Three nights at Royal Davui Resort in July

This is the view of the Royal Davui Resort private island from about 300 feet, at sunset. The grass in the front of the island is actually used as a helipad for guests that come in from Nadi airport directly by helicopter. We opted for a domestic flight and a short boat transit.

On the south side of the island where our villa was located, there was a nice little private beach with only a couple of villas facing it (one under renovation)

Lots of interesting shells washing up, and tons of little hermit crabs running around in the debris.

This is the sunset view looking at our side of the island. For obvious reasons, I kept the drone very well clear of parts of the island with villas.

This is as far out as the drone could venture into the open water towards the larger neighboring island.

Standup paddle boards and kayaks for guest use. In choppy waters offshore, our standup paddle boards were more like kneeling paddle boards.

Staff regularly feed the fish around the dock, so snorkeling there is a frenzy of fish that are totally fearless.

We were able to have the staff just leave us there alone for several hours while the tide and weather permitted.

Just us on the island... Apparently the place disappears at high tide, so it was virgin footprints in the sand for our visit.

The little Mavic drone we brought on this trip performed like a champ hundreds of feet up and up to a half kilometer away in some pretty windy conditions.

We've tried to arrange private island visits in several South Pacific countries now and this was the first time we legitimately had a place completely to ourselves for a time.

We got the staff to extend our time there by a couple of hours, but low and behold, just as it was almost time for our pickup... another boat rolls up packed with tourists from another resort. These guys swarmed the island like a bunch of hooligans... one little kid was going nuts with a fishing rod and other kids running around. Savages disturbing our peaceful little sand cay. Sigh. That was our cue to pack it up. You have to travel really, really far away, to get away from people.... and even then, those moments are pretty fleeting.