Cocoa Island

This stunningly beautiful island - Cocoa Island, also known as Makunufushi, is a quick boat journey from Malé's city. It's a little more than 100 steps wide and no more than a soccer field, and it's home to uber-luxe. One of the Maldives' first luxury resorts, Como Cocoa.

Its wrap-around beach looks precisely like the images, but the shifting sands of its 2625ft (800m) sandbar are what really catch the eye. Not a bad spot to spread out a blanket and eat a papaya dish. It only takes around ten minutes to walk from one side of the island to the other. The island's two reefs are home to eagle rays, playful blacktip sharks, and squid. The beach's nice slope seems to be limitless, and the quiet waves appear to be licking the white, powdery sand. COMO Cocoa Island is essentially only tens of meters of soft shallows that allow you to wade from one end of the atoll to the other.

Coral reefs are easily accessible and teeming with tropical wildlife. Hundreds of fish of various colors and patterns, as well as huge turtles and small reef sharks (harmless to people), can all be found here. Vadhoo Channel, one of the top dive locations in the world, is only a ten-minute boat trip away.

Location: the Maldives' South Malé atoll