Vakarufalhi Island Resort

Our first visit to this beautiful resort, thank you so much Angelfish Travel for your outstanding service in arranging our trip to Vakarufalhi. We stayed for nine nights, first 3 in a beach villa and transferred to a water villa for the remaining six nights. We really enjoyed the peacefulness and the luxury of this well-run resort. The buffets meals were excellent, with a lot of choice and great quality! Great service and staff, everyone is so friendly from the staff that look after the island all the way up to the General Manager. Huge thanks to Afzal, Dewa, Waheed and Farook who looked after us so well in the restaurant. Thanks to all the staff in the bar and the chefs, sorry can't remember all your names. Special thanks to Mamun who looked after us so well in our water villa. We hope to see you all again next year and hopefully to go snorkelling with Luca.

This is one island one must visit . Not big on size but a superb house reef together with superb food by Chef Puspa catering for all veg and vegans with a different dish every day. Really enjoyed our stay here.

After seven visits to the Maldives I can compare this to other islands in a fair way . This is a very pleasant island , they have a lot of things right but a few that are very wrong , we normally travel with emirates but due to maintenance on Dubai runway we had to fly with Etihad ( never again , nothing to do with the island ) on arrival at Male at 14.35 there was no representative from the island to meet us , but as it wasn’t our first time to the Maldives so we went looking for the rep desk and to us wasn’t really a problem , but could see it been be one if you hadn’t been before , The rep then advised us we would be on a domestic flight with a 10 min speed boat trip ( we aren’t daft ) I asked why they were no sea planes ( no answer received , I said is it due to the weather ( grey skies and it did rain for 5 minutes) he said yes , strange many sea planes flew in and out whilst we were waiting . We had a 3 hour wait for the domestic flight which was on an aircraft that absolutely hummed from sweat , 30 mins later we arrived at Maamigili airport and got on mini buses to drive us to the boats , then when finally on the boat we stopped at 3 other islands to drop people off ( reminded us of the costa del sol package tour drop offs) we arrived at vakaru about 19.00 . There was never going to be a sea plane at this time as it was too well organised the domestic flight was full with other holiday makers and boats waiting and routes planned, a bottle of water or Voucher for food would have been nice. Once on the island we went through a briefing with a lady and to be told there was no Wi-Fi in the rooms unless you paid $50 for four days than $5 a day after that ( only island I’ve ever heard of this ) so most people when they went for lunch or dinner were on their phones in the bar or reception ( great atmosphere as nobody was talking ) this was every night , she also said the All-inclusive finishes at 23.00hrs ( even though it says 00.00 in the room , so your sat there the band plays their 1st set which finished at 23.00 and everybody leaves as who wants to pay for drinks on an AI ( this didn’t really bother me as I don’t drink before I Dive) , she also said cappuccino and latte coffees are chargeable ( never had that before either) so tell me the difference between a free iced coffee and a chargeable latte apart from ones warm , doesn’t make sense , the mini bar in the room is also chargeable ( never had that before either ) but you got 2 PLASTIC bottles of water free each day in the room( why not use refillable glass bottles like others do) and others you had to get from the main bar , coffee pods are $3.50 each ( I emailed the resort before and they told me they were Nespresso which they weren’t so our own pods wouldn’t work ( I made a filter) . she showed us to the room which was very nice apart from big ants in the bed, when I pointed them out to her, she just wiped them off (they do provided a tin of spray) as the island does seem to have a problem with large ants. on 3 occasions ( might have been more due to wind direction ) during the day they burnt rubbish which gave off acrid pungent smoke this was terrible one of the guys in the white shirts told me it was leaves and coconut palms that they were burning ( smelt more like plastic) he said plastic went to another island , we also had the same problem on a night twice. The island is kept immaculate even the gardeners sweep the broken coral up when the tide goes out (never seen this before) so you don’t hurt your feet. the service from the room boy to the restaurant , bar staff and everybody else is absolutely fantastic ,you think by looking at it the food choice is limited but its quality and never got bored , we had a great beach BBQ twice which was excellent and the fillet steak melted in your mouth . Would I go back, yes depending on the price if it was the same price as Villamendhoo id choose villa which you get all that’s missing at vakaru. Diving Pro divers has a really great set up 3 dives a day 09.30 normally advanced dive the boat comes back and picks any other divers up at 11.15 , then back to the island for lunch , out again at 15.30 so really relaxing if you want to sleep in on your holidays , great dive team and boat crew , also they have 15lt tanks and a well-stocked dive shop .