Can a luxury resort ever be green? A new hotel on the Maldivian island of Hadahaa is a true
eco-paradise
With great pride, our "butler" Atheef is describing the utter deliciousness, the supreme
sweetness, the irresistible flavour and vast superiority of the Maldivian mango. When I offer the
Indian mango in comparison, he snorts with derision: the Maldivian variety is clearly in a much
higher league. It's also only available in this island paradise for two months of the year, and
as Atheef speaks I have a flashback to childhood and the giddy excitement of strawberries coming
into season – a delight wholly unknown to my own children, for whom such
exotic delicacies are these days pedestrian staples thanks to the global food market.
The Maldives, however, is not the place to get radical about eating only local, or indeed
seasonal, foodstuffs: these idyllic islands rely on imported produce, and working out how to feed
themselves while striving to become the first carbon-neutral nation on earth is one of the many
conundrums facing the inhabitants of this breathtaking collection of islands. There are 1,190 of
them in all, scattered among some of the most pristine coral reefs in the Indian Ocean, and at
two metres above sea level this vacation paradise is one of the most threatened nations on earth.
The most pessimistic estimates suggest that they will be underwater by the beginning of the next
century, a danger their energetic new president, Mohamed Nasheed, is striving to publicise to the
international community – last October the entire cabinet donned scuba gear
and met underwater.
As a result of the very real threat on their doorstep, words like "sustainability", whispered
among a very few of the forward-thinking hotels a decade ago, are now littered generously
throughout their brochures. The bonanza that took place in the 1980s and 90s, turning the area
around the capital, Malé, into a resort metropolis with barely a care for preserving reefs
or local livelihoods, has thankfully all but come to a halt.
If the Maldives are a dot on the world map, the island of Hadahaa is a mere grain in an enormous
oceanic expanse, as far south as you can go without crossing the equator. It lies in the utterly
unspoilt and second largest atoll in the world, Huvadhoo. Until recently the whole area was off
limits to visitors, the result of a government policy that sought to protect its ecosystem but
also discouraged mingling between tourists and the local population, which put many travellers
off these islands because they felt them to be a cultural void.
Since 2007 a small clutch of hotels has been allowed to set up among the native islands under the
strictest environmental supervision, bringing employment and visitors to a region previously
ignored. The contrast between this gloriously underpopulated, development-free atoll and the
frenzy of the resort scene around Malé is extraordinary.
The latest arrivals, such as the one I'm visiting, pay more than lip service to environmental
concerns. At Alila Hadahaa, which opened in August, they have their own desalination plant to
create drinking water, hold a Green Globe Certification for planning and construction, and use
wood certified sustainable from Malaysia. Most commendable of all is the presence of so many
local staff; Maldivians make up 65% of the workforce. For a people in search of a homeland
– as their president has described them – they couldn't be
doing a better job of the audition. Staff such as Atheef – in his roving role
of villa butler – and Shamin (snorkeller, babysitter, football expert and
purveyor of popcorn) are proud of their country, eager to help you to experience more of it and
so good with the kids that I feel surplus to requirements.
For a resort so clearly not imagined with children in mind – from the lavish
luxury of the super-chic rooms to the glass and stone-hewn bathrooms – they
couldn't cater for them better. Chicken curry sans spices, jelly made to order, babysitting on
request and everywhere waiters happy to build "volcano land" in the sand, dive masters who long
to take them snorkelling. I virtually have to wrestle the staff to get the children back for a
couple of hours a day.
Alila's new resort is certainly architecturally adventurous. The two-storey state-of-the-art
restaurant with its Bauhaus severity is slightly wasted on an ageing barefoot boho like myself,
but the luxury beach bungalows and water villas make it a positively elemental experience. Of
course it's an irony that is hard for the arriving tourist to ignore that the popular wooden
water bungalows strung out on stilts above the aquamarine shallows at most resorts could, in the
course of our children's lifetime, be all that's left of this island nation.
FOR THOSE WHO stray as far south as Hadahaa, the reward is a pewter evening ocean with a hazy
shadow of islands on the far horizon, bearing no sign of human habitation. Ears pump with the
complete silence we so rarely get to hear. When I take my four-year-old son snorkelling 5ft off
the beach and find a lionfish swaying in the swell, a couple of Moorish Idols guarding the reef
and as many small yellowtails as I can count, Dan starts to choke on his snorkel in excitement.
To say the ocean is still stocked biblically here would be to underestimate what lies below.
Visiting the local villages is also now actively encouraged, as we discover when we are taken on
an afternoon trip to Gadhdhoo, where hand-weaving straw tablemats and fishing offer the only
alternative employment to the hotel and tourist sector. Despite obvious poverty and very basic
amenities, the village looks like it is auditioning for a Best Kept Town award: no rubbish,
well-tended homes with immaculate front yards and trees adorned with colourful strips of the
Maldivian flag.
Shamin explains that every evening at sunset the women and children take to street cleaning in
order to keep their collective home in good order. If only a similar civic spirit could be
nurtured in the UK. During our amble around town an elderly lady in a headscarf (since 9/11 the
Maldivians, previously relaxed Muslims with a little bit of local magic thrown in, have
increasingly been embracing a stricter Islamic code) stops me to enquire whether Molly and Dan
are my only children. When I reply that they are, she looks at me pityingly before declaring that
she has produced 14. Patting my meagre contribution to the population on their heads, she wanders
off chuckling in amusement at my uselessness as a woman.
This is my fourth trip to the Maldives and the first where I get to meet local people in their
own environment and also to eat their cuisine. Along with western delights that include breakfast
croissants the finest Parisian pastry chef would be proud of, Alila Hadahaa boasts a local
restaurant – sand-floored, trestle-tabled and musically themed
– offering the spiciest of curries, the tastiest of pumpkins, the crunchiest
papaya and chilli salads on poppadoms, and pancakes with caramel bananas or fresh coconut rice
pudding to follow. Where other Maldivian resorts can seem hell bent on ignoring their
surroundings, this one is utterly committed to celebrating them.
On our last night, as the great fiery disc of the sun begins its exhausted slide into the sea, we
spot a pod of dolphins gliding in and out of water thick as oil, feeding on the plentifully
stocked and carefully protected home reef. The children, who have been weaving coconut-frond
tapestries with Shamin, run shrieking toward the ocean, dropping clothes along the powder-white
sand as they race into the sea in pursuit of each other. The dolphins make a hasty exit to open
water, but in their absence a familiar figure steps into the frame: Shamin, waist deep in the
ocean, still in uniform shorts and polo shirt, initiating a game with the kids.
It's my abiding image of our brief sojourn on this entrancing island. Thanks not to the
cutting-edge design of the resort nor the fantastic food but to the seductive charm of the local
staff, the five nights here number among the best vacations of my life.
HOW TO GET THERE... Elegant Resorts (01244 897 515; elegantresorts.co.uk) is offering seven nights at
Alila Villas Hadahaa for the price of five, from £2,280 per adult, £2,070 per child
(based on four sharing), including breakfast, British Airways flights and all transfers.
Visit guardian.co.uk/travel for more advice
and travel suggestions
CARBON NEUTRAL... BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FLIGHTS?
The Maldives is engaged in an ambitious plan to become the world's first carbon-neutral country.
By 2020 all its power will come from the wind and the sun, plus a biomass plant burning coconut
husks. But the Maldives' biggest industry is tourism, so what about all the carbon emitted by the
flights? There is no magic solution, but the government's plans include offsetting the emissions
of all flights. Several offsetting methods are being examined, including buying "European
emissions permits" which reduce pollution from Europe's factories. Until the scheme is
operational, tourists have to arrange their own offsets. Mariella Frostrup did so with Climate
Care (jpmorgan climatecare.com).
Mariella Frostrupguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use
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