Somewhat reluctantly, writer Carole Jacobs went exploring in paradise in Fiji, island hopping by boat and mostly by air. When on land, she found magical places and experiences and shares them with us in this article.

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Fiji Island Hopping on a Wing and a Prayer:

Qamea, Fiji: I hate small planes, ‘copters – any sort of travel where they strap you into a motorized tin can and up you go, less separating you from the elements than the insulation in a ski jacket. Should an errant comet come hurling towards earth, you can have my seat on SpaceShipTwo – honest. I’m staying down here.

Unfortunately, flying in small planes is an occupational hazard for a travel writer. Just last year, I was homeward bound, flying high above the Mojave Desert on the last leg of a journey during which I’d scaled 17,000-foot peaks without mishap, when the winds suddenly picked up, tossing the plane like a wind-up toy and then suddenly flipping it, leaving us passengers hanging upside down in our seats.

“Ride ‘em, cowboy!” roared three combat pilots, all returning home from Afghanistan. Before the plane righted itself, I vowed there and then never again to step in a small plane. The promise lasted two days, or until the Fijian government invited me to island-hop around their archipelago.

Visit Fiji and the Qamea Resort. Photo courtesy Qamea Resort.

The only way to get to the islands of Fiji is by tiny plane

So you’re saying it’s impossible to reach any of these islands by boat or ferry?” I asked the government official.

“Not impossible, Miss Jacobs, but may I email you a map so we can review together?”

I got the picture: Not impossible, but with 333 islands and 550 islets scattered across a 7,100-square-mile expanse of sea combined with Fiji’s dearth of airports and inter-island flights, impractical and time-consuming, unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life on a boat and/or limit my travels to the main isle of Viti Levu, the only Fijian isle with an international airport. The rest of Fiji’s airports were one-room shacks overlooking tiny landing strips, which meant I’d be flying in on 4-6 seat planes and coming in with the mail, rice, and chickens.

My Fijian wish list was simple: I wanted to skip the luxury resorts run by big, international brands and visit native villages where I could meet the chiefs, mingle with the kids, check out the schools and sit down with a family or two for a home-cooked dinner of chicken curry or fish stew.

We sketched out a game plan: To get my feet wet, I’d start with a visit to one of Fijis most authentic resorts on Viti Levu’s “Adventure Coast” and from there wing across the sea to distant isles floating in the vast reaches of the country’s northeastern and northwestern archipelago.

Kids and teacher met during a Malomalo School Tour. Photo courtesy the InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa, by Justin Mott.

Hungry for more? Find out what to expect from a Fijian feast.

Spoiled rotten at Nanuku, Aubert Resort Collections

So what do you want to hear about first — my thatched-roof bure with its ridiculously romantic poster bed with mosquito netting (and my darling hubby so far away — sigh), the private plunge pool and hot tub out front, the sugar-white beach a steps west with sapphire seas rippling to shore, or my personal “buddy” Pela, a member of the local village assigned to me to do anything my little heart desired?

Before I could protest, she had run me a coconut bubble bath with two frangipani blossoms floating in billowing suds and was ironing my hiking shorts, something none of my clothes had experienced in years.

That night, we attended a traditional Kava Ceremony during which the men of the village crushed kava kava roots into a large bowl, added water and passed around the murky-looking, rumored-to-be hypnotic beverage for us to taste. A native multi-course feast (tuna sushi, tempura eggplant, pork belly, snapper, crème Brule) after which I went back to my bure, crashed on my bed with all my clothing on and slept like the dead.

The next morning, Pela was waiting for me with a pot of Fijian coffee and homemade carrot and pineapple muffins still warm from the oven. After a few nibbles, I followed her over to the resort’s beachfront Kanavata Restaurant, where the village choir serenaded us with Sunday morning hymns as I tucked into a leaning-tower-of Pisa stack of pancakes layered with lady fingers, bananas, vanilla bean pod ice cream and drizzled with Fijian honey.

Just as I was finishing, a member of the choir approached me shyly to ask how I wanted to spend my day: Hiking through impenetrable jungle to the top of Bequa, a jungled off-shore isle steeped in lore, kayaking the Deuba River through a tunnel of hushed mangrove forests or sliding down my butt on a muddy trail to a trio of lost waterfalls plunging from cliffs in the nearby rainforest? We did it all, a lesson in every landscape and still an hour left over for me to take a paddle boarding lesson. And while the emerald seas were as still as glass, I never got up, although I did manage to work up a killer appetite for dinner.

The airlift to Yasawa Island Resort & Spa, Fiji

It took all day to reach Yasawa Island, Nanuku’s brooding rainforests were a distant memory as we sailed high above a sun-bleached Fiji where scrubby mountain isles and grassy hillsides dotted with blooms looked more like Southern California’s Catalina Island than Fiji.

When I admitted I was scared to death, the gentle Fijian pilot insisted I sit up front with him so we could hold hands the entire way. Yet despite his repeated reassurances, I still put my hands over my eyes and gasped as the plane made its final descent, loop-de-looping around a volcanic crag that looked close enough to touch before landing with a soft thud on a vertical runway strung between two hillsides.

With its modern, airy villas, palm-shaded cabanas and flower-ringed spa, even the resort looked like it had been airlifted from LA as did the Sawa-I-Lau-Caves, where we swam across underground caves and caverns, but probably because I had seen them in the 1980s Hollywood flick Blue Lagoon starring Brooke Shields.

The indigenous Fijians make up more than half of Fiji’s total population and own 80 percent of the land, none of which can ever be bought or sold. If a developer wants to build a resort on their land, he must first get permission from the village and then lease it.

Like Nanuku, Yasawa was also staffed by local natives, and one morning, we got permission from the chief to visit their village. A complex of thatched roofed huts faced the sea, colorful laundry flapping and snapping in the brisk sea breeze and chickens and roosters pecking and squawking in the hard scrabble dirt.

It was all so achingly familiar: Years ago, I had taught in some of the Caribbean’s most impoverished regions and lived in many such villages myself. And as one Yasawa family after another invited me into their humble abodes with their swept dirt floors, kerosene lamps and tidy stacks of canned goods, I had to fight back tears against the memories. Before leaving the village, we dropped by the home of the chief to pay our respects and were stunned to discover he was a thoroughly modern man who was well-traveled and well-educated, yet still had one foot in the past and the other in the 21^st century.

The next morning, the resort boated me to a remote island and dropped me off for the day. From a scrumptious picnic lunch to a beach umbrella and blanket, sunscreen, snorkeling gear and explicit instructions about when and where they’d pick me up, this was hardly a Cast Away experience. Still, it was the first chance I’d had during my entire visit to catch my breath and reflect on everything I’d seen and experienced in Fiji. As I gazed out over endless miles of emerald sea, it suddenly occurred to me that I was farther from home than I’d before been, or 12, 182 miles.

A staffer at Yasawa resort. Photo by Yasawa Resort.

The mail run to Qamea Resort and Spa Fiji

“You can’t get there from here” is usually the norm rather than the exception when it comes to traveling in Fiji, and while the island of Qamea is only 180 miles from Yasawa as the crow flies, to get there meant backtracking to Viti Levu and catching another small plane to Taveuni, where a motorboat would whisk me across 10 miles of sea to the island resort.

I arrived at sunset, the skies streaked pink, purple and purple before surrendering to a canopy of stars. A line of villages had assembled on the beach to welcome me in song, and as I stepped out of the boat and onto shore, a small, shy girl stood on tiptoe to drape a beautiful homemade lei around my neck.

My beachfront bure came complete with a “Do Not Disturb” red coconut, but who were they kidding with wind surfing, catamaran sailing, snorkeling, shark diving and sea kayaking beyond my front door? Each night at sunset, the conch horn sounded, beckoning to yet another Fijian-style dinner followed by a traditional performance by the villagers.

My last morning, we polished off a breakfast of tropical fruits, home-baked bread and omelets made from eggs still warm from the chickens before boating over to Tavenui for a hike up into Bouma National Heritage Park. The trail coiled up past a thundering plunger, switch-backed up a vertical ladder trail and dead-ended at a bridal veil cascade ringed by rainbows where we stood under the pounding spray.

On the flight back to Vitu Levi, another pint-sized plane with the mail, coconuts and sacks of rice slung across the back seats, I met a fellow traveler who proved to be a more fearful flyer than I’d ever been. She was white before the plane left the ground and turned green the moment it lifted, spending the next two hours alternately crying, hiccupping succumbing to air sickness.

I felt her pain, and in fact, was so preoccupied trying to console her that I barely registered the flight as we winged over miles of turquoise sea and swooped over upholstered green mountains. By the time the plane landed in the crowded shanty town of Nadi, I knew I was cured.

To learn more, visit the Tourism Fiji website.

A Honeymoon Bure. Photo courtesy Qamea Resort.

BONUS: Five More Awesome Things to do in Fiji

1. Get hitched (or renew your vows) at the Hotel InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa: Set amid 35 acres of tropical gardens along aquamarine Natadola Bay on Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu, this 226-room world class resort features authentic Fijian hospitality and experiences, luxury digs and dining, a spa, three swimming pools, an 18-hole championship golf course, and was voted to have one of the best beaches on earth. With five different wedding packages and wedding pros to handle all the details, your biggest decision may be trying to decide whether to get married on the white-sand beach or in the beautiful pavilion with views of Natadola Bay.
   

   Imagine a wedding reception on the lawn at the Intercontinental. Photo courtesy Intercontinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa.

2. Explore Fiji’s underwater magic: With 1,000 species of fish and two of the South Pacific’s most stunning reefs, including Rainbow and Vanu, both off the coast of the island of Taveuni, scores of beach resorts and dedicated dive resorts, you’ll have no problem finding wonderful places to snorkeling and dive Fiji’s looking-glass seas. There’s plenty to see right from the beach on the islands of Yasawa and Mamanuca while hardcore divers flock to the Great Astrolabe Reef near Kadavu Island, the world’s fourth-largest barrier reef (75 miles long) named after the ship that collided into it in 1827. Don’t pass on swimming with the Manta Ray at Mantaray Island Resort. Born hams and fascinated by swimmers, they’ll dive, twist, turn, somersault and loop around you in a performance you’ll never forget.
3. Stop and smell the orchids: Visit the Garden of the Sleeping Giant, located a half hour from Nadi in the shadow of the Sabeto Mountains and Sleeping Giant Mountain. This serene horticultural sanctuary is far away from the madding crowds was founded in 1977 by the late American actor Raymund Burr to house his own orchids. Today, the 50-acre garden showcases more than 2,000 kinds of orchids and offers free guided tours.
4. Meet the locals: Fiji’s greatest resource is its warm and friendly people, so save a day to visit the Nakavu Village and Waterfall. You’ll travel down the Navua River on long boats, enjoy a guided tour of village and school, and do lunch with the locals at the village community hall as villagers perform traditional Fijian song and dance.
5. Venture north: Fiji’s northern isles are frozen in time and offer a chance to experience the Old South Pacific, so don’t miss the island Savusavu, featuring drop-dead-gorgeous beach resorts, Waisali Rainforest Reserve and Savusavu Bay.

— Story by Carole Jacobs