The first European to see these islands was William Bligh, in 1789, in an open boat, days after losing the Bounty, and he did not stop. The Yasawas have spent much of the time since being sailed past. An American expedition stayed long enough to chart them in 1840. Tongan raiders landed for the sail mats the islands were known for, and paid for them or did not. The American military borrowed them for communications posts in the Second World War, and otherwise the world left them alone.
Then it became policy. Until 1987 the group was closed to land-based tourism, by most accounts because its own king did not want it, and the cruise ships that came from the 1950s had to keep their passengers on board, which is a long way to sail to look at a beach. The resorts came after that, and they have not had it easy. In February 2016 Cyclone Winston took a heavy toll here, with homes lost on several islands and the Yasawas High School on Naviti destroyed, and cyclones reach Fiji about once a year.
We would go to the far end. Six main islands run north-east for more than 80 kilometres, volcanic and steep, and the last of them, Yasawa, is 22 kilometres long and less than one wide, so nobody on it is far from the sea on either side. The only safe passage for shipping runs off its northern tip. The ships still go by, and these days you can watch them from the beach.
