Fiji

We sit cross-legged on the grass facing the village chief, who is part way through a long speech welcoming us to the Yasawa Islands, a necklace of volcanic and limestone beads brushed with white sand and dipped in seas bluer than the sky. As is customary in Fiji the chief, wearing a garland of banana leaves and a cotton sulu (sarong), sips the ceremonial drink kava, made from the pounded root of a mildly narcotic plant, before offering it to his guests. It numbs my tongue and goes down like cold coffee. Formal ceremony over, men and women dressed in raffia and frangipani blossoms bring Fiji’s stories to life in the meke, a performance of song, dance and the beating of bamboo. Though visually entertaining, some performers appear bored, eager to get the show over with. Then we are steered down rows of seashells (50p to £10) with some women pleading for us to buy. These are not intricately made crafts, merely unwanted food packaging.
"There’s a good side and a bad side to tourism," says Fasiu Jione, passenger service director of Blue Lagoon Cruises, which began bringing tourists to the Yasawas in the 1950s. For 2004, the company has secured consent from the chiefs and council leaders of Rabi and Kioa, two remote islands in the north, to visit with its new historical and cultural cruises. "I’ve seen some villages on the mainland where the villagers have become lazy, their diet has changed, people get ill. In the urban centres of Fiji diabetes is one of our biggest killers, because they eat too much processed food.

"But tourism can help," he assures me when I naively ask why Rabi and Kioa, untouched by tourism, cannot be left alone. "Life is tough on the islands. Look at the Yasawas. They sit in a cyclone zone, but with the money from tourism they have put in stronger buildings and a lot of children have been educated."

Developing tourism is crucial to Fiji’s 180 inhabited islands in an archipelago of more than 300, especially since the recent collapse of the local copra industry (harvested brown coconuts), overfishing of the Pacific and the expense of exporting tropical fruits.

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