Time for cruising in Fiji

By GRAHAM REID

Sue was our mystery woman. She wasn't at lifejacket drill on the first day, and probably didn't need to be. But we wanted to meet her. She might give us the answer early and that would mean, as journalists, our work would be done.

Sue, we'd heard, had been on this cruise 20 times - three lazy nights and four glorious days around the Yasawa group of islands in west Fiji - so we wanted to ask this mysterious American why.

We'd been told she wasn't wealthy, but this was how she chose to spend her holidays.

It was at the champagne dinner on the first night I picked her, a large, middle-aged woman in bottle-bottom glasses sitting at the captain's table. I pointed her out to a fellow journalist who, fired by liquor and enthusiasm, needed the answer right then. "So, why do you keep coming back?" he asked.

Sue laughed - over the next few days Sue, like the rest of us, would laugh a lot - and said, "You'll know by the third day."

She was right. By the third day our small party of journalists on this freebie was more than convinced. Most of us knew by the second morning when the sun rose across a deep, turquoise ocean, the clouds skittered away to reveal a flat blue canopy, and the comfortable, scrupulously maintained Mystique Princess charted a leisurely course up the picturesque bracelet of islands that is the Yasawas.

This was cruising, as advertised in brochures and newspapers, and travellers like me who are more used to cheap hotels and bone-abusing local buses were falling for it already. It wasn't hard.

I'd never been to Fiji before so didn't know what to expect. Frankly, first impressions were disappointing: Nadi looked like Kaikohe with curry shops and as I wandered its run-down streets I was told twice by large Fijian men not to buy in Indian stores.

Lautoka wasn't much better. There was a dark undercurrent and the Indian woman in the camera shop spoke openly of how difficult things had been for her family. It was tense.

And then after a night in the luxurious and sprawling Sheraton Fiji, part of the package, we went cruising, which has probably nothing to do with real Fiji, except the crew were among the most friendly people I have met.

Service without servility is rare but it came naturally to the all-ages crew and, as I learned on the last day, these guys twice my size and half my age took no prisoners when you played volleyball on a palm-fringed court of sand beside a sandy strip and shimmering sea.

And you do play volleyball because on such a small vessel - 34 air-conditioned stateroom cabins and we were only half full - you quickly got to know the crew by name, as they did yours. We chatted about our lives, and the knotty political situation, as we sat on a beach, slightly breathless from an hour of snorkelling between rainbows of fish.

Yes, Sue was right. By the third day we knew, and by the second afternoon, enjoying cocktails on the upper deck, we also knew four days were going to be too short.

We'd left Lautoka under a menacingly blue-black sky and by dusk the horizon was being cut by flash lightning, the thick air punctuated by the low rumble of rolling thunder. It was magical as we sat on the quarterdeck, nursing cocktails and chatting.

By the first night we had become familiar with the vessel's motto: The more you eat the better you float. Judging by that evening's meal and the breakfast table the following morning which groaned with sausages and bacon, fruit and rolls, and a dozen other options we would become highly buoyant.

Our first stop mid-morning was at Yawini Island, the kind of place you expect to see a rake-thin Tom Hanks. It was uninhabited and every bit the tropical-island cliche of clear water, swaying palms and exotic fish.

Our water taxi dropped us at the reef and we snorkelled through a tepid, underwater world of multi-hued and curious sea creatures. We had coffee and biscuits on the beach (for added buoyancy), wandered aimlessly looking at crabs and shells, snoozed in the shade, and generally did what you are supposed to on holiday. Nothing. And very slowly.

By mid-afternoon we were on our way to Yasawa-I-Rara where we were treated to a welcome and a cultural display in the small, friendly village. I usually avoid such plastic-tiki affairs ("Bring me back something made of shells", as "Bob the Builder" quipped) but this one wasn't over-rehearsed.

The women cracked up laughing when a couple of them made missteps. Sure they had the customary tapa, kava bowls and trinkets of shell and coconut to sell (cheap, actually) but there was no pressure to buy.

The following day we were at Nanuya-Lailai Island, the better half of which is owned by Pacific Cruises. We did nothing but lie around, feed fish while snorkelling, lie around some more before the barbecue lunch, and then lie around until volleyball, cocktails and the huge feast which the crew had put down in a lovo, the Fijian equivalent of a hangi.

That night we drank kava with the crew and sang under burning flares, walked alone reflectively under the empty sky, then laughed and drank and sang some more. We went back to the boat and drank and laughed some more.

Bob the Builder, with a typically salacious glint, cast his eye over some of the attractive women in our group and said he had a new respect for journalists. We all laughed again. When we hadn't been being lazy we'd been laughing for days.

It was the last night and many of us gave our addresses to new friends and insisted they call if they were in the neighbourhood. You get to know people quickly and well on such an intimate cruise. I expect the calls and welcome them. We had shared a rare moment in our too-hectic lives and agreed that we had become much better at floating in these fleeting, perfectly relaxing days.

But that afternoon I had also lounged around with Sue, who spent most of her life in front of a computer in Buffalo. As we waded in the warm water she said her friends "didn't know nothin' about Fiji". They thought it was somewhere in the Bahamas.

We joked about those package tours out of Florida where thousands crowd on to a soulless, water-born wedding cake and sit down to the never-ending smorgasbord. But I wanted to know why she came on this one. And why a cruise anyway?

It was a question I asked everyone, and the answers were various and illuminating. They reminded me of how we mostly live our lives.

On this trip we'd cruised to drop out of life for five days and to take back the time stolen from us by our daily waking grind.

We cruise to have the comfort and convenience of our own cabin as a retreat, somewhere to settle without constantly packing and unpacking, to enjoy the companionship of others who are also there to relax but prepared to hold up their end of a dinner-table conversation.

We cruise to read trashy books or the great novels that have lain unopened on the bedside table for months. To escape the kids or parents for a while, to let go of our lives and remember who we really are. To pull on the handbrake and be where there are no clocks or deadlines. To live by the longer rhythms of the sun and moon.

We cruise to sleep in or to go to bed early if we want. To do nothing because we have allowed ourselves that luxury for this brief respite. To meet different people. To laugh. To sing even, because we don't usually have the chance in our other life. To embarrass ourselves and know that no one cares, they're doing it too. We cruise just to be ourselves.

And in a world which assaults us with neon and advertisements, traffic and television, and the emotional demands of the difficult business of living, just to stare into a black night in a warm Pacific breeze with a cocktail in hand is the long overdue reward for what we endure.

We cruise to escape the mundane, to live just that little bit higher than life. For Sue, and maybe us all, we cruise to be made to feel special in a world which is mostly indifferent to us.

To be unguarded and open to possibility, even if just for a short while, in a world of paradise and lunch.

But mostly we cruise because, if we can afford it, we can. And you don't have to wait to the third day to know why.

* Graham Reid travelled to Fiji courtesy of Air Pacific and Blue Lagoon Cruises.

Case notes

Fiji is three hours from Auckland and Blue Lagoon Cruises has a number of holiday options, including six-night cruises, honeymoon and wedding packages.

The four-day/three-night package is $2639 a person which includes economy-class airfares on Air Pacific, one night in the Sheraton Fiji, all transfers, and the cruise on the Mystique Princess.

Blue Lagoon Cruises prices vary according to itinerary.

The company has four vessels; the Mystique Princess is the largest at 54m.

Blue Lagoon Cruises