Island

The island is 400 x 200 meters in size. There are Water, Superior and Standard Bugalows.

The Water bungalows are IMHO not worth the money (180$/day 2 pers. incl. full expansion). You can NOT enter directly from Bungalow the sea and the way from the water bungalow to a beach is definitely longer than from any other point on the island.

The Superior bunglaows (96$ per day, 2 Pers. VP) have a fridge, hot water and air conditioning and are in general in a very good condition.I think the standards cost about $65 a day.

Embudu itself is a beautifully maintained island with many palm trees and hanging baskets for lazing around. There are - except for the water bungalows - beaches everywhere, including two larger sandy beaches. The bungalows are designed in such a way that you cannot see them from the sea.

Food

It's gotten better. Especially the new chef for dessert inspired us with super ice cream creations and delicious creams and cakes. Unlike other resorts, this is a fairly Maldivian/Sri Lankese/Indian cooking. I. e. rice, chicken, fish, curry are available in some form almost daily. Of course, you can also take something else from the buffet (Asian, Chinese, Italian evenings).

Bar

The bar is quite large with the typical drinks (beer about $2.80, cocktails from $3.00)

Once a week there's disco, but since Embudu is a very cozy island, the DJ switches from 11:45 am to softer sound, so that everyone can sleep at 00:30pm at the latest.

There are also acrobats, magicians and "Nero Fiddle", a Maldivian minnesinger who can also sing "Muss i denn aus dem Städele...." (who likes it). Nero comes once a week.

Personnel

Very, very friendly! Only they have a long memory and remembered my last year's Long Island Icetea crash (weirdly, I can't recall; -o).

Transfer

That's the big plus of Embudu. Because of the proximity to the airport (7km) you are two hours after landing on the beach! The crossing takes about 35 minutes.

Housereef

Corals grow. All kinds of reef dwellers, such as napoleon, doctor, rabbit fish, groupers, turtles (4 pieces), lobsters (yes, for once in the sea and alive and not in the coffee shop and red). On Embudu you can snorkel around the island. Due to its special location across the canal, one often also sees large fish such as sharks (white and blacktip reef sharks, lemon sharks) and rays (stitch, eagle and occasionally also manta rays). You can almost say that snorkeling is as much to be seen as diving (e. g. diving). I only saw eagle rays at the house reef this time, and I did so on almost 30 dives in two weeks).

The visibility was exceptionally clear for August, with visibility around 20 metres.

Diving

Non Limit diving costs $250 for 6 days. A boat trip with the big Dhoni 10$. The dhoni has a sun deck so that you can also tan (red). The base is very well organized and the instructors are very friendly and "cool". Obviously, unlike diving instructors on other islands, they didn't get island-rumped.

Among the dive sites there are some special highlights, like "Embudu Express" (flow dive, grey, whitetip reef sharks, rarely hammerhead sharks, stingray and eagle ray formations), the "Male Victory" or Vellasaru Caves, where you can also see threshing sharks.

As mentioned above, the corals are coming back slowly and some gorgonians have become quite impressive. However, this year I had the feeling that there were fewer fish.

The Negative

Like other islands, Embudu also has lobster evening and night fishing. Rumor has it that three sharks were killed during night fishing, not for eating, but for fear of taking the animals off the hook again. It might be time to ban these activities on the Maldives in general. At the neighbouring island of Ghuli (local island) one had the feeling that a ship must have sunk, so much rubbish was floating on the surface of the water (bottles, cans, neon tubes, etc.).

For the first time something like German mentality came up (one would like to forgive this expression), which means that the holidaymakers get up at seven o' clock or before to occupy the loungers with their beach towels. There are actually enough loungers.

Weather

Of course Embudu is not responsible for the weather, but it was beautiful with maybe 15 minutes of rain in two weeks.

Conclusion

We're going back to the fourth time!!