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.
