Options aplenty in Maldives

The Maldives' daisy chain of atolls is famed for its seductive resorts and as a honeymoon destination.

However, once you've sunbaked and swam, slept then swam again, you might ask: "What else is there to do?" Another swim? There are other options.

Without travelling far you'll find your resort's spa.

Penetrate the guff about a near-mystical transformation and at times a spa session can be wondrous - such as when you peer down from your massage table and through a glass floor to the reef covered in fish below.

At other times it might be just an average-good massage, although at a way-above-average rate, starting from $US100 ($117) for a 50-minute "hour". Ouch.

I found an excellent spa at Cocoa Island in South Male Atoll, boasting neither expanses of marble nor gusts of hyperbole. Instead, a beach hut treatment room and a Balinese healer were the starting point of an excellent, full-hour, deep tissue session.

Because life is more than a spa and a sandbar, no matter how romantic your over-water bungalow or how sumptuous the evening buffet, at times "rock fever" will strike - that Robinson Crusoe urge to escape your resort and its hypnotic azure moat.

Just a few paces beyond your room is the beach and a short swim beyond that will be a cornucopia reef.

To snorkel or dive? The Maldives offers extraordinary diving or the chance to earn your Open Water certificate.

The reefs are littered with mantas, turtles and reef sharks, and the strong currents in the channels between islands allow for exhilarating drift dives.

Even when just snorkelling off your island's "house reef", you'll find the water so gin-clear you're tempted to breathe it.

While you're down there, why not get married?

The stylish Beach House at Manafaru in the far northern Maldives offers underwater weddings.

They'll teach you to dive first, if necessary - and your witnesses, too. Then down you all go - not too deep - with the celebrant.

Note that the Maldives is an exclusively Muslim country, so the rites of other religions don't count. As moving as your ceremony may be, it's not official.

Nevertheless, when the first challenge of your wedded life is to blow "I do" in bubbles, everything that follows should be easier.

Not all the watery fun is under it.

Experienced surfers (this is no place for learners) have the choice of eight good reef breaks along North Male Atoll - some of the best waves are at the private reef of Chaaya Island Dhonveli resort.

Or they fly south to even more isolated, less crowded breaks where they cruise on live-aboard dhonis that hunt the atoll reefs.

The best live-aboard boats, for divers or surfers, have freshwater showers, ensuite cabins and support runabouts.

A guide navigates you to wherever the best waves are pumping or the reefs are teeming.

The chef keeps you elegantly fed and, come morning, you just fall overboard to hit the first crystal, uncrowded waves of the day.

You don't surf, dive or do vows? How about a jet-ski tour?

"It's like a Harley-Davidson tour with snorkels, going from reef to reef," says Manfred, the water sports director of Diva Resort and Spa on South Ari Atoll.

Following instructions on how to handle a jet ski, riders set off in convoy.

Arriving at a good reef, you link the skis together, then everyone slips down to where the abyss is littered with clown fish, fusiliers and jacks in far greater density than on any resort house reef.

If you want terra firma thrills, there is a golf course, on Kuredu Island. It's only nine holes but Maldives islands are measured in low hectares.

The greens are artificial turf, the sand trap is a beach and the water hazard a lagoon.

Each resort is an island unto itself, as is each Maldivian village.

The two cultures, local and tourist, rarely collide except at the airport.

Be sure to arrange a few hours in Male, the capital, where 80,000 or so citizens inhabit a compact, if not crowded, island that's gridded with sandy streets called "magoos".

Its attractions include the golden-domed Grand Friday Mosque (which you can enter) and the more interesting, 17th century Hukuru Mosque (which you can't).

The harbour esplanade sees a constant coming and going of high-prowed dhonis and is dotted with the odd cannon left by Portuguese invaders who were sent packing in 1573.

Be sure to visit the fish markets when they haul in the morning's catch of gleaming tuna and marlin.

Many resorts offer short trips to nearby village islands, a rare chance to see "the real Maldives".

Some islands are so small you can see blue sea at either end of the village street.

In-between might be a mosque, a score of giggling kids and coral-block homes.

A wooden dhoni under construction or about to sail is never far away.

On such an island, Eydhafushi, an old man once proudly told me he had six children there and another six on other islands.

Maldivians, he explained, have one of the highest divorce rates in the world. And, presumably, plenty of second honeymoons.

John Borthwick travelled courtesy of the Maldives Islands Tourist Board.