above the hotel – still part of the property – to discover a dozen clay tennis courts and a tennis centre staffed with several pros; you could spend a week here doing nothing but taking instruction from different pros. And around and above that, a championship golf course. With its slopes, views, challenges and properly panoramic clubhouse – at the very top of the property, several hundred metres above the beach – it is, apparently, one of the best reputed in Europe.

Seven days at the Ritz-Carlton Abama and we had not even discovered half of it, it seems. From the exotic to the haute cuisine to the stellar, it’s a place that seems to have it all. And it’s just a short hop from western Europe.

ritzcarlton.com

Reading time: 9 min

Try again

Ocean Fantasy: The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands

A new resort complex in the Maldives seeks to combine ocean exploration and conservation, extreme luxury, sustainability, and a cultural vibe the islands have never seen before. Candice Tucker checks in

Hotel of the Month: The Anam, Cam Ranh Bay

Why should I go now?

What’s the lowdown?

Getting horizontal

Nitpicking

An unexpected paradise off the coast of Africa

On the south side of an island off the coast of Africa, yet pleasingly accessible, the Ritz-Carlton Abama is one of the most dramatic resorts in the world, as DARIUS SANAI discovers

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