The Maldives with Fiona Falkiner

The Maldives. It’s a destination on the bucket list of any seasoned wanderlust traveller.

Flying over the atolls that make up the tiny nation in the Indian Ocean is a real treat – expect to see islands ringed with white sand sitting in pools that are every shade of blue.

To be honest, The Maldives is a place I’d thought I would venture to for a honeymoon but, this year when a mate asked me to join them on a last-minute trip there, I’d be damned if I’d give up a visit to paradise just because a certain finger remains uncovered.

Without doing our research and both being beginner surfers, we made a slight error at our first stop of Hudhuran Fushi because you needed to be a very experienced surfer to surf at that hotel.

Thankfully, for those of us who can’t throw a cutback like Carissa Moore, there are plenty of activities that you can do while you explore the island.

Since surfing was out at our first stop, we decided to get comfortable and headed straight across to the bar overlooking the reef break – yep, we would not be surfing that. It was a cracking view though, and watching others get barrelled while taking in the sunset, cocktail in hand, was good enough for me.

While there we threw ourselves into the other activities on offer. We did a snorkelling boat trip and, because we were lucky and got a clear day on the water with good visibility, we saw a huge sea turtle; the locals said this was the first one they’d seen in weeks. We took this as a good omen and a day later left for our next island destination.