Stayed here for a week in early November - loved the setting, the warm ocean, the weather, the snorkelling, the staff etc. Only little problem was we had no idea that the resort does NOT have a swimming pool. Also the management seemed pretty poor - no shower gel was provided in the rooms, the staff seemed to be all on short term contracts and a few spoke very little English. Also this resort is frequented predominantly by Italians; hence the meals tend to include pasta and pizza almost daily which is a little too repetitive for me.

Despite sounding negative, this is a brilliant resort - take a few books to read, snorkelling gear, a pair of sunglasses and suntan lotion and you will love it.

a superb resort island, better than expected after booking an internet deal.

excellent weather, not too hot, water bungalow had everything + an expresso coffee machine!
prices for drinks reasonnable, and staff could do enough to please.

gave us the rest we were looking for.

We spent a week on Bolifushi having spent a busy week on a liveaboard dive boat around the North and South Male Atolls. The whole experience was wonderful.

The island is exactly the idyllic Maldivian white sandy beach resort that you would expect. The island is very small and as such it's quite quiet. There is a restaurant, bar, coffee shop, several beaches, spa, volley ball court and table tennis. There is a risk that particularly active people will get board, but if you want a relaxing week or two I don't think you'll have a problem.

There are around fifty rooms. The cheaper rooms are in a two storey block and have a balacony and look out towards the sea but are not directly on the beach. We had a quick peek inside and they looked clean and basic. We stayed in a beach bungalow, which was recently re-furbished and beautiful with a large back balcony facing the beach and great bathroom. The water bungalows have a great aspect, most of them looking directly out to the sea, but are perhaps a little dated from what we heard as they were built a while ago.

The food was good - with a large ranging buffet. You're likely to find things you like without getting too board. There are some good vegetarian options too. The bar does great cocktails. The wine choice was ok, but fairly expensive.

We opted not do diving on the island as we were 'dived out' from our previous week- but had no problems spending our money on the spa instead. The treatments are extremely good and allow you to really relax - the Swedish and Thai massages were fabulous. If you are going to dive you can probably do a couple of decent shore dives on the house reef but otherwise make sure you ask to go to manta point - it's about two hours away but well worth it!

Snorkelling around the island is also good with a good house reef that starts at very shallow points and has a sloping wall down to about 12m. We saw a surprising amount - turtles, all reef fish, bump head parrot fish, moray eels and on our last day we saw a Manat Ray feeding near the surface - it was incredible.

The only draw backs to the island is perhaps that it is small and for two weeks I think we may have got a bit board- but for one week it was perfect. The bar and restaurant only seem to have one CD to play - so get used to 50 cent! Also the dive prices are really quite expensive with a $15 additional charge for baot for each dive. If you're hiring kit two dives works out as $60. There were some families on the resort - it's not couples only - so there is the occassional crying child in the restaurant - which I think some weren't happy with.

On the whole though th island is beautiful, the service was great, the beaches are lovely and we managed to find plenty to do (as long as you count nothing!). We had a wonderful week and would recommend Bolifushi.

Sue & JIm