It would be quite possible to spend an entire stay without venturing more than a few metres from your room, but anyone doing so would miss out on many of the island’s other pleasures. Away from the accommodation side, Matagi is untamed and rugged. The jagged coastline is indented with dozens on craggy inlets and rocky pools where all manner of sea creatures lurk after being trapped on the incoming tide. Shells lie strewn on the beach and the whole area has a wild and deserted feel to it.

     The island’s interior is covered with ferns and coconut palms. Fallen nuts are left to grow where they drop and their chace of reaching maturity as fully grown trees depends to a great extent
on their ability to find sunlight. As a result, many of the slender trunks are twisted from their efforts to break through the thick canopy of overhanging fronds. Parts of the island’s interior is so dense it resembles a rain forest. It’s a steep and somewhat precarious climb to Matagi’s highest point, but the view from the top, looking down on the multicoloured layers of coral and surrounding islands, is absolutely stunning. As it was once a working plantation, on your walks, you’ll also come across mountain goats, wild fowl, pigs and cattle.

     If it wasn’t for mealtimes, you would probably never see your fellow guests. But around 6pm, just as the sun is striking low on the horizon, there’s a mutual drift towards the bar for pre-dinner drinks. Conversations over cocktails invariably centres around who’s done what during the day. It’s a chance to mull over the days events, share the excitement of a successful fishing trip or commiserate about the one that got away.

     Dinner, like breakfast, is served en famille, around long tables in a dining room lit by oil lamps. Any guests who fail to appear are summoned by the rhythmic beating of a hollow log, a tradition originally established as a method for calling fishermen home from the sea. Only then when everyone is ‘present’ and ‘correct’ is the meal served.

     Indistinguishable from the guests as they mingle among them, are Matangi’s owners, Noel and Carol Douglas. The island has been in the Douglas family for generations, first as a working copra (coconut) plantation, then as a family retreat. Finally the plantation was discontinued and in 1986, the resort came into being. Nonetheless, Matangi is first and foremost a home a home, and the Douglas stamp is unmistakable. Flo, Noel’s mother, had built up an enviable collection of tropical plants, fruit trees and flowers in the plantations garden.

     She was also responsible for the menagerie of poultry, guinea flow, turkeys and wild birds. Even today, as much as possible, food is grown on the island. Cows and goats provide milk, fish is caught daily and coconuts are never is short supply.

Mantangi’s coconut plantation

Fijian ‘Meke’ performance

     One night each week, entertainment is provided in the form of a meke -  traditional Fijian songs and dances performed by the villagers from a neighbouring island. The dancers arrive by rowing boats bringing their home made costumes, and armfuls of leaf and flower leis which they distribute to the onlookers. While the performances may be less polished than many on mainland Fiji, it is done with such humour and enthusiasm, that it’s hard to know who enjoys themselves the most, the entertainers or the audience.