Indian Ocean Holidays Blog

My Mum and I travelled to Kuredu Island in the Maldives in May’08. So where do I start?! We travelled with First Choice and it was an excellent flight with plenty of legroom and great seat back entertainment. We arrived into Male airport and were taken straight through to the private lounge area for Kuredu guests. We were greeted with a cold towel and cold fruit cocktail which was greatly appreciated, we then had a 2 hour wait for our seaplane. When it finally arrived we hopped straight on and began our journey, the seaplane ride is an experience in itself, it’s amazing to see the hundreds upon hundreds of coral reefs and islands beneath you.

When we arrived onto Kuredu Island we were greeted with the locals drumming and then whisked off to the Akiri Bar to be met with another refreshing ice cold drink, we were given our room key and were shown how to get to our fabulous Jacuzzi beach villa. Our luggage was delivered to our room an hour later by the room boys and then we could finally relax. I really can’t explain the true beauty of this island, the sand is so white and soft to the touch, the sea is crystal clear and the colour magnificent! Most mornings we would head over to the Sangu Restaurant for breakfast, the food is amazing, there’s everything you could possibly want out and available for you. The mornings were great for heading down to the sand bank, as the tide was so low we would walk out to sea along the sand bank for miles with the water getting no higher than ankle deep, we’d lay in the middle of the sea for a couple of hours then have a swim and a sun bathe then go and grab some lunch. Afternoons were great for chilling after lunch, some days we’d lay on our sun beds for hours reading or we’d have a walk around the island which takes approximately an hour or dive in and do some snorkelling. We bought our own snorkels and fins before we went to save hiring them once there. This was the first time I’d snorkelled and it was like being in another world. We saw hundreds of brightly coloured fish, sting rays and my mums favourite – the Turtles! We would swim alongside the turtles for hours or at least until they decided to swim away, we did have the resident trigger fish chase us a few times but if we kept our distance they would usually ignore us.

Come the evening after relaxing in the garden of our Jacuzzi beach villa, we’d head out for dinner. Every evening would bring a wide variety of food and a different theme would occur each night. I especially loved the Maldivian evening as the food was so spicy and beautiful (a little too spicy for my mum). There is a large buffet area then the chef’s stations where they’ll cook specialities right in front of you to your taste, and if you can fit any more in the dessert station was out of this world! After dinner we’d have a nice walk over to the other side of the island to the Babuna Bar, low key entertainment was held here each evening, the wildest of nights is the crab race where we placed bets on the crabs to win, that’s the liveliest it gets here so if you’re looking to party, I would recommend going somewhere else.

The barmen had a specialty cocktail on offer each evening, our favourite was the Pina Colada which came in a fresh coconut and tasted divine! The shisha pipe was fun to try after a few of these! It’s so hard to sum up the beauty of the Maldives, I’ve tried my best to do so here but you really do have to see it with your own eyes. I’d love to go back again and hopefully one day will, I just need to start saving!

By Suzy Cuc

North East

My partner and I travelled to Goa in April’09 and stayed at the Lagoa Azul in the resort of Arpora. We travelled with First Choice and the flight was great, we upgraded to Star Class Premier and had the extra legroom seats too which was great for this long flight! When we arrived at Goa airport we were getting slightly frustrated as we were stuck in a queue for about an hour waiting to go through passport control and it was so hot! Once through, the Goa experience began. We went to collect our luggage and found our cases had been taken off the conveyer belt by men wanting a tip for doing so. After fighting our way through the crowds of porters wanting to carry our bags we jumped in a taxi and headed for the hotel. We were so pleased on arrival, the hotel looked lovely and our room was perfect, basic but clean and we had a fantastic view overlooking the pool and Baga River. This hotel is perfect if like us you want to get away from it all. It’s about 5 minutes from Baga where you’ll find a lovely beach and some great shops. This was my first time in Goa but my boyfriend Alex’s second so he knew what to expect, I on the other hand felt quite overwhelmed for the first few days but that soon wore off and I adjusted well. On our second day we hired a scooter for our 2 weeks stay from a lovely man called Sanjay who ran the taxi rank outside the hotel, this cost around £2 a day, an absolute bargain and well worth doing although not for the faint hearted as the roads here are crazy! If you do plan on hiring one then make sure you have adequate cover as it is important – we saw an accident in which a scooter had been ran over and was underneath a car, the car then began reversing trying to get off the man and scooter!

The pool at the hotel was lovely although as there was little to no breeze we found it hard to sunbathe here for long, so we jumped on the scooter everyday and worked our way around. Baga beach was lovely and the sea beautiful, you can have loads of fun here, the river joins the sea and you get swept straight through. We also visited Candolim, the beach here is beautiful although you do tend to get quite a lot of hassle from the sellers on the beach but you can use this to your advantage and get some great bargains. The sea here is fantastic although furious, I’ve never seen waves as big in my life! They knocked me over and I had quite a few embarrassing bikini incidents, but great fun for those brave enough! Our next stop was Sinquerim, which is the next beach down from Candolim, this beach was beautiful and very quiet with calm shallow water which is exactly what we needed. One of my favourite things we did was visit Dudhsagar Waterfall, we decided not to do the trip through the rep so we booked a taxi and headed to the hills, the jeep ride and walk up to the waterfall was great fun and feeding the monkeys was an unforgettable experience, especially for Alex when the monkey attacked him for his banana! Another amazing trip we took was up to Morjim Beach, we booked a night in a Luxury Beach Tent at the Montego Bay Beach Village. The beach here is unspoilt, there are only 10-20 sunbeds on this beach which stretches for miles and the shallow calm sea was just what we needed. We sat on the rocks and watched the sunset while the local fishermen were preparing their boats to head out to sea. There are lots of great restaurants here, some of our favourites were spice oven and all spice. There was one restaurant which stood out from the rest, The Lazy River Restaurant which sits on Baga River is a stunning, modern building with beautiful decor and food to die for! The last place we visited was Little Vagator, a beautiful, quiet, unspoilt beach with amazing calm sea. However we did have an incident at one of the beach shacks  ” Lucky’s Shack ” I’ll cut this story short but basically we ordered our food, waited an hour for it to come, Alex’s came first and he’d finished his before mine arrived ( poor thing ) I cut into my vegetable cutlet and thought…What is that?! It was a very large black bug cooked inside! We practically ran out of their and back to the scooter where we hurried back to the hotel & felt ill for a couple of hours.

There are some great markets here in Goa, we got some great bargains at the main market in Anjuna but had loads of fun at the Saturday night market in Arpora where you’ll see old school hippies from everywhere, local bands singing and dancing and hundreds upon hundreds of stalls - the atmosphere is electric and I found it a real eye opener. All in all we had an excellent holiday, great people, great place and most of the time….great food. I will be returning to Goa the next chance I get and would recommend it to anyone, especially travelling in April as the weather is great and it is very quiet due to the season coming to a close.

By Laura Elliott

What a fantastic place in the Indian Ocean, everything about it was just perfect…the best holiday we’ve ever had. From the speed boat ride over to the island we had 2 weeks of paradise. We stayed in a water bungalow which was larger than we’d expected which had air-conditioning (thankfully!) , minibar, tea/coffee, complimentary mineral water, mosquito repellents, cable TV, and an outdoor bathroom!! Yes that sounds primitive but believe me it is a wonderful touch that you won’t see in many other places around the world.

The food was excellent and there was plenty of variety. The staff were unobtrusive yet always seemed to be around if you needed them. We spent hours snorkeling and marvelled at the tiny colourful fish that you just do not see back home, even in the best of aquariums. We also went on an evening fishing trip, we were advised that this was the best time to catch fish and again we weren’t disappointed!! We would highly recommend a holiday in the fabulous Indian Ocean and definitely recommend the Hudhuranfushi Resort.

Deborah Wilson, Cunbria.