Fiji’s remote former ‘Cannibal Isles’ are now a snorkelling paradise
No one planned it this way but sometimes the best stuff just happens last. We drop overboard from the Zodiac and onto a Yasawa Islands reef that bursts to life before my mask. Blue-green chromis fish flit like electrons around huge, pensive, brain-form bommies. Below them the reef drops to deeper and deeper blues but I’m content to burble along near the surface, face-down in a rapture of the shallows.
This silent coral symphony off Drawaqa Island is the last and most vivid snorkelling session of our four-day voyage in Fiji’s north-west archipelago, the Mamanuca and Yasawa islands. With one day international travel each way, plus a pre-cruise night in Fiji, this six-day roundtrip is a perfectly tailored mini-break, sort of a week-long long-weekend.
Drawaqa Island’s spectacular marine reserve.Credit: iStock
We board the 114-passenger, 57-suite expedition vessel MV Caledonian Sky at Lautoka, north of Nadi and set sail for tiny Tivua Island. Once ashore, my first plunge into its waters clears the digital cobwebs like no over-curated cocktail or double shot espresso ever could. And beach sand between barefoot toes trumps any footwear on earth. I slump beneath a palm tree and sigh, “Let the show begin.” And so it does.
“Bula, family!” It’s a welcome we hear often from the ship’s endlessly friendly Fijian crew. It wasn’t always so in the days when these were known as “the Cannibal Isles”. The Yasawans have greatly upgraded their table manners since 1789 when the first Europeans stumbled through here. William Bligh and his 17 loyalists, having lost the “Bounty” to the mutinous Mr Christian, were rowing 7000 torturous kilometres from Tonga to Dutch Timor but, on reaching the Yasawas they had to frantically out-paddle a war canoe of lip-smacking local warriors. Bligh later immortalised the location as, of course, Bligh Passage.
Prime snorkelling… off the coast of Drawaqa Island.Credit: iStock
Our second day starts with a wake-up swim off Naviti Island’s Brothers Beach, a long, white slash of silica and snoozing green hills. Drift snorkelling between two Zodiacs, we’re soon over a kaleidoscopic reef of parrot fish, surgeonfish and endless soft corals. (Fiji is described as “the soft coral capital of the world”.) For non-swimming guests there are glass-bottom kayaks that reveal equally vivid submarine views: “It’s like dry snorkelling!” exclaims one young paddler.
After a buffet breakfast on the open-air Lido Deck I set out to explore our ship. Caledonian Sky, owned by Captain Cook Cruises Fiji, is an elegant, intimate tub, blue-hulled and immaculately maintained. It specialises in cruises among the outer islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, negotiating shallow waters where larger ships can’t go.
The Caledonian Sky is an elegant, intimate tub, blue-hulled and immaculately maintained.
Launched in 1991 as Renaissance VI, the Italian-built, 91-metre ship has a rich pedigree, including once being owned by a Middle Eastern prince who planned to convert it to a private superyacht. For whatever reason — smaller than the neighbour’s new ride? — he sold the ship, which returned to cruising.
We head north through the islands, alternately swimming (the “Pacific Plunge” off the transom deck is a great favourite), taking Zodiac excursions ashore, catching on-board lectures about ancient Pasifika migration or marine biology, or just doing nothing special. The upper-deck Panorama Lounge is perfect for the latter. The ship doesn’t have a pool (the library is its own form of immersion) but there’s a mini-gym and massages. And, of course, a bar.
My 26-square-metre ocean-view balcony suite is a work of art or, more precisely, of 1990s Italian craftsmanship. Its polished rosewood walls and ceiling encompass a walk-in dressing room, plus ensuite bathroom. A full-length glass wall leads to a balcony that faces an untrammelled coastline or, alternately, a horizon so empty with only one other boat spotted on the last day.
A suite on board Caledonian Sky.
The volcanic Yasawa Group stretches 80 kilometres down the ocean like a spill of rough-cut emeralds. Captain Bligh would still recognise the cockscomb profiles of its six main islands and their outliers. Until 1987 they were closed to most tourism and today there are still only a few small resorts, the best-known being upmarket Turtle Island. I had sea-kayaked through here 20 years ago and, other than today’s larger villages and more electrification, it feels much the same.
We visit one of those villages on Yaqeta, our northernmost island, where local schoolmaster Frank Hilton welcomes us beside a giant breadfruit tree that shades his classrooms. School’s out — it’s summer holidays — and many students are away on neighbouring islands but about 15 boys and girls turn up to greet us.
Hilton explains how he wants his charges to not lose their own home island dialects while still learning standard Fijian and English, plus some Hindi. It’s working. As he notes, “We speak in our own dialects and yet still understand each other.” On the other hand, he shares a quandary common to teachers around the world: so many kids distracted by their mobile phones. His online, polylingual students form-up to sing for us, finishing with the heart-tweaking Fijian song of farewell, Isa Lei.
We scoot back to the ship over the lagoon’s ever-shifting paintbox of blues and soon regroup, better dressed, in the Caledonian Lounge restaurant. Chef Ashim Singh keeps us elegantly well-fuelled throughout the cruise with a la carte international, Indian and Fijian dishes. Among the latter I love kokodo, a tangy, coconut milk-enhanced version of poisson cru (raw fish salad). As for the yellowfin tuna poke with black sesame rice — yes, every time! Taro leaf rourou soup, I can take or leave. There’s a democratic wine list, including good South Australian options.
Clownfish dart past anemone in Fiji’s Yasawa Group.
If the peaks and shores we’re cruising among seem cinematically familiar it’s because that’s where we’ve seen them already. The Tom Hanks movie Cast Away was shot in 2000 in the Mamanucas, and Brooke Shields’ 1980 flick, The Blue Lagoon, in the northern Yasawas.
Which is our cue for a landing on Sawa-i-Lau Island where the lagoon — the Blue Lagoon — awaits. Fifteen-metre, cathedral-like walls of karst limestone soar above the famous pool. Long sun-shafts dapple its tidal waters. But Ms Shields is long gone, replaced today by a tour group of hooting backpackers who, born in a subsequent century, are probably asking, “Brooke who?”
The cathedral-like Sawa-i-Lau limestone caves.Credit: Tourism Fiji
Day Four. I’m looking at a steaming hole in the ground from which two Matacawalevu village men, wearing gloves are extracting too-hot-to-handle, foil-wrapped fish, pork, cassava, banana and breadfruit. “Call it a Fijian microwave,” jokes one. It’s a lovo earth pit oven, and we’ve come ashore here for a traditional Fijian feast, our last supper, so to speak.
Bench tables set on the village green are groaning with food and drink. The local women keep serving until I can’t face another yam, sausage or stuffed pumpkin. They’ve set-up chairs so that we can sit, digesting, and drink small bilo cups of ceremonial kava. As dusk falls, island performers come out to dance their tales and sing stories. The rapid-beat of log drums kicks up, the tempo and temperature rise, and while the women sway and sing in decorous harmony, the grass-skirted blokes dance up a frenzied storm.
Real-life location of The Blue Lagoon... Sawa-i-Lau.Credit: Tourism Fiji
The village chief, a dignified giant, stands to deliver a few words of greeting and fellowship. And then the whole ensemble moves into the poignant, hymn-like farewell, Isa Lei. Music that you feel more than hear, it never fails to bring a damp corner to this ol’ eye.
The writer was a guest of Captain Cook Cruises Fiji and Fiji Airways.
THE DETAILS
FLY
Fiji Airways flies daily from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane direct to Nadi, and on select days from Canberra and Adelaide. Flying time, Sydney to Nadi is 4.5 hour. See fijiairways.com
STAY
The Intercontinental Fiji Golf Resort near Nadi faces Natadola Beach, one of the world’s most beautiful shores. Rooms from $375 a night, including breakfast. See fiji.intercontinental.com
CRUISE
Fijian-Australian specialists, Captain Cook Cruises Fiji operate Caledonian Sky from Viti Levu Island, Fiji. The 57-suite vessel offers three, four and seven-night cruises in the Yasawa and Mamanuca Islands, seven-night itineraries in the Northern and Southern Lau waters, and 14-night voyages to Tonga and Samoa. Luxury suites on the four-night Northern Yasawa Islands Cruise start from $4396 an adult and $3297 for children aged 7-14 sharing with adults. Rates include all meals, excursions, entertainment, snorkelling and equipment. See captaincookcruisesfiji.com
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