Review: Kuramathi Island, Maldives

We’re away on holiday at the moment so whilst we are away I thought I’d bring you the second installment of posts about our Maldives honeymoon.

It’s not a cheap place, and we’ve been paying it off ever since, but honeymoons are once in a lifetime right?! We booked with Kuoni, and they were smooth sailing from start to finish.

We chose Kuramathi as it seemed to have a good balance of everything we wanted. It was one of the slightly bigger resorts, and with this came 5 A La Carte restaurants (now 6!) 3 buffet restaurants and 5 bars. it also boasted a house reef (snorkelling straight off the beach) an ECO centre, Spa & Gym and various sports & watersports. You could do as much or as little as you wanted.

We booked into a Water Villa for our 10 day stay (yes those huts on stilts that you see in all the photos) and for those wondering whether its worth paying extra for this, in our opinion it definitely is. Our villa came complete with open air shower, hot tub on our own private deck overlooking the ocean, nespresso machine and much much more. I loved the private deck – you could just roll out of bed and onto the loungers out there to catch the sunrise – magical. The deck also had steps straight down into the sea, so we could swim and snorkel to our hearts desire.

Me sitting on our deck – Lee taking the photo from the sea!

There were two pools on the island, if you wanted a break from the sea. One which was right at the south of the island was an infinity pool where we spent more time because of the views, and the other in the middle of the island adjoined to the Spa complex. Both were gorgeously landscaped.

We booked a couple of Spa treatments, including a his and hers massage – which took place out on a jetty, the nicest place I’ll probably ever have a massage! I also got my nails done and had a facial.

Moving on to the food and drink – we had opted for A La Carte All inclusive, which meant that we could basically eat and drink anywhere we wanted at any time. The buffet restaurants were open for breakfast or the island Coffee Shop, and then for lunch you could eat either at the buffet (we never did!) or at either The Palm or the Island Coffee Shop. Our favorite was the Island Coffee Shop as it was situated neat the infinity pool and the part of the beach where we liked the most. My favorite lunch was the Asian Shrimp Jungle Salad!

The Palm did a range of Italian food, the pizza was absolutely great, albeit with some odd toppings!

In the evening you had the choice of the 5 A La Carte restaurants;

The Palm
Island BBQ
The Reef
Tandoor Mahal
Siam Garden

There is also now Duniye – a 6th restaurant. Its relatively easy to guess what kind of food each did. The Island BBQ was our favourite, but we didn’t have a bad meal really. All the food was pretty top notch. Anything and everything was available, you can see all the menus on their website, and re-reading them just has made me so hungry! My pics of the food aren’t that great – I didn’t have a very good camera at the time!

Char grilled ginger and lime marinated tiger prawns Mango, cucumber and passion fruit salsa, pistachio oil

Stir-fried crab in yellow curry sauce

Peppercorn-Seared Yellow Fin Tuna Sprinkled with soy and wasabi mayonnaise and served with pickled ginger, Kuramathi garden mixed greens and vegetables and lemon oil

Beef carpaccio Finely sliced Australian beef tenderloin scented with lemon olive oil garnished with shaved parmesan & rocket leaves

Lobster Chowder with Purple Potato

Caramelised Australian Scallops Served with mashed cauliflower, sun dried tomato pesto with hazelnut vinaigrette

Breaded Shrimp with Avocado, Hot Sauce and Chilli Lime Slaw

When you’ve had enough to eat you can while away the rest of the evening at one of the bars – watch the stingray feeding up at the top of the island at Laguna Bar, stare out to sea at the Dhoni Bar or chill out on the sand at Fung Bar. In the day theres also the pool bar, or after dark head inside to the Havana Club – rum, cigars and shisha pipes!