You and your wife fly to Wakaya from Viti Levu, the main Fijian island. Underneath the wingprops, the Melanesian archipelago is a pattern of islands risen from the contoured Pacific. Imagine crimped volcanos, covered in electric green lichen and girdled with white sandbars, coral reefs and the clean, clear ocean, itself every shade from lapis lazuli to eau de nil through emerald and turquoise. It is as if the Fijian god Denge has turned up the optical volume, and you're seeing his world in full colour for the first time.

Wakaya is a private place, home to 200 islanders who are devoted to the wellbeing its guests, of whom there are a maximum of 18 at any one time. It's very easy to take to this rare treat of island life, breakfasting on fried bread stuffed with banana mashed with coconut and ginger and dusted with raw sugar. When Nobu visited, he left his recipe for tempura of spinach and seaweed-wrapped tuna fillet, so it'd be rude not to feast on that, too. You sip watermelon and lemon juice and mop your unfevered brow on chilled vanilla-scented towels. Everything tastes big, saturated with flavour.

It is the beach picnic that defines Wakaya's approach to unobtrusive private luxury. You get to choose a beach, which is yours alone for the day, and the menu. Chef Napoleon has some nice lobsters. Can he make you a salad? Yes, he can. And some mangrove crab with caramelised plum and ginger . . . sashimi of wild salmon slick with sesame oil and chopped scallions. Stopping only to flip the sign at the top of your beach road to: "Engaged - do not enter", you crunch softly along and find two fat blue sunloungers, a smart toilet with a green iguana sunbathing on the door, snorkels, a double hammock and a bucket shower rigged in a palm tree.

You are together and in love and the beach, sheltered by a steep hill, is a perfect caster sugar crescent. There are orchids that smell of warm maple syrup, and lovebirds and lorikeets with crimson chests chattering in the hibiscus. In this lush promiscuity, you rip off your swimming trolleys and splash excitedly into the calm ocean, which is warm and full of tiny shiny glinting flitting tropical fish. You oodle around forever with the snorkel on, marvelling at the world beneath. Only when it's time for champagne with passionfruit juice and that promised cuddle on the hammock do you realise that your Manchester arse is burnt pink as the bloody sashimi.

· wakaya.com.