Kava and Companionship in Paradise

Our boat was 15 miles northwest of Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu when the skipper, Sala Saucoko, said we had entered Bligh Water.

It was in this part of the South Pacific, in 1789, that Capt. William Bligh and 18 others were chased by two Fijian war canoes. Bligh and his men, cast adrift days earlier by mutineers on the Bounty, pulled frantically on the oars of their longboat, narrowly escaping the savages.

Saucoko laughed at the image of the sailors fleeing his ancestors. “They were lucky,” he said. “If they catch them, they eat them.”

The Fijians long ago replaced cannibalism with tourism. On this day, Saucoko was ferrying us to the Gold Coast Inn, a budget resort on Nanuya Lailai, one of the Yasawa Islands. The place was too new for the guidebooks (we’d heard about it in a Viti Levu hotel lobby), so Andrea and I were taking our chances--though risking far less than had Bligh and his crew.

When the one-square-mile island appeared off the bow, we broke into wide grins. This was the Fiji of our daydreams, a picture- postcard vision. Separating the green mountainside and the dazzling blue water was a white strip of sand, fringed by a line of coconut palms arching like swans’ necks over the beach.

The Gold Coast Inn is no Club Med, but we were enthralled by its primitive charm. The entire resort consists of six thatched bungalows, called bures (BOO-rays), and two outhouses. The lobby is a shady spot beneath a rain tree, the dining room is a picnic table in the sand and the cash drawer is a traveling cosmetics case.

Our bure was built of tree limbs, reeds and palm fronds. Its only furnishings were a double bed and a mosquito net. We fell asleep at night to the sound of waves lapping the shore. Each morning we woke to a sunrise that turned the Pacific Ocean the color of a flame. Paying $39 a day for two, including three meals, we felt as though we were stealing paradise.

Little distinction is made between the resort and the village that extends up the hillside. The 20 or so workers are related to the owner, Filo Saucoko, Sala’s wife. They treated us more like family members than guests.

We shared the resort with 19 other travelers, mainly Europeans, mainly young. Most were like us, people who had set aside their routines to explore the world. Our yearlong itinerary impressed our fellow vagabonds, who believe all Americans squeeze their journeys into an annual two-week vacation.

Ben, an Irish veterinarian, and his wife, Liz, an English pediatric nurse, had been traveling on the cheap for close to two years. Both in their early 30s, they were postponing all major decisions--children, careers, house.

“As soon as you decide, you close all the doors,” Ben said. “I used to be a control freak, but now we’re down to our last $1,500, and I’ve never been happier. It’s good to get out of a rut. So many people hate their jobs, but they don’t do anything about it.”

One day, after a lunch of Spam, stir-fried vegetables and rice, we followed two dogs to the other side of the island. As we splashed through the shallow, 80-degree water, poisonous sea snakes darted out of our way. We rounded a rocky point and beheld a deserted white crescent of sand fronting a calm, clear day. It was Blue Lagoon Beach, one of the shooting locations for the 1949 film “The Blue Lagoon,” starring Jean Simmons, as well as the 1980 remake with Brooke Shields.

We donned our snorkel gear and kicked toward the reef. I peered through my mask and saw we were surrounded by fish of every size and color. Velvety royal blue starfish, looking like five-legged Beanie Babies, clung to the sun-dappled ocean floor. The coral resembled massive deer antlers. It was like swimming inside a Discovery Channel program.

On our final night on the island, our hosts prepared a feast in honor of Millie, an Englishwoman celebrating her 19th birthday. Chicken, fish and lamb were wrapped in palm leaves and baked in a lovo, an earthen oven. Children draped flowers around Millie’s neck and crowned her with a tinsel wreath. A white cake appeared, and we all sang “Happy Birthday.”

After dinner, several of us joined the locals for a few rounds of kava, the Fijian national drink. We sat in a circle, legs crossed, as a man measured into a cloth some powder ground from the dried root of a pepper plant. Again and again he wrung the cloth in a large wooden bowl of water. When offered a coconut shell full of the grog, the recipient claps once, says “Bula” (life), drains the kava and claps three more times. The beverage looks like muddy water and tastes about the same. It is nonalcoholic, though many Fijians get looped from its tranquilizing effect. All I felt after four “high tides” (full shells) was a numb tongue and an urge to visit the outhouse.

In the morning, we exchanged e-mail addresses with fellow travelers we had grown fond of during the previous three days. It was hard to leave them and our gracious hosts. A Fijian woman we had yet to meet hugged us on the beach and thanked us for coming. As our boat motored away from the shore, we looked back and saw the whole island waving goodbye. It recalled a verse from “Isa Lei,” a traditional farewell song the villagers sang the night before:

Isa Lei, the purple shadows fall

Sad the morrow will dawn upon my sorrow

Oh forget not when you are far away

Precious moments from Fiji.

NEXT WEEK: Cyclone Jo.