Love that wild blue wonder

No one goes to the Maldives for culture. Nor do they go for hills, lakes or rivers there aren't any. For people who love water, however, there is no place quite like it. You wake to the hypnotic sound of oceanic waves. When you step into the water, it is like being in your own private aquarium. Imagine a designer like Kenzo or Missoni being let loose on fish: those ravishing catwalk colours and patterns are exactly what you see when you look under the waters of the Indian Ocean.

The curious mixture of honeymooners and scuba-divers drawn to this island nation stay in luxurious water villas built over lagoons and connected to the land by narrow jetties. So compelling is the ocean, it is difficult to get anything done. Isolated in your own little slice of hotel heaven, you can either retreat into blissful, self-imposed purdah, gazing for hours at the ocean, or spy, Rear Window-style, on other guests.

Normally, this kind of undercover people-watching is one of the quiet joys of hotel life but here it is the fish that are the greatest distraction. Who wants to look at love-struck couples downing margaritas in the hotel bar when you could be swimming with the fishes in a warm, deserted lagoon with no power-skis or speedboats to spoil things?

Of the 87 resort islands, I picked Baros as my first stop because it has a tiny diving school that offers one-to-one tuition for novices. Off-season (July), there were so few guests that I felt as though I had the place to myself. There was no danger of bumping into anyone I knew. And I was comforted by the size of the island: it is so small that in only half an hour you can swim around it and that's without flippers.

On my second day, I looked out at a sea so calm and benevolent it would have been a crime not to go underwater. Of course, I could have gone snorkelling but I had always wanted to learn to dive in a beautiful sunlit place, free from other people and the municipal misery of a public pool. Until now, I had always been too scared to try, even when foreign holidays offered the chance. It wasn't fear of sharks but of all the technical things that could go wrong. What if my goggles leaked or my tank ran out of oxygen?

After breakfast, I grabbed my swimsuit and went in search of the island's diving instructors, Derk and Margreet Molenaar, a free-spirited Dutch couple who operate from a timber-roofed hut at the end of a jetty. Could they teach me one to one? It was early in the morning and none of the other guests had surfaced. Margreet took me under her wing.

After she ran me through the rudiments and taught me a few signals an "o" with my fingers to indicate I'm OK, a fluttering of one hand to show there's a problem she helped me into a light wetsuit, cut off at the knee and elbow. "Baros is a very good island for beginners because of the house reef and lagoon," she said as we walked along a beach shaped like a crescent moon.

At the water's edge, a small tank was hoisted onto my back and an astonishingly hefty belt tied at my waist. "Any sharks?" I asked, nerves in shreds as I lowered myself into the water, wondering whether I would drown under all that weight. "Yes, there are white- and blacktip reef sharks in the lagoon but they don't go after humans unless you provoke or tease them," she said, tightening my belt.