Robert Louis Stevenson has a lot to answer for. Ever since Robinson Crusoe, tropical islands have become synonymous with getting away from it all. So when Fiji comes free as a stopover, I'm laughing all the way to the bikini shop.

The scenery on the drive to the hotel is captivating: the sky, mid-rainy season, is the colour of thunder, making fields seem impossibly green and flowers luminous. We zoom past markets, stalls piled high with coconuts; villagers chat outside thatched houses, and chickens and goats amble by. I sit out well into the night, tracing the lines of the Southern Cross in the sky as frogs hop around my feet.