Santiago

This is where you wish you were right now. Remote and authentic yet easily accessed from Viti Levu and home to comfortable, ecofriendly resorts, Kadavu blends Fiji’s best assets. As your plane lands on a tiny airstrip surrounded by luminescent sea, volcanic peaks and intense forest, you’ll feel like an adventurer. Your flight will be followed by a boat ride to your resort past prehistoric-looking coves, and when you reach your destination you can grab your snorkel or dive gear to get below the waves and explore the incredible Great Astrolabe Reef – the world's fourth-largest barrier reef.

With welcoming settlements, year-round warmth and genuine local hospitality, it’s not for nothing that Vanua Levu and Taveuni are billed as Fiji’s ‘friendly north’. The country’s second- and third-biggest islands, respectively, are clean, green havens languidly trapped in a time before ‘hectic’ was invented: even their epithets – Vanua Levu was once called Sandalwood Island and Taveuni’s nickname is the Garden Island – evoke the scents and sights of a land left wild.

Taveuni is renowned as Fiji’s Garden Island, though its tangled, steamy interior is more reminiscent of a prehistoric jungle than anything that might yield to a hedgetrimmer and set of pruning shears. Hot and often wet, this impossibly green volcanic bump is covered by a riotous quilt of palms, monster ferns and tropical wildflowers, one of which – the tagimaucia – is found nowhere else on earth. Its dense rainforest is a magnet for colourful bird life.

Though it’s Fiji’s second-largest island, Vanua Levu (Big Island) is one of the tropics’ best-kept secrets. It’s another world from the bustle of Viti Levu and the more-touristed islands: many roads are little more than rutted dirt tracks, and Labasa, the island’s largest ‘city’, is a one-street strip of shops. To the south, Savusavu entices yachties, divers and dreamers looking for a tropical idyll. The rest of ‘Big Island’ is given over to sugarcane and copra plantations, hideaway villages, mountain passes streaming with waterfalls, endless swaths of forest and an ever-changing coastline forgotten by the world. Take it slow, keep a smile on your face and savour rural Fiji on its grandest scale.

This small island (2.55 sq km) is laden with fancy resorts manicured to perfection with heavenly pools and designer suites. Although it’s only 6km west of Nadi town, the disparity couldn’t be starker: staying here offers little insight into everyday Fijian life. But to splash some cash, get spoiled and avoid Nadi, then Denarau is the place to go. Be warned – what the resorts don’t advertise is that Denarau is built on reclaimed mangrove mudflats; most of the beach has dark-grey sand and murky water unsuitable for snorkelling.

A wide bank of coral offshore gives this stretch of coast between Korotogo and Pacific Harbour its name. Flanked by waves of richly vegetated hills and a fringing reef that drops off dramatically into the deep blue of the South Pacific Ocean, it’s the most scenic slice of the Queens Road and resorts of all standards exploit the views. That said, the Coral Coast’s beaches are poor cousins to those on Fiji’s smaller islands and most swimming is done in hotel pools. Many travellers prefer to focus on inland and other highlights, such as the Sigatoka Sand Dunes, Tavuni Hill Fort, Sigatoka Valley and, near Pacific Harbour, river trips in the Namosi Highlands and diving in the Beqa Lagoon. Lounging in a resort is also a prime pursuit in these parts.

Despite its proximity to Viti Levu, the Lomaiviti group is often overlooked as a tourist destination in Fiji. Its residents may moan this is unfair, and if you make it here you'll understand why. It was in Levuka, the capital of the main island Ovalau, that the first Europeans settled and eventually made this the country’s first capital. Its wild and immoral colonial days are long over but you'll likely be seduced by its laid-back charms and welcoming atmosphere – not forgetting its historic centre that won Fiji's first World Heritage site listing in 2013.

Sigatoka (sing-a-to-ka) is the largest town on the Coral Coast and serves as the commercial hub for the farming communities that grow sugar cane and vegetables upriver in the fertile swathe of the Sigatoka Valley.

Rugged, remote and more dramatic than the sugardrop islands of the Mamanucas, the mighty Yasawas were once off-limits to all but those determined to play out their Robinson Crusoe fantasies. Today, ferries, cruise ships and seaplanes make daily deposits of sun-and-fun-seekers keen to explore both its looming landscapes and eminently diveable depths.

Most travellers go to Nadi (nan-di) twice, whether they like it or not: its indecently warm air slaps you in the face when you first step from the plane, and kicks you up the backside as you board for home.