Yasawa Island Resort and Spa, Fiji

With the ocean at your doorstep and everything else you might need a few languid steps away, this is an idyllic Blue Lagoon hideaway

With the ocean at your doorstep and everything else you might need a few languid steps away, this is an idyllic Blue Lagoon hideaway

The soundtrack is not of tinkling wind chimes nor the love songs of humpback whales. At the new Baravi Spa at Fiji’s Yasawa Island Resort, the background thrum is simply of waves surging to shore and splashing the sand. Positioned right on the beach, this small thatched spa features treatment rooms with french windows that open to the salty air. There’s even the option of alfresco massages on a sea-facing deck; it’s a serene precinct of sparkling sea and gleaming sky and sweet coconut oil, that most visceral of tropical smells.

The Yasawa group, northwest of Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu, boasts the best beaches in the country – long, soft strands shaded by feathery coconut palms – and waters rich with lobsters and fish that are fat and full of fight. The main island, at the northern tip of the six-isle chain, is home to the villages of Bukama and Dalomo as well as Yasawa Island Resort & Spa, which opened in 1991 and is a multi award-winning operation popular with honeymooners and urban escapees. The present owner, Garth Downey, is a former viticulturalist who grew up in Leura in the NSW Blue Mountains dreaming of a tropical climate. He visited Yasawa in 1996 and liked its palmy, balmy feel so much he bought it.

Guests arrive from Nadi by seaplane or small aircraft (landing on the long and bumpy grass strip is exhilarating) and these transfers take about 35 minutes over aquamarine waters laced with coral reefs. The resort features 18 super-spacious thatched guest bures; all face the beach and are arranged at discreet intervals, surrounded by gardens knotted with flowering greenery and sand paths that lead to private little beach huts and twin hammocks. Indoor and outdoor showers, tonnes of lounging space, tiled floors and a simple but stylish decor in earthy colours make these bures very agreeable habitats in which to retreat into one’s (holiday) shell. (The do-not-disturb sign is a green-painted coconut; pop it on your top step during siesta time.)

The honeymoon bure, Lomalagi, which sits under a swirl of flying foxes most afternoons, is at a remove from the resort proper and has its own green-tiled pool set into a broad timber deck. But one could argue that all guests have their own pool – it’s that ensuite ocean just a few steps from each bure. The beach is long enough that there’s no sense of crowding, and picnics can be arranged to a swag of deserted white-sand beaches.

“Bula” is the booming greeting of the day (and night) and, as with all resorts I’ve visited in Fiji, Yasawa’s staff welcomes guests into an instant feeling of close family. It’s first names only, kava bowls with communal cups and guitars after dinner, and sunbeam smiles all round.
Playing With Australian skipper Greg Edwards at the helm, a 44ft custom-built sports-fishing boat takes keen anglers off to the deep in search of yellowfin tuna, sailfish, marlin and more. There’s good fishing year-round, with yellowfin tuna best from December to April.

Excursions to the limestone sea caves at the island’s southern end are an absolute must; it was in these waters that The Blue Lagoon was filmed in 1980. Snorkelling and diving are fab – fragile fan corals, manta rays, galaxies of starfish and sudden sunny bursts of orange anemone fish.

Eating Food is included in Yasawa’s tariff and daily menus may include just-caught spanish mackerel softened with lime juice and coconut cream, tuna sashimi or grilled mahi mahi. But the real gorge item here is lobster; if you are a fancier, let the staff know and lobsters will be cooked to order (every meal, if you wish). A lobster omelette is always on the breakfast menu and there could be no better way to start the morning. Forecast for the day? Horizontal, with a chance of intermittent action. But I do have some quibbles. The island is remote but surely fresh fruit juice is not an impossibility and the in-room dining menu is no more than a tiny assortment of snacks and one variety of sandwich. The kitchen really has slipped since my last visit (2002); while the food is wholesome and well-intentioned, it’s unexciting in terms of variety and presentation. And not everyone wants to eat in communal fashion on weekly lovo night – long tables of merrymakers belong in boarding schools or at weddings.

Hot tip Try to include a Sunday in your stay, when the choir of Bukama’s Methodist church gathers in the resort’s main bure and all but lifts off the tall pitched roof with their rousing choruses.

Everyone’s talking about Spa treatments – if you’re lucky, the lovely Aggie will be on duty, her laugh as robust as her massage technique as she moves her hands in harmony with the waves. Therapies are based on an ample larder of sea and shore, including black volcanic rocks, algae, banana-leaf wraps, sandalwood and sea-salt scrubs blended with sand so fine it is known in the Yasawas as “eight-month sand’’. Locals say it takes that long to remove the grains from your hair. An eight-month enforced beachcomb on Yasawa? I could do that.

Essentials Rooms from $970 plus 17.5% tax per couple per day, including meals and non-alcoholic drinks; better value if room packages are booked, including stay-three-nights-and-pay-for-two specials. Children are welcome during family weeks: all December 2008, and all January, all April, June 15 to July 31 and September 15 to October 31, 2009. For more information call
[phone] or visit yasawa.com.
Susan Kurosawa is The Australian’s travel editor