Family-friendly Fiji

This is compounded when I notice all the other passengers are couples, clearly looking to enjoy a romantic evening at tables set for two and being serenaded with love songs.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. In true Fijian style, 18-month-old Gus is plucked from my lap as soon as our entrées arrive, and doesn’t come back until the end of our three-course meal. We spot him at various intervals – aloft on the shoulders of a burly deckhand, running around the boat supervised by a crew member, and sitting with the captain upstairs. As we arrive back at port, I virtually have to prise him from the enormous arms of his new best friend Elijah.

It is mine and husband Ben’s first time in Fiji and Gus’s first stamp in his brand new passport. We had arrived with few expectations – just the assurance that Fijians have a fantastic natural rapport with children. We quickly learn to relax as Gus is regularly and happily taken off for adventures with complete strangers.

To get to Denerau Island, we cross a short bridge over a mangrove-filled inlet and into the realm of manicured gated communities. The island consists almost entirely of luxurious resorts, golf courses and sprawling foreign-owned estates. The tranquil, tourist-focussed enclave provides a marked contrast to the bustling streets and cracked tarmac of downtown Nadi – crammed with hustling taxi drivers and shop owners trying to tempt foreigners into cluttered souvenir shops.

Barely five minutes after we arrive at the immaculate Radisson Resort, Gus is again whisked off in the arms of smiling staff. Waitresses take turns at carrying him through the restaurant and down to the beach, watching closely as he totters through the sand. I sip my wine and grin at him.

Later, in the fragrant balmy dusk, the breeze stirs through frangipani blossoms as parents cajole their kids out of the pool for bed time. Other families amble back from dinner, lit by flaming torches, tousled and sunburnt and oblivious to the first swollen drops of warm tropical rain. My own toddler, glassy-eyed with exhaustion, falls asleep as soon as his head touches the cool white hotel linen.

One morning, a driver from Rosie Holidays takes us on a sight-seeing tour around the north-eastern part of Viti-Levu. We stop first at the Garden of the Sleeping Giant. Nestled at the base of the eponymous mountain range, the garden bristles with some utterly improbable orchids: alien-like spindles, gleaming twists of colour, and frothy pastel blooms abound in the damp, warm undergrowth. We wind our way around the rickety boardwalks with Gus surveying the scenery from his Mountain Buggy. Ripe fruit plummets from the upper reaches of the canopy, startling us as it crashes through the undergrowth.

Another day, slathered in a thick layer of sweat and sunscreen we queue for our boat transfer out to Mana Island, one of several resorts in the Mamanuca archipelago. The South Sea Cruise takes us out past coral reefs, tiny resort islands that are little more than a cluster of thatched huts on the beach, and cartoonish hillocks of sand that seem to float like mirages against the horizon. Looking down, the ocean is the most cerulean blue I’ve ever seen, fading out to iridescent turquoise in rings around the islands. I almost laugh at how preposterously beautiful it all is.

Mana Island, while ostensibly a four-star resort, seeks the middle-ground between the glossy patina of the resorts on Denerau and an authentic Fijian village experience. Rooms are individual bures, scattered through the mid-section of the narrow island – not dissimilar to some of the small settlements we discovered around Nadi – though with air-conditioning, and without bony roaming dogs.

Later in the week, I escape the island for a day on my own onboard the Seaspray schooner. The gentle sea breeze provides welcome relief from the relentlessly thick tropical heat. Plunging into glassy water to snorkel to shore, I feel like I’m flying over hulking coral and schools of tiny bright fish.

I wash up on the beach – the very same that hosted Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway – and sprawl on the powdery white sand until the captain calls us back to the boat for a barbecue lunch.

The water is so perfectly, utterly clear it’s like being submerged in the distilled essence of blue.

In the evening as Gus sleeps, Ben and I sip wine outside our bure from sweaty, beaded glasses. It is 8pm and the temperature is still in the low 30s. The laden mango tree above us intermittently plops its ripe bounty onto the sandy lawn, pterodactyl-sized fruit bats thrash and chirp in its branches, and tiny geckos scamper up the walls, trilling to each other.

Although Gus is too young for the organised activities of the Kid’s Club, we discover on our last day that the resort offers five hours free crèche time each day for the smaller guests. We drop him in, and he happily runs off to join the throng of other blond toddlers.

Ben and I find a pair of shady loungers on Mana’s pristine North beach, order silly cocktails adorned with flowers, and groan contentedly in the blissful moment. Still, I can’t seem to shake the surreal sensation that I have been transplanted into someone else’s re-touched holiday photos – it’s almost a bit too perfect.