Fiji
Nukubati Island
A handful of bures on a speck of sand beside the world's third-largest barrier reef.
Nukubati takes so few guests that the beach is yours by nine in the morning. The Great Sea Reef, the third-largest barrier reef on Earth, runs beyond the horizon line, and the lodge's boats know every channel through it.
Nukubati is a small private island off Vanua Levu's north coast and the South Pacific's first solar-powered resort. It faces Cakaulevu, the Great Sea Reef, which runs more than 200 kilometres and holds over half of Fiji's known reef fish species and nearly three quarters of its corals; the communities along it call it the Protector of Fiji, and their tabu no-take zones are part of how it survives. Beachfront bures stand among coconut palms metres from the water, without televisions or phones. Arrival is its own small journey: a flight to Labasa, a road along Vanua Levu's north coast, then the boat across. Guided snorkel and dive boats work the reef around the tides.
Couple
A few beachfront bures beside the world's third-largest barrier reef, with no screens and no neighbours: the reef and the evening are effectively yours.
Solo
World-class reef access and genuine seclusion rarely come together in the Pacific; at a lodge this small, a single traveller is half the conversation at dinner.
- The Great Sea Reef is the world's third-largest barrier reef, running more than 200 kilometres past the island.
- The reef holds 55 per cent of Fiji's known reef fish species and 74 per cent of its corals.
- The whole island can be taken as a single private charter, and the beachfront bures keep the scale tiny.
- The resort was the South Pacific's first to run on solar power.
Seafood is caught off the resort and plated with fruit and vegetables from its own organic gardens.
The kitchen has spent thirty years refining South Pacific recipes with a modern twist, morning and afternoon teas included.
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