Fiji
Vanua Balavu
Limestone karst towers rising from turquoise Pacific in Fiji's outer Lau islands, yachts anchored among them.
The Bay of Islands looks like a reef that forgot to submerge: limestone towers and islets scattered across water so bright yacht crews call it Turquoise Harbour. Boats on the Pacific crossing anchor among the formations, and the view changes shape with every hour of light.
Vanua Balavu is the third-largest island of the Lau Group, out at Fiji's eastern margin where supply flights from Suva and the cargo boats set the calendar. At its northern tip the Qilaqila marine reserve holds the Bay of Islands: limestone islets, a cathedral cave forty metres high with a ceiling thick with stalactites, and sacred burial caves in the cliffs between Narocivo and Namalata villages. History runs Tongan here. The warlord Ma'afu made Lomaloma the base for his nineteenth-century bid to control Fiji, a monument by the wharf remembers the port's sailing-era weight, and around four hundred Tongans still keep Sawana village at Lomaloma's southern end.
Solo
The supply flight and cargo boats set the schedule, and a traveller who accepts that lands on an outer island where every arrival is an event.
Couple
Paddling the limestone bay together, then an evening with guesthouse hosts, is a Fiji that the main tourist circuit never touches.
- The Bay of Islands scatters limestone islets across the Qilaqila marine reserve, a recognised hurricane shelter yachts call Turquoise Harbour.
- A cathedral cave forty metres high, its ceiling full of stalactites, hides among the bay's formations.
- Lomaloma was the Tongan warlord Ma'afu's base for his bid to control Fiji, and Sawana village is still home to some four hundred Tongans.
- Supply flights from Suva and the cargo boats set the island's calendar.
Guesthouse and homestay hosts cook what the island gives: reef fish, root crops and garden greens at a shared table.
Cruising crews provision at Lomaloma's small stores, and a bowl of kava usually opens the evening ashore.
Manuel Antonio
Costa Rica
Capuchins patrol the sand beneath dozing sloths where rainforest walks into the ocean.
Tortuguero
Costa Rica
Jungle canals where green sea turtles haul onto black volcanic sand under a moonless sky.
Akdamar Island
Turkey
A tenth-century Armenian church carved with biblical scenes floats alone on an island in Lake Van.
Praia do Rosa
Brazil
Right whales leave Antarctica to calve in this bay, and you watch from the headland.
Taveuni
Fiji
Stand astride the 180th meridian in rainforest, one foot in today, one in yesterday.
Suva
Fiji
South Pacific hustle where Hindu temples share streets with Fijian markets and colonial verandahs.
Levuka
Fiji
Fiji's first colonial capital frozen in the 1870s, wooden shopfronts sagging under tropical rain.
Kadavu
Fiji
Manta rays circle the world's fourth-largest barrier reef, off villages the road barely reaches.