Lagoon Blues by John Borthwick

"This is our island 'truck'," jokes Otto Doughty as he pushes passenger luggage up the beach in his wheelbarrow. Welcome to tiny Tavewa Island. Welcome to Fiji's Yasawa Archipelago. No trucks, no cars, no jet overflights. Just plenty of turquoise water and time.

As for transport, all you need here are two willing arms. Henry Murray, a big Yasawan, points me at a sleek, seven-metre fibreglass sea kayak. And, following a half hour's instructions in paddling and safety techniques from Al Bakker (a somewhat smaller Canadian-Australian), it's simply these two arms that will get me through the next eight days.

The low volcanic peaks of the Yasawa group - located 50 kilometres north-west of Fiji's main island, Viti Levu - lie scattered for some 60 kilometres down the ocean like a tumble of uncut emeralds. This sparsely populated archipelago (where the movie "Blue Lagoon" was shot) is almost a resort-free zone, and that's how Fiji intends to keep it.

The opportunity to paddle through this pristine chain - usually for around four hours per day - is one of the Pacific's great privileges. By now, Al Bakker of Southern Sea Kayaks knows the Yasawas like the backs of his paddles. Along with his friend and guide Henry, for the last nine years he has lead small groups (maximum 12 people) of sea kayakers from swim-in caves to secret coves to some camping spot on a crescent of sand below a snowstorm of stars.

Well, that's the promise. Our excursion starts (and ends) at Lautoka, on Viti Levu. After transferring by ferry to Tavewa, our kayaking stint commences with a great disappearing trick: we pack into the hull of each kayak almost 100 kilos of food, snorkelling gear, bladders of fresh water, two-person tents and cooking utensils, not to mention our own minimal luggage. "It should have been a logistical nightmare, but it wasn't." says Scottish Pam, adding, "I suppose it's pretty difficult to have a nightmare in Paradise."

Our little flotilla of four one-person and three two-person kayaks is soon under way. On a blazing blue morning our paddles rhythmically rotate across a lagoon of impossibly pale cerulean shallows. With foot rudders to steer by, and Nancy, a talkative New Yorker as my paddling companion, I soon remember where my city shoulder muscles have been hiding.
Our first stint of paddling, down the coast of Tavewa then across a breezy channel to Mathathawa Levu and on to Yangetta Island (and a well-earned lunch), happens at a fairly leisurely pace. The island slopes are alternatively well wooded or sparse, depending upon whether logging and/or introduced goats have had their way on the island. At water level the sea's power of suggestion challenges you to "name that blue": there are so many hues here, from turquoise, teal and azure to royal blue, that the sea's palette quickly defeats my vocabulary.

After some 16 kilometres, much of it stroking into a headwind, we cross Bligh Waters passage and reach our destination, Naviti Island. I feel like I've done six hours of arm-work at the gym. Our campsite is a scalloped bay whose beach, shaded by she-oaks, is so narrow at high tide that I can roll straight out of my tent and into the lagoon. It happens to be full moon and the illuminated beach at midnight seems so "solarized" (or "lunarized") that, as Debbie, an accountant from Sydney, puts it next morning, "It was so bright inside the tent that I woke up, thinking I'd left my flashlight on."

A kayak - pointed at both ends - could be a palindrome of a vessel, in both shape and word, except that you can't paddle it backwards as happily as you can spell it so. Stick to simply paddling forwards, and there's no experience needed for this journey, just a commitment to literally "putting your back into it". The group, mostly Australians, whose occupations range from a securities analyst to a secondary school teacher doing a two-year stint in Fiji, are in general short on experience but OK on endurance.

Other than via the occasional cruise, sea kayaking is almost the only way to experience the Yasawa Islands. It's also a chance for the villages that we visit, like Vanivatu and our ultimate destination, Soso, to enjoy a little low-impact tourism. The pleasure of the locals at our arrival clearly shows that past visits by Al's kayakers have been about a good-spirited exchange, not blunderbuss "invasion".

The first Europeans to visit the Yasawas under "paddle-power" - in May 1789 - didn't receive such a friendly welcome. As if William Bligh and his 17 hard-rowing loyalists in their tiny boat didn't have enough trouble with the loss of "Bounty" to the mutinous Mr. Christian, without having to strenuously out-row a war canoe full of lip-smacking, non-vegetarian warriors.

Our meals are neither as contentious nor evasive, and (I'm sure) are far tastier: the dishes that Al, his friend Robin and Henry conjure out of the foodstuffs from the kayak holds are extraordinary. Henry disappears every now and then with a fishing line, to reappear with a catch of good-sized Red Emperors. None of us has any such success with a line or rod.
"Next stop, Bora Bora," calls someone as we look from our campsite on Ndrawannga and down towards the southernmost Yasawas. The dramatic coronet of 200 metre peaks and untamed jungle indeed does seem like Tahiti's Bora Bora.

Four of us take single kayaks to explore these islands, paddling as far as Naukathuvu Island to an unfinished resort that an Italian company once dreamed of opening. We replenish our water bladders from a tank there, then commence the homeward leg. What had been a helpful tailwind on the southbound journey has now become (of course) an obstinate headwind. The swell has picked up, and as we skirt the seaward, western shore of the islands, surf is breaking upon the fringing reefs.

We labour our way back north, often turning our bows into the surf to avoid broaching. My right rudder is badly adjusted, and I have to continually stretch hard to operate it; my lower back, disgruntled by the asymmetry and the effort, would - if it could - yowl in complaint. Oblivious of all this, the westering sun bathes the ocean and grassy hillsides in a balmy, golden light. Towards dusk, I paddle lamely into our campsite at Ndrawannga, soon to have all my agonies sluiced away by, firstly, a plunge into the lagoon and then into a bowl of rum punch.

Beyond the grandeur of the Yasawas and the adventure of kayaking, it's the minutiae that make a journey like this. For one person, it's the kaleidoscopic reef life that startles you to life when snorkelling; for someone else, it may be meeting a group of local kids on their way home from fishing, comparing our bizarre fibreglass craft with their own equally improbable one, a canoe made from a single, bent sheet of corrugated iron. For others, it's the almost mantric rhythm of paddling through those blue lagoons, an experience so indelible that at times I find myself humming a line from an old Cream song, Tales of Brave Ulysses, about, "... carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind."

Our journey concludes, after 75 paddling kilometres, at Soso, a village of about 400 people on Naviti Island. It's Sunday. A senior man beats a log drum to summon the village to afternoon prayer; women in "Mother Hubbard" dresses and men in sulu wraps file into the stone Methodist church and Sweet Jesus hymns waft out.

"Bula!" the same elders welcome us later that night with big bowl of kava, drunk from a smaller "bilo" (cup), and followed by our vast "lovo" (earth oven) farewell feast of fish, pork, cassava, banana and breadfruit. The next morning ... well, as our powerboat chugs back towards Lautoka and the mainland, I'd trade all the ease for those aching arms and the lagoon blues again.

Frangipani perfumes, hermit crabs swapping their shells by moonlight, singers beneath a tree harmonising on Isa Lei, palm-thatched bure houses, and a reef that bleeds its colours from ultramarine to teal and back again. If this sounds like something that happens only when a tourist is taking a photo of it, it's not. It's just business as usual in the Yasawas.