Six Senses Laamu

Laamu is a long way south, and getting there by seaplane from Malé is the first argument in its favour. Six Senses occupies Olhuveli Island, where beach villas sit back into the greenery and overwater villas walk out across the lagoon, all of it built from timber and thatch instead of gloss.

What distinguishes the resort is what happens below the surface. Marine biologists live and work on the island, and SHELL, the resort’s marine centre, opens what they do to guests. A snorkel guided by somebody who knows the reef is a different proposition from a snorkel taken alone. The bicycles and the long empty afternoons are all still here; they simply come with a subject.

Far enough south to matter

Laamu Atoll lies well south of Malé, and the seaplane over the atolls is the part of the journey nobody regrets. Distance does its own filtering here, and the pace settles within a day of arriving. Bicycles are the transport, sand is the surface, and the free-form pool and the watersports supply as much structure as most people want from a week. The rest of the day organises itself around the tide.

Beach shade or open lagoon

The choice is elemental. A beach villa sits back in the vegetation, with shade, birdsong and the sand a few steps away; an overwater villa gives up the greenery for the lagoon directly underneath. Pool categories exist in both. The construction is the same throughout, timber and thatch and generous space, and the privacy is real rather than notional. Neither option is the better one; they simply produce different memories of the same island.

The reef, properly introduced

SHELL, the Sea Hub of Environmental Learning in Laamu, is a thatched building on the beach and the base for the Maldives Underwater Initiative, which brings marine biologists together with the Manta Trust, the Blue Marine Foundation and the Olive Ridley Project. Guests can sit in on the work, then take it into the water on a guided snorkel or dive. That gives a week in the Maldives a second dimension, particularly for children, who ask better questions than the adults.