2/26/2023 0 Comments Unison league alice![]() ![]() The mantas also have a manoeuvre called “cyclone feeding”, but I see that every morning when my boys hit the breakfast buffet. One morning word goes round the resort that it’s a Good Manta Day, and willing guests are scrambled into speedboats like we’re on the Titanic and whisked Hanifaruwards. The Westin sits on the edge of Unesco’s Baa Atoll Biosphere Reserve, home to Hanifaru Bay - a sort of Cornwall for mantas, because every summer thousands of them descend there like clockwork. ![]() Of course the kids barely acknowledge the amazing things we wanted them to (“So you saw a dolphin, Dad - next time don’t bother us unless it’s a shark”). While one half of the quartet thinks “Mmm! Privacy”, the other goes with “Mmm! Unfettered midnight raiding of the minibar’s sweets. Being shown round ours at the Westin Miriandhoo, all four of us are thrilled to find two properly separate (lockable!) bedrooms. The summer holidays are the Maldives’ off season, which meant that at a mid-price (for the Maldives) resort, a two-bedroom villa was a viable option. The boys certainly appreciate our villa, though. ![]() ‘Nothing counters an aphrodisiac quicker than a pair of tweens tugging at your kaftan’ This trip, it is clear - even as our sons ignore the exquisite aquamarine outside the seaplane window and search for a seat-back telly - will put the Indian Ocean archipelago’s fabled reputation for romance to a real test. Now, no one needs the Maldives’ stock in trade of star-strewn skies, Crusoe-like islets and couples’ massages more than parents but nothing counters the aphrodisiac effect of all that stuff quicker than a pair of tweens tugging at your kaftan. I know this because we were supposed to celebrate in 2021, so we ended up with a damp weekend in Pembrokeshire - and, last month, a romantic trip to the Maldives à quatre because it had to be put back to the school holidays, with Flipper Boy and his nine-year-old brother in tow. Then our 11-year-old slaps the back of our heads with a snorkelling fin and shouts: “Yuck! You’re so embarrassing!” Wavelets whisper, the sky blushes and Ellie leans toward me. (Well, of course it has I’ve been with my girlfriend for 30 years now.) And yet here we are, gazing semi-lovingly into each other’s eyes as a screensaver-perfect Indian Ocean sunset and some pretty-but-potent cocktails work their magic. It has been a long time since I’ve kissed a woman properly. Thursday October 13 2022, 5.00pm, The Sunday Times ![]()
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