The Yasawa Islands: Nanuya Lai Lai

Sunet over The Blue Lagoon on Nanuya Lai Lai, the location of the setting of the film Blue Lagoon

This spot is right at the top of the Yasawa group and is meant to have the best snorkelling possible. It is also the location of the setting of both the original Blue Lagoon movie and the more contemporary remake starring Brooke Shields.

There are a number of swanky resorts including Nanuya Lai Lai Island Resort and the highly opulent Turtle Island Resort, where Britney Spears chose to spend her honeymoon. Jennifer Aniston is currently staying there at the time of visiting.

Our Accommodation

The Locals at Nanuya Lai Lai, Sunrise Lagoon resort... Don't go there

So, The Blue Lagoon is full of mega-stars and upmarket resorts… great!

We managed to choose the only shithole on the island then, Sunrise Lagoon resort on the East side. Thats a 2km jaunt over an extinct volcano or around the rugged shoreline to get to The Blue Lagoon. Dreadful food, poor quality accommodation, clueless retarded staff but thankfully great company amongst the other guests with a Euro-melange from Sweden, Germany Ireland, NZ, Belgium and ourselves.

Lazy days on The Blue Lagoon

We stayed for 2-nights as we have everywhere, but rapidly gave up on the supercarb loading diet they offered us to eat healthily over at the Nanuya Lai Lai island resort which is glorious and is placed right on the best corner of The Lagoon.

The snorkelling was, as promised fantastic. You really didn’t need to swim out too far to hit beautiful reefs covered in fascinating sea flora. Fish I spotted were also pretty exotic: Swordfish shoals, Angelfish, stripy black ones, stripy blue orange ones and everything else. I hadn’t a clue what most things were but they were lovely.

Every night we watched the sunset over The Lagoon, simply magical before trekking back to Poverty Island Resort as I have now renamed it.

 Nights in Sunrise Lagoon

30 second exposure taken under the moonlight

On our last night they shocked us and pulled out of the bag a tasty meal with a carrot and ginger soup starter which was really delicious. Nights were usually spent chatting to the Euros and sipping on Fiji Bitter, our new found poison. It’s not as good as Samoan Vailima beer.

At 2300 every night, Poverty Bay turned off the diesel generator and electricity was no more, so we would wander down to the beach and listen to the iPod and finish our beers under the moonlight. It was so bright you didn’t need power there on a clear night.

Tags: fiji, islands, nanuya lai lai, pacific, yasawa