Aside from the super-rich and the local poor, few are familiar with the delights of Fiji's Yasawa Archipelago To get away from it all, to leave the tourist hubbub behind, often means to jettison certainty. A man comes at you with a raised machete. The ghost of Capt. Bligh gets entangled with the scent of Brooke Shields. The beaches are strangely deserted. There is no CNN. Fate deals the cards. As a traveller, I've had a lifelong antipathy to packaged tours, cruise ships, 14-course buffet breakfasts, theme parks, and cocktails served with tiny paper umbrellas, a dislike that has increased as global tourism has reduced distant experiences to unctuous uniformity. As is true of most faraway places, there are, in fact, two Fijis: the one that most tourists see along the crowded hotel strip around Nadi, and the one the very rich--or the itinerant poor--see when they head offshore to places barely touched by time, places like the Yasawa Archipelago.

Lying 100 kilometres off the western coast of Fiji's principal island, Viti Levu, the Yasawas are an outpost of South Pacific tradition and somnolence, overlooked by travellers until 25 years ago when Hollywood arrived here to film the Brooke Shields potboiler The Blue Lagoon. Subsequently, a few high-end, palm-surrounded resorts--plus a dozen clusters of backpackers' thatched bures--were built along the numerous beaches that punctuate the 30-island chain. But a series of coups d'état in the '90s brought Fijian tourism to a halt and lassitude reasserted itself. Even today, electricity, phone service, motor vehicles, and stores are rare on the Yasawas. The 4,000 people in the archipelago's two dozen villages live from fishing, collecting coconuts, digging wild yams, and servicing the struggling tourism developments, hoping a few--typically Australian--dollars fall their way.

As my twin-engine plane descends toward the Yasawas, I look down upon a string of low, volcanic islands, the hills covered with tall mongoose grass, the slopes with wispy vaivai trees. There are white-sand beaches and blue lagoons and reefs beyond number...and few signs of human occupation. Entire islands are deserted: jade-coloured beads in an aquamarine sea. It's a sea kayaker's wet dream. Below, I know from my research, lies 200-hectare Turtle Island, one of the most expensive resort destinations in the Pacific, where the minimum six-night stay will put $18,000 on your platinum American Express. However, I'm headed for the slightly less expensive Yasawa Island Resort, my soft landing amid tropical bliss and Fijian culture. I'm not unhappy with the deluxe accommodations, the kilometre of empty sand, the nearby reefs of iridescent fish, the hammock, the alfresco shower, but, these things said, I arrange to escape luxury for a glimpse into the life of the people who live on Yasawa Island itself, the largest and most populated in the archipelago.

When Capt. William Bligh approached the Yasawas in 1789, he found himself between a rock and a hard spot. Behind him lay the Bounty and its mutinous crew; ahead lay the archipelago's notorious cannibals. He fled their greetings. Not so fortunate was American missionary Thomas Baker, who didn't realize, until too late, that the locals' 1867 invitation to dinner included him. (Since then, rituals have changed; native Fijians are primarily Methodists.) The people are poor, the roads rutted, the hilly terrain jungly. Says Anare Ragigia, 22, of a typical day in the 200-person Yasawan village of Dalomo: "I have breakfast. Help my father. Help my mother. Help my family. I go to the garden and work a bit. Have lunch. Sleep. Maybe I go fishing, or maybe play rugby with my friends. Have supper. Then, we all drink grog [a mild South Pacific intoxicant] and sit around telling stories. Every day's the same." As he talks, a shouting friend approaches, his raised machete slicing the air. Ragigia translates from Fijian: the man is hoping to have his picture taken--in a dramatic swashbuckling pose. Beyond him, two dozen rounded Fijian bures encircle the chief's larger grass-thatched home. Beyond these, a line of beachside palms leans in the prevailing east wind, and faded clothing dries on a rope stretched between their trunks. A couple of small fishing boats are pulled high on the sand. And beyond that are a surf so aquamarine, an offshore reef so turquoise, and a strait so cobalt that I stand there for a while, adrift in blue.

The next morning, I climb into a motorized skiff to visit a site made famous by Shields. We cruise along Yasawa Island's rugged, 22-kilometre west coast. Whales spout in the deeper water offshore. Dolphins perform aerial acrobatics. Yet, beach after palm-lined, white-sand beach is empty. The little bays have no boats. Islets perfect for secluded outdoor trysts are unpopulated. No surfers await incoming waves.

The boat crosses the windswept bay at the island's southern tip, where the village of Nabukeru sits, and enters--not just any paradisiacal blue lagoon, but the Blue Lagoon. The boat weaves amid coral heads. We land on the vertiginous karst island of Sawa-I-Lau, the site of a half-submerged limestone cave where love bloomed for the 1979 movie's castaway couple. The problem with famous places is that they are famous. Everyone wants to see them. There are, it turns out, too many people in the labyrinthine, dimly lit grotto to feel the place's seductive magic. It's like trying to have an intimate conversation with God and hearing His cellphone beep. I flee the yakking, splish-splashing crowd for a solitary sunlit swim outside--in the very waters where Capt. Bligh once fled the Yasawans and Brooke Shields swam au naturel. I float facedown, inert, my mask and snorkel in place, finding solace in the squadrons of tropical fish that move in wide-eyed caution beneath me. It would be easy, I think, to become for a while flotsam, carried by the tide to this or that shore, unmindful of purpose or direction.

ACCESS: Air Canada flies daily from Vancouver to Los Angeles, connecting to the 11.5-hour Air New Zealand flight to Nadi, Fiji. There are several ways to get to the Yasawas. Turtle Air's floatplanes service the islands. The Tavewa Flyer and Yasawa Flyer, high-speed catamarans, leave the port of Lautoka daily, stopping at various islands/resorts in the archipelago. Blue Lagoon Cruises offers three-to-seven-day cruise/diving packages through the islands. To get to Yasawa Island Resort, a daily flight leaves Nadi to the hotel's airstrip ($225, one way). A stay in one of the resort's deluxe wooden/thatched-roofed bures costs $1,150 a night for two, all-inclusive. There are opportunities for spectacular reef diving, game fishing, spa services, and hiking. Contact www.yasawa.com/. A number of smaller, down-market lodges and backpacker hostels--with prices from $10 to $50 a night--are scattered throughout the Yasawas. For example, David's Place on Tavewa Island offers individual bures for $20 a night. Check out www.fijibudget.com/.

For further information, contact Fiji Visitors Bureau, P.O. Box 92, Suva, Fiji Islands (www.bulafiji-au.com/).