There is a reef along the western shore of an island way up in the north-west of Fiji, in the Yasawa island group, which salmost no-one ever visits.
   
Most people pass it by in their cruise ships or their elongated tinny runabouts that are the local taxis with nary a thought to stopping and taking a closer look. Just another island. Just more ocean.
   
But they are missing perhaps one of the most beautiful stretches of coral in Fiji, and certainly one of the most isolated.
   
On the seaward shore of Tavewa, out past the drop-off from the island's coral reef, you can swim in virgin ocean along the outer edge of a coral reef that you can be confident only a handful of western tourists have seen before.
   
It takes a bit of a pioneering spirit, but not much more, to experience this very special stretch of remote reef.
   
Tavewa's western shore is inaccessible other than by water, unless you don't mind tumbling down a steep hillside through mountain goats, chest high grass and random scrub. Even by water, there are just one or two spots where you could land.
   
We don't need to land, though. Our objective is a "swim cruise". Not just swimming, certainly not merely "snorkelling". More a combination of both: our objective is to swim a bit of distance, checking out the reef and sealife along the way.

Booee collecting.

We've already done a bit of that in Fiji. Before the Yasawas, we spent five days swimming around Mana Island, one of the longest established resorts in the Mamanuca (Ma-ma-new-tha) island group, just off Nadi, to the south.
   
Mana Island restarted its annual ocean swim this year after an interregnum of three years, offering three distances from 500m up to 3km along its North Beach.
   
North Beach is perfect for ocean swimmers: the drop-off from the reef is just 75 metres out. The swim along it, for a couple of kilometres each west or east, is beautiful and clear.
   
Jump in off the North Beach deck and head to the reef at Mana's western end, or far down off Mana's eastern tip for the best reef.
   
The "official" swim is merely the catalyst for myriad swims that are inspiring in their beauty, at a water temperature around 26 Celsius.
   
The really glorious thing about Mana Island is that it offers good swimming in pretty well any conditions. Long and slender running east to west, Mana has good beaches on both sides.
   
North Beach usually is the best side for swimming in prevailing sou'-easterly winds. But if the wind swings around, then head a couple of hundred metres to Mana's South Beach, and swim across a very different reef, which runs a kilometre or so out, white and sandy with random coral plumes.

The Mana Fiji Swim.

Up in the Yasawas, access to Tavewa's western shore is by tinny. You round the northern point of Tavewa, where there is a beautiful, deserted beach with a gentle break rolling in over the reef. Around the point, you clear another reef jutting out to the nor'-west, and you're there.
   
Get the tinny to hove to about 50 metres offshore, and jump in. We don't use snorkels or diving masks, just swimming goggles and cossies.
   
Swimming along this reef, you can be a pioneer, and you can be confident you will run into no-one as a random encounter.
   
There are a multitude of submerged inlets, points, holes, coral heads and plains stretching three kilometres from the northern point of Tavewa along its inaccessible western shore, to its southern coconut-fringed, white-sandy tip.
   
There are heads of coral, reef platforms, mini-reefs and blooms of deep, electric blues, purples, pinks, reds, greens, whites, soft browns, some black (don't mess with that one)... almost any colour you could think of.
   
All the way along, tropical sea life darts in and out of the coral, pokes its head out of holes in the rock, grazes on the new growth, hides in it for protection, or just cruises, just a little offshore, looking for action.
   
On a sandy bottom, look for the green weed that looks like bunches of  tiny grapes. It's nama, sold as a delicacy at the markets. You can pick it from the bottom and nibble as you go along. It tastes like salty oysters.
   
Out deeper, you might spot other, larger stuff, too. Nothing to worry about; plenty to spike your interest.
   
Way down there on the bottom, five metres below, there's a coral snake, striped and pretty, mooching along the sand. Diving off this reef a few years back, we found a Spanish Dancer, which looks like a striped leaf waving like a flamenco skirt through the ocean.

Otto and Fanny's provided us with a boat, crewed by Jimmy and Api (perched on the bow) to take us around to the back side of Tavewa Island, and to escort us along the reef.

Mrs Sparkle's favourite experience at Mana Island was the kava ceremony, held to welcome guests and to gain traditional owners' permission to hold our swim in their waters. She asked for seconds.

Mana Island Resort have on hand an excellent set of marker booees, perhaps the best we've experienced, to mark their swim. Curiously, the previous owner told us that these booees had been destroyed in a fire. We couldn't find any scorch marks.

Those who watch from a distance aboard a ship have no idea what they are missing. Out here, there is nothing between you and Vanuatu or the Solomon Islands, apart from ocean.
   
When the tsunami warnings were issued earlier this year, the dozens of residents of Tavewa made for the hill, above the danger zones along the island's shores and at its southern tip, which is a vast, flat grove of cocount palms.
   
As it happened at the time, nothing happened. The lagoon fell and rose slightly, almost imperceptibly. But certainly no threat to life ensued.
   
Tavewa forms the western edge of a vast lagoon that also bears its name. The other shores are Nacula (Nar-thoo-la), Nanuya Lai-Lai (Little Nanuya), and ...
   
The lagoon and the  channels between the islands offer exotic swimming in water that is clean, clear and quite safe. There may be things lurking there, and it's not to deny the currents that run with the tides, but in five visits to date, we have never encountered problems.
   
Our first dip is the 1.7km hop from Nanuya Lai Lai, on the point at Nanuya Island Resort, to the southern end of Tavewa, at Otto and Fanny's Place, where the reward is afternoon tea, famed around the Yasawa.

We head out over the reef from Nanuya to one of the markers that indicate the channel between the reefs. With a dropping tide, it's still a metre or two deep over this reef, more weed than coral, with plenty of water to clear even the deepest ocean swimmer's keel.
  
From the marker, it's a 70 metre skip across the channel to the Tavewa reef, which is broad and sandy, with intermittent blooms of coral. This reef runs a couple of kilometres along Tavewa's eastern shore, and hundreds of metrs into the palm-sighing beach.
   
There is a brisk nor'-easter running, whipping up a small but vigorous chop, and if you breathe only to the right, you stand a good chance of drinking your weight in lagoon.
   
The current is running westwards with the tide, and, with the wind, we allow for a drag and a push, heading north rather than nor'-west, before running with the chop and the breeze into the beach.
   
There is something about white sand and bright sun in the tropics that makes water so clear, so acquamarine, so resplendent when you look down through it, and across its surface. The chop neutralises the richest colours in the wind, but the clarity is there when you look down.
   
From Nanuya resort, you also can swim along the beach of the Blue Lagoon, although access is impeded here when cruise ships are moored offshore.
   
Another longer, albeit tide dependent swim is from Safe Landing Resort, in the nor'-eastern corner of Tavewa Lagoon, around the distant point to the west and around to Oarsman's Lodge. It's a bit over four kilometres and heavily tide dependent: there's a lot of shallow reef along the way, and if the tide is low, you simply cannot get over it. The round-way is much longer.
   
A freakier swim is from Oarsman's to Coral View. There's a long and beautiful swim along the reef out from the Oarsman's bay, but the channel crossing of about a kilometre from there to Coral View, on Tavewa's nor'-eastern shore, is much longer through deeply dark, blue water.
   
There's a straight line swim, too, from the nor'-eastern point of Nanuya Lai-Lai, with the wind and the chop into the island's nor'-western tip, which protects Nanuya Island Resort.
   
At the finish of this swim, Nanuya Island Resort truly is one of the most beautiful, peaceful havens in all of Fiji.
   
Tavewa Lagoon is dotted with resorts: 17 of them, according to Fanny Doughty, matriarch of Otto and Fanny's Place. Most of them are attached to local villages and are what you would call at the budget or backpacker end of the market.
   
They are distinguished from each other often by the standard of food served, and in this Otto and Fanny's Place and Nanuya Island Resort stand head and shoulders above the others.
   
A word of caution about swimming in the Yasawas, however: swim with a local escort. Most resorts will be happy to provide a piloted tinny to get you to and from your swims, and to escort you along the way. And, with the exchange rate the way it is, they're not expensive.

They've had ocean swims before at Mana Island, and they still have not only the booees, but the anchors, and many of the anchor points remain on the lagoon bottom, so laying the course is little more than attaching key booees to the established anchor points. There is more to it than that, of course, and the Mana crew are very good at it.

Tu Vili is Mana Island Resort's Swim Master.

Mana Island Resort swim crew.

IF YOU'RE GOING:
  
Air Pacific/Qantas and Pacific Blue offer daily flights to Fiji, but check online portals such as zuji.com for the best fares available, as well as the airlines' own sites. Often, the airlines will have very different fares, even between Air Pacific and Qantas, who operate codeshare flights.

Pacific Blue's schedule is much more user friendly to travellers from Sydney.
   
Transport to the Mamanuca island resorts and to the Yasawas - Awesome Adventures - www.awesomefiji.com

Mana Island Resort
Otto and Fanny's Place
Nanuya Island Resort
   
Fiji Visitors Bureau

After the Mana Fiji Swim, two swimmers were married. He wanted to surprise her, but it turned out that he had to let her know because they needed her permission. Funny world, isn't it.

Glistening Dave makes friends everywhere. He's just that kind of guy. Here are his new friends on Mana Island.

Paradise. Photo artiste Krystle Wright and Mrs Sparkle, loll after their swim along Tavewa's back reef. They are in the Blue Lagoon.

Mrs Sparkle and Emma Starritt were very pleased when they turned up on Mana's North Beach wearing the same cossies, or rather, the same style of cossie. Luckily, both are bigger than that, and they got on famously.

Mana Fiji Swim, the start.

Swan Palace, Otto and Fanny's Place, which is where HM Roy stayed. Early morning.

Lovely technique from Mrs Sparkle. She was classically trained, you know. This is her 1st position.

A rare shot of Glistening Dave's technique. Perhaps we should get him to swim over shallow coral reef more often, for it does wonderful things for one's stroke.