The Park Hyatt Maldives at Hadahaa Island has one of the most spectacular house reefs out there in the world. From the comfort of your private island, from it’s sandy shores, you and one of the 150 other island residents have access to some of the most exclusive and pristine coral reefs out there. Thanks to the high price of admission, it’s a limited bunch that gain access to these waters, resulting in a reef that’s in gorgeous condition, but exceptionally accessible from shore.

---

Snorkelling the Park Hyatt Maldives House Reef at Hadahaa, Maldives.

“The Park Hyatt Maldives House Reef at Hadahaa Island, Maldives is simply the greatest house reef that I’ve ever visited from any resort in the world. “

---

On this visit to the Park Hyatt Maldives, we stayed in a wonderful Park Hyatt Maldives Pool Villa. We also had the opportunity to circumnavigate the Hadahaa Island, took in a back of house tour, explored and snorkled the wonderful Hadahaa house reef, and enjoyed many sunsets on Hadahaa.

For our experience during our last stay, or for some additional room configurations, please see here for our time in a Park Hyatt Maldives Park Villa and Park Hyatt Maldives Over Water Villa.

Where is the Hadahaa Island House Reef?

One of the features of the Park Hyatt Maldives that doesn’t always get mentioned is the excellent house reef. The Park Hyatt Maldives is situated a mere 55 kilometres north of the equator. The Hadahaa Island house reef is by far the best house reef I’ve ever experienced across by travels throughout the world.

The house reef is situated on the north west portion of the island. From almost half the island, corals exist on the entire north west side of the island. From the dawn jetty or the dusk jetty, you can snorkel halfway around the island, seeing a variety of marine life.

What does the Hadahaa House Reef look like:

We’ve been fortunate enough to snorkel in many of the world’s greatest locations; Ko Phi Phi Don in Thailand, The Whitsunday Islands in Australia, Dahab in Egypt, Moorea in French Polynesia and off Le Morne in Mauritius. None of them compare to the beauty of the Hadahaa House Reef.

There Is a whole variety of tropical fish in this reef that’s situated around the Park Hyatt Maldives. The visibility is usually excellent. The corals are also in excellent shape and have not had any damage from being stepped on.

What can you see on the Hadahaa House Reef?

The reef contains a remarkable amount of aquatic life. The Park Hyatt Maldives features guided tours of the reef in both day and night times although we didn’t partake in the tours. You could spend days and months here and not be able to see everything in this particular reef.

Once you get past the enormity of all the various fish types you can get acclimated to the environment. There were hundreds of specimens on an individual basis. The Hadahaa house reef had a great opportunity to see a wide sampling of tropical fish.

Spotting Grey Tip Reef Sharks:

In addition to spectacular underwater life, we were fortunate enough that we were able to get a swim past of several grey tip reef sharks. It’s pretty terrifying to see one of these things coming toward you- I had the underwater camera at the time and managed to keep still enough to get some photographs. MrsWT73 and I were swimming together and likely looked bigger than we actually were. They say that they are harmless, but I wouldn’t make a habit of provoking them.

Our first sighting was out by the drop off near the water villas at feeding time around 5 PM. Keeping our eye on him, he circled through the reef shallows, checking us out before he headed out to open waters. 

We had a few additional sightings during our stay. Needless to say, we needed a few cocktails that evening after that first shark encounter!

My thoughts about the Hadahaa House Reef:

I have always been really impressed with the Hadahaa House Reef at the Park Hyatt Maldives. It is simply a wonderful underwater environment that allows any visitor to take in a whole lot of fish with the convenience of being right from shore. While we’ve had the opportunity to snorkel in Moorea- French Polynesia, Dahab- Egypt, the Withsunday Islands on the Great Barrier Reef – Australia and Muscat- Oman, nothing has compared to this particular reef. Make sure you get here while it’s still in great condition.

---

If you’ve snorkelled the Park Hyatt Maldives house reef, did you find it as gorgeous as we did?

---