Snorkel in Mamanuca islands off Port Denarau.

We walk down the path from Jane’s house to the Denarau Marina, hoping we can move ourselves from yesterday’s waitlist for the Coral Cats all-day cruise to the outer islands for sun, sand, snacks and snorkeling, to today’s catamaran leaving at 10 a.m. We find Finau, yesterday’s gal at the Coral Cats booth, and after a few calls and some sly looks, she adds us to 30 other souls on “Wanaka,” a 12.5 meter catamaran. Patrick, a deck hand, and Sova, the skipper who grew up on Kadavu Island, welcome us on board.

We sweep out of the harbor in a wide curve, passing gigantic yachts and numerous small craft anchored off shore. Sharp mountains to the right, a long reach of beach and low luxury hotels to the left. Several couples reclining on the webbing stretched across the two bows finish the beers they brought and are served more on a tray brought up from the galley on the starboard side. Sova stands at the bow and tells us how we may die if the boat malfunctions, demonstrates a life jacket and says we will motor a ways and then raise sails when we reach some wind. The Indian contingent babbles under the boat’s central awning while everyone else strips and slathers sunscreen and asks for more beer. The couple with the lovely aging grandmother and their irrepressible two-and-a-half year-old daughter, Alex, sit in the front getting drenched occasionally by waves splashing up from the bow.

The weather is perfect. Small, deep green islands dot the ocean near and far; the water sparkles like silver in a soft and steady breeze as the deck hands raise two sails and we slap lazily on gentle swells out into the Pacific. After about an hour-plus, we anchor at Sunflower Reef near Plantation Island to don masks, fins and more sunscreen and snorkel over and around the coral reef around us. The variety of fish is incredible. The coral is not as interesting or as colorful as at the Great Barrier Reef, but the fish here swim in large groups three inches from our goggles and nip at our legs. One of the deck hands swims as a guide and his advice is “Keep your feet off the coral. If you don’t know what something is, don’t touch it.”

We snorkel for over an hour and get back on board, bound for Musket Cove where we disembark, find restrooms — “Don’t go under the coconut trees,” Patrick said — find the busy bar serving all the loud people who are staying at the luxury hotels on the south side of the island, buy drinks and have a hot lunch served to us at tables overlooking your typically gorgeous South Pacific bay. We chat with a young couple from Canberra. They are delightful and hunting for their first house, which is complicated because she has six horses and he is still a student, getting his Ph.D in manufacturing engineering.

Back on Wanaka, we motor to Sandquay reef and snorkel some more for another hour or so. Then, the couples in the front get more beers and become increasingly present as we sail back to Port Denarau. In fact, they empty every beer in the galley and are reduced to yelling incisive comments at each other. “That’s such a Cameron Diaz look you’re bashing,” says one to another.

The sands of sunset countdown clock are draining fast as Cynthia and I grab the first taxi we can find after we dock so we can get to the Radisson Hotel’s “sunset area bar” on the other side of the point from the harbor. We make it just in time to order coladas and margaritas as we drop into some rattan armchairs to watch the sun sink into the distant horizon, which, except for the few scattered dark islands that now seem to float above it, is so sharp and flat it looks cut by a knife. The Pacific’s lapping waves and the gentle frangipani-scented breeze and the sun and the clouds fringed with light do their “special island” thing.

We take the same taxi back to Jane’s place, shower and change into suitable clothes to go to Indigo, an Indian restaurant a short walk away. Dinner is lovely, a cornucopia of flavors with the lights of boats riding their anchors winking in the distance.

We return and are soon asleep on this, our penultimate day in Fiji.

Another day in watery Paradise