Four slow days at Tokoriki Island Resort, and the small treasures I carried home.
I will admit something. I wasn't sure what to expect from Fiji.
In my head it was a tropical cliché. Postcard blue, a little boring, the kind of place that looks the same in every photograph.
I went expecting pretty. I came home a bit undone, in the best way.
The undoing started early. We landed at Nadi and were through the airport so quickly and so gently that I kept waiting for the catch. There was none. No rigmarole, no endless terminal. It felt almost suspicious, as though we could not possibly be on holiday already.
Then Tris told me he had booked a helicopter.
As if! Not possible.
I had never been in one. I did not really believe it would happen until we lifted off and the Mamanuca Islands opened up beneath us. Little green islets scattered across water so clear it did not look real. Lush trees, soft white edges, that impossible blue.
You cannot photograph it. I have tried.
You cannot write it either, and I am about to spend a whole post failing to.
By the time we reached Tokoriki, something in me had already let go. The water was warm, the waves were soft, and the people who met us were so genuinely kind that the last of my cynicism quietly packed its bags.
A fast slowdown
Tokoriki Island Resort is adults-only, child-free, Tokoriki Island itself is just two resorts sharing one small island.
There is a certain expectation that comes with that. Something wild and relentlessly romantic.
What we found instead was gentler, and for us, far better.
We had four days of easy back and forth between together and apart. We ate together, ate with friends, watched every sunset together. And then Tris would go for a paddle or a run, and I would swim and comb the sand for shells, or sit and sketch, or learn how to weave a basket.
We snorkelled side by side, then drifted off into our own corners of the day.
Because there was nothing to manage, no logistics, no daily noise, the conversations between us could just flow. They were unhurried and uninterrupted.
We unwound faster in four days than we have on holidays that are objectively far grander. You know the ones. Beautiful, but they take a week just to uncurl.
Tokoriki has a strange gift for a fast slowdown.
I am not an activities person. Apparently I lied.
I never thought I was an activities person.
Turns out I just hate planning them.
Here you look at a board, you choose a couple of things, and they simply happen. No booking, no organising, no hunting down a professional.
Tomorrow you might cook, or snorkel, or weave, or race a crab.
Anyone who knows the particular exhaustion of decision fatigue will understand what a relief this was.
The snorkelling was the loveliest I have done. The staff were so conscientious about everyone feeling safe, the people on the boat became friends, and the fish, well, the fish were showing off.
I collected coral and shells like the bowerbird I am. If you follow along, you will have seen the haul.
And I learned to weave a basket, under the very, very patient eye of my teacher, Pate. He took a visible deep breath more than once. He showed me through every step.
I made the basket.
Kudos to him, honestly.
The part I did not see coming
I should mention the music, because I did not expect to be moved by it.
Normally a stranger playing music in my direction is my idea of a quiet nightmare. But the team at Tokoriki sing.
Welcome songs, farewell songs, songs at dinner. One evening they played a lesser-known Springsteen song I love, and I thought to myself ... this is my place.
It was the people, in the end, who taught me how wrong I had been. Warm, generous, present. I came home grateful, which is not a souvenir I expected to pack.
On the kava ceremony, and how to be a guest
On one evening we were welcomed into a kava ceremony. Two men explained what kava is, calling it a chiefly drink more than once, and made it clear that this is a reverent thing, kept for important occasions. They taught us how to do it properly. The cup went around. I did my best to clap at the right moments and say the right words.
I will be honest about one thing, because it has stayed with me. A few guests pulled faces and said it tasted gritty or made some comparisons that weren't very flattering. I felt embarrassed for all of us. These men had just shared something they hold as sacred, and the reply was a wrinkled nose.
So if I can leave you with anything, it is this. Go to Fiji. You will love it. But when someone offers you their culture, receive it gently. Be reverent. Listen.
For the record, it does not taste like dirt. It is a little aniseedy, a little numbing. I had wrongly assumed kava was some fermented spirit. It is a root. I had also had a drink or two earlier in the night and did not want to muddle the experience, so I only had a little half-coconut cup amount.
Next time I will skip the cocktail, go slow, and let kava stand on its own. I would gently recommend you do the same.
What I carried home
Here is what surprised me most. The island is simple. Two resorts, one stretch of sand, no corner store, no shopping strip, nowhere in particular to go.
And I did not want for a single thing.
There were people to talk to, guests and staff and reef guides who read the water like a book, and more to learn and notice and be quietly inspired by than four days could hold.
I came for a pretty beach.
I left with a basket I made badly and love completely, a pocket of shells, a song stuck in my head, and a small lesson I will keep for a long time.
Do not trust the cliché. Not the one about Fiji, not any of them.
Go and see for yourself.
The most beautiful things are almost never the ones you were told to expect.
With love,
Laura x
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