Tell me that the honeyeater, the fantail and the velvet fruit dove don't evoke some kind of romantic mystical images straight out of a Gaugin painting. They do? Okay, now slip yourself into that picture, wandering the sands of a remote beach, the slither of palm fronds as the musical backdrop for every evening. In the distance, the raucous call of the native musk parrot echoes in the forest before you see its identifying flash of scarlet and green through the leaves.
Where are you? On Kadavu, the fourth largest island in the Fijian archipelago. More specifically, you're at Nukubalavu Adventure Resort and Dive Centre on the eastern end of the island, near the center of Great Astrolabe Reef. Rest your world-weary head in a traditional bure just back from beach a beach accessible only by sea (there are no roads to this isolated resort). The scuba diving is phenomenal, an area internationally renowned as some of the planet's best, and the range includes beginning through very experienced. And if you really do just want to relax, you'll find all the help you need in the resort's name; Nukubalavu means "long white beach," and sometimes yours will be the only footprints on it!
