The Yasawas are a chain of about twenty volcanic islands strung over 80 kilometres of sea northwest of Fiji's main island, with no roads on them and no airstrip. Nobody was allowed to sleep here until 1987. Cruise ships had been passing since the 1950s without putting anyone ashore, and a ban on resorts held until the chain's high chief lifted it. So the way in is still a boat. A daily catamaran threads the length of the chain, dropping people at one jetty after another, and the village and resort boats do the rest. Because so few people get this far, the beaches are often empty, white sand under palms and green ridges with nobody else on them. A living reef wraps almost every island a short swim out, so the sand drops away into coral gardens, reef fish and the occasional turtle.
Off Kuata, at the southern end, blacktip and whitetip reef sharks cruise the fringing reef in clear warm shallows, and guided snorkellers slip in from the beach to watch them pass. Between Drawaqa and Naviti a channel funnels plankton through on the tide, and from May to October reef mantas come in to feed on it. When one is sighted a wooden lali drum calls everyone down to the boats. You slide into the current and let it carry you over wings wider than you are tall, mouths open, the animals banking and barrel-rolling below. At the northern end is the odd island out, Sawa-i-Lau, a bare block of pale limestone among green volcanic neighbours. Inside it a vaulted chamber holds clear water lit by a shaft of daylight through a gap in the roof, and a guide takes you through a submerged passage into a second chamber deeper in the rock. The caves are sacred, home in Fijian tradition to Ulutini, a ten-headed ancestral god, and the villagers still decide who enters. Nobody simply walks into a village here either: you come with a bundle of kava root for the chief, and the visit starts when he takes it.