After a relaxing week at Dusit Thani Maldives, it was time to go check out another part of the Maldives. Even though we’d missed seeing whale sharks up in the Baa Atoll, we had experienced an impressive snorkel with several dozen mantas. However, while whale sightings were seasonal at best in the Baa Atoll, they were found year round in the South Ari Atoll, which was where we were headed next. I’d selected Nova Maldives for this portion of the trip. Unlike Dusit, it’s not part of a chain, but the flagship property of a Maldivian hospitality company. Proximity to whale shark sightings and reports of a healthy house reef (plus good online reviews) were key factors when making the decision among the multitude of resorts in the area.

Summary

What I liked:

• The food! The buffet was excellent – it was so good that we didn’t even try the a la carte restaurants. Again, you would have to try really hard not to find something you liked at each meal. Special note to the pasta chef!
• The staff – well trained and friendly. While Nova doesn’t offer personal butler service, they have staff available 24/7
• Villa – well appointed and comfortable. We opted for a beach villa, and we really liked having our own beach right outside the door
• Excursions – this is where Nova really shone. We had excellent snorkeling excursions to see whale sharks, nurse sharks, and explored some uninhabited atolls. The reasonable prices were a bonus
• Sunset cruise – this was included in our package, and it was one of the highlights of our trip
• The gym! Easily the best gym we’ve ever seen at a hotel or resort
• Private beach – it’s technically part of the villa, but was so nice I’ll mention it again.

What I didn’t like:

• House reef (okay, I had to put something here!). The house reef was easy to snorkel and we saw some cool things, but didn’t go very far around the island
• Mixed luck with cocktails – I ended up having sparkling wine, which was very nice

After our shuttle to the main dock, we were escorted to the main reception area, or as Nova calls it, The Hub.

Upstairs is dedicated to a little library – we had plenty to do, so never quite made it up there. The Hub is staffed 24/7, so no matter what you need, you can either call or stop by, and someone will be there to help you.

We were greeted by the resort manager, who immediately asked us how our stay at Dusit Thani was. We’d told him that we had enjoyed it, but had sadly missed out on seeing whale sharks. He immediately told us there was a whale shark excursion the next morning, and would we be interested? Why, yes, we would. The best part of this was that we learned the cost of the excursion was $150/person – less than half of what it was at Dusit.

One of the Hub staff then gave us a brief tour of the island on the way to our villa. The tour is quite brief, because the island itself is smaller than Dusit. One day we walked around the whole island on the beach, and it took us 20 minutes. No electric golf carts were needed here.

Every villa entrance is private. We were in villa 137.

Our villa was quite comfortable with a fun manta decoration on the bed.

There was a connecting door to the villa next door. It turns out we were in one of the family villas. I was a little concerned about that at first, but it turns out everything was very private and we never heard our neighbours.

The bathroom was entirely outside, and had two showers.

Like Dusit, the best part of the room was outside the double doors leading to the beach. First we had our own patio with hanging chair and lounger.

There was a thoughtfully placed water spout where we could rinse off our feet after walking in from the beach.

Then, there was our beach!

Which then opened up to the larger beach.

We didn’t miss having an overwater bungalow, though truth be told, we did miss the plunge pool a little bit. If I were to go back, I think I’d definitely look into getting that. It was quite nice having that to jump into after snorkeling.

We had opted for a sunset beach villa, which meant, of course, that we had prime views to some amazing sunsets. Mr. RO took this picture of me on our first night there.

Room keys were also bracelets here, but unlike Dusit, they were waterproof!

The whole theme for Nova is that is it your “soul” place. They call their staff members “soulmates”. Everything there is “soulful”. Their buffet restaurant is called “Soul Kitchen”.

The food was really good – lots of choices, and much like Dusit, there were a lot of choices geared toward their Chinese customers. But since we’d recently acquired a taste for Chinese food for breakfast, that worked out just fine.

Nova also had two on call chefs for each meal – a wok chef for every meal, and an omelet chef for breakfast, and – my absolute favourite – a pasta chef for lunch and dinner. If for some impossible reason you didn’t want any of dishes in the buffet, the pasta chef would just make you pasta. There were four choices of pasta, five choices of sauce, and three (or more) choices of protein. I had the pasta twice, not because I didn’t like the other offerings, but because the pasta was just so good.

There are two a la carte restaurants on the island. Flames, a grill restaurant, and Mizu, a teppanyaki restaurant. Flames was included in our package, but Mizu was not. Regardless, we enjoyed the buffet enough we didn’t venture to either (the pasta chef may have had something to do with that).

Getting around the island are similar well manicured paths that are swept every morning.

Signposts are included in case you get lost, that are helpfully lit at night.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the gym. We were expecting the regular three treadmills and some hand weights, but they have a real gym at Nova. We were impressed.

They also hosted yoga classes there every day. We did use the gym while we were there – though I’ve never done a weight workout barefoot before!

While we didn’t spent much time at the pool, it was very nice and even had a swim up bar.

Nova seems built for Instagram-worth pictures – the logo in the above picture is atop two swings in the water. There’s also this cute area not far from Wink, the main bar.

We enjoyed happy hours at Wink – snacks are available from 4-5, but we were always so stuffed from our other meals we never partook. The cocktails were fine – Mr. RO liked the pina colada, but my first attempt at a cocktail tasted like cough syrup – so like at Dusit, we stuck with wine or sparkling wine for most of libations while we were there.

One night there was a wedding that took place at sunset. I took this just as they were setting up, and it was beautiful.

Another highlight for us were the excusions! We ended up taking three – one to look for whale sharks, one to snorkel with nurse sharks, and one called “snorkeling safari”, which was snorkeling on some nearby uninhabited atolls. All three were excellent, and the price was terrific. For what we spent at Dusit for just the manta snorkeling, we went on both the whale shark and nurse shark excursions. Both were longer, on better boats, and had fewer people. If anything, Nova doesn’t do enough to promote the excursions. We only found out about the last excursion when we went into the dive centre to ask about others after a fantastic whale shark experience (another entry). We befriended a German couple on our whale shark excursions – they spent two days diving and also had an excellent experience.

When we weren’t taking excursions, we snorkeled the house reef. While we found some great marine life (porcupine ray and snowflake moray eel for the win), the extent of healthy reef did not extend very far around the island. Dusit’s house reef was healthier and extended farther around the island than Nova’s. We felt after two or three snorkels, we’d seen everything we needed to (even though we never saw the resident turtle), and stayed out of the water on our last day to let our gear dry out.

Also included in our package was a sunset cruise! Upon arrival, we were given vouchers for our cruise a few days away. That was a nice surprise considering our experience with Dusit and our forgotten cruise. The only problem was – on the appointed day, the after turned definitely cloudy. We asked if the cruise was still on, and of course it was!

Providence was smiling on us, and just as we left the dock, the sun started to peek out. It ended up being one of the more interesting sunsets of our stay. Nova provided sparkling wine for the cruise, too. A selfie from that cruise ended up becoming my new Facebook profile picture.

We very much enjoyed our stay at Nova. I was very happy with my choices of both resorts for this trip. We’d definitely stay at Nova again. It’s easy to try to compare the two resorts, but they had very different vibes and a comparison doesn’t seem quite fair. Dusit had a kids club (not sure I mentioned that), and was slightly larger than Nova. Nova had a more casual vibe but definitely provided the same level of service.

I’ll finish this post with another beach picture and, of course, a sunset.