MaldivesFreak

OK, this is a tough question but not at all impossible to answer. The answer is both yes and no. Degree is the key word here. Beautiful new villa interiors and amenities aside, you should find good sand, but not nearly as much as say Rangali and almost certainly nowhere near as fine as Irufushi.





As you can see from the picture above, the main part of Ithaafushi is built on a natural island that had a tiny, and I mean tiny, amount of greenery to begin with. Because of this you're going to find almost 100% planted (as opposed to natural) jungle with no natural undergrowth. Lots of thick undergrowth is what you really need in order for you to feel like it's real and been there for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. There will be pathways through planted rows of palm trees but with a somewhat, or rather fake feel to it all (depending on how it's done and who you ask!) Take a look at the picture below of One&Only Reethi Rah Maldives and you'll see what I mean regarding the lack of undergrowth you can expect, the planted forest tree feel and the straight, man-made roads. Most of that resort is reclaimed land. Beautiful but a rather fake beautiful.





Note that I'm not saying the whole of Reethi Rah is like that but it's a good example of what developers and landscape artists do when there is nothing to work with. If you look at the layout of Ithaafushi they've been very careful not to make mistakes like the Reethi Rah, i.e; they've avoided too many perfectly straight pathways. They've tried to twist and turn them and by all means it should look much better but still, it's all planted and it will be very noticible. Then again some folks will no doubt wander down the pathways and think "Oh, so lovely!" while others who are more observant will be thinking "Hmm.....these aren't cut out of any original jungle." And there's something else to consider as well. The undergrowth will get thicker as time goes by so when the resort opens it will seem barren by Rangali (Rangali Island in particular) and Irufushi standards. I'm not sure how long the undergrowth will take to thicken up but probably years.

The bonus is you have the large lagoon in the centre and its shallow water and that gradation into deep blue and the fantastic array of blues and greens mixed together. You can see it's got a reasonably good-looking lagoon from the photos earlier in the thread. Beachfront will be sparse, especially at high tide, and it doesn't look like there's enough space to have a decent beach BBQ anywhere and that's a shame. If you've got the time and the inclination, get onto Google Maps or similar service and check out the sizes and widths of the beaches of some of the islands that have resorts on them. You'll soon see that this resort, although new and up-market, is pretty crowded. Some folks won't mind too much but others will. I suggest arranging the times you plan on laying about on the beach and to do it at low tide, that way you'll have more beachfront to play with. The Water Sports centre will be able to tell you the precise times. When you want to go swimming or snorkelling at the resort, you may wish to do it at high tide. That way you get more shallow water before any dropoff or where it gets deep. Another obvious advantage with Ithaafushi that I should point out is the 2 sandbanks that you see in the first picture, one in the middle of the resort (situated on the band of coral on the far right of the lagoon) and the other to the south (which the resort may have access to on a permanent basis). This is something that most resorts do not have and will be fun to take a boat out to (or swim to if you're game). They should be able to take guests there to have a picnic or whatnot - but at a price no doubt.

As far as the coral and marine life is concerned, you probably know that around 70% of the coral in the Maldives was killed off by higher than normal water temperatures in 2016. It will take a good many years for the coral to recover but at a brand new resort like this I doubt there is even a single cluster of coral that survived both the rise in temperature and the construction process. Hey, that's probably an exaggeration but the good thing is there is usually a lot of marine life in situations like this because they feed off the algae that grows on dead coral. Again, because of the construction process I don't know how much marine life there is but I'd hazard a guess and say not a lot at this stage, at least not in close proximity to the BVs and the inner regions of the lagoon. Other resorts have living coral and tons of marine life so this is something to consider. Of course there will be excursions that you can go on to visit nearby 'healthy' reefs but they won't be free.

Hope that's sort of answered your question.