This Resort in the Maldives Offers an Innovative Amenity for Color-Blind Guests
Courtesy Finolhu Baa Atoll Maldives
“What color are those clouds?” I ask my companion as we bob in the large sunken pool on our private deck, long enough to cross in seven swipes of front crawl. The sun is sinking beneath the sapphire seas of the Indian Ocean, the last gasps of daylight painting the skies in countless hues. “White,” she tells me. “A little grey, maybe.”
Through my EnChroma sunglasses—which, along with a box containing four other styles, appeared silently and without fanfare atop a turquoise cabinet in my overwater villa on the third day of my stay—the cumulus puffs radiate pink, peach, and blush. It’s like viewing the world through rose-tinted spectacles. “They look like cotton candy to me,” I reply, pulling the shades off my head and setting the frames on the bridge of her nose. Like one in 12 men, I have color vision deficiency, which means I don’t perceive reds and greens as vividly as most people. Only one in 200 women is affected by color blindness, and my companion isn’t one of them.
It makes sense for an island destination like Finolhu to want to guests to see the resort with the vibrance filter turned all the way up to 100. The German-owned Seaside Collection acquired, renovated, and relaunched the property in November 2020, slathering it in an endless palette of colors. Where many properties in the Maldives consist of an endless stretch of aquamarine, punctuated by golden atolls and dark wood villas, Finolhu pops. A sculpture in fractals of colored glass greets visitors from the landing jetty, while a thousand strands of dangling rope in varying hues make up an art installation at the Beach Club restaurant. Multicoloured rattan lampshades hang above hot-pink scatter cushions and the pool area positively hums with neon blues.
Amazing aerial beach landscape. Beautiful Maldives sunset seascape view. Horizon colorful sea sky clouds over water villa pier pathway. Tranquil drone view island lagoon tourism travel exotic vacation
It’s perhaps for this reason that Finolhu has partnered with EnChroma, a company that makes glasses with lenses that, they claim, improve and expand the range of visible colors for people with red-green color blindness. Finolhu loans EnChroma sunglasses and snorkel masks to colour-blind guests. The resort is in one of the most vibrant regions of the Maldives: the Baa Atoll is a UNESCO-listed Biosphere Reserve, supporting the seventh largest coral reef on Earth, more than 250 types of colourful corals, and around 1,200 polychromatic species of fish.
The EnChroma lenses are not sturdy enough to withstand the pressures of scuba diving, so I use it exclusively to snorkel the impressive house reef. For scuba, I use my own trusty Seadive TrueColor-HD mask, which corrects for the reds lost at depth with a rose-colored filter. The cyan seas teem with striped angelfish, orange clownfish, and bright yellow butterflyfish. You can also find checkerboard-patterned whale sharks, and endangered green turtles, plus the spotted eagle rays that I spy darting between the stilts of the over-water villas.
Of the 125 accommodations at the horseshoe-shaped resort, only 32 of them are situated on the diminutive island itself. On one side, the longest resort sandbank in the Maldives arcs out into the distance. At the end of this spit, you’ll find the Crab Shack, the island’s exclusive, sandy-floored beach bar and restaurant, where you can lunch on crustaceans while hermit crabs guilt-trip you by scurrying around your toes. There’s nothing else here but the resort’s Insta-famous Beach Bubble—a transparent, plastic dome tent tucked away on a remote beach—and a hot-pink VW camper with which to fill your social feeds.
On the other side of the island, an 800-meter-long jetty supports all the overwater villas. Those that face the lagoon offer sunrise views and those facing the reef get those colorful sunsets. At the end, the two, premium Rockstar Suites (so far from land that they come with a personal golf buggy) enjoy unobstructed views of both. Each is equipped with a fully stocked home bar, above which a giant mirror-ball reflects back the modernist, Klee-meets-Crayola rugs to dazzling effect.
It’s contrast that defines the EnChroma experience and it’s interesting to note that my non-color blind companion also finds that life looks a little more dramatic through their lens. Reds and pinks fizzle with an intensity with which neither of us are accustomed but the sapphire seas and azure skies lose something in translation—they’re tainted with indigo. My blues are better.
That’s the thing about colors, isn’t it? They are, in a way, subjective. I can never really know what my companion calls blue. Language can’t adequately convey that which we see. Nor can words thoroughly describe the full spectrum of joys that my stay at Finolhu has stirred up in me. And I’m really not looking at it through rose-tinted glasses.
A version of this article originally appeared in Condé Nast Traveller UK.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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