Port Vila

Port Vila curls around a harbour with an island in the middle of it, in a country that keeps topping the world's happiness surveys without appearing to try. Vanuatu's eighty-three islands run on kastom — the customary law of chiefs, dances and land — and on the world's strongest kava, drunk at dusk in shadowy nakamals where the loudest permitted sound is a whisper. The capital is the gentle porch of all of it: market mamas in flowered dresses, French bread from the colonial marriage, reef fish grilled by the water.

The traveller swims the tiered blue pools of Mele cascades; paddles or boats the Erakor lagoon; eats at the market house where laplap — the national pudding of grated roots baked in leaves — comes wrapped like a gift; drinks one respectful shell of kava at sunset; and then flies to the outer wonders: Tanna, where the Yasur volcano performs its fireworks nightly at crater's edge, and Pentecost in spring, where the naghol land-divers leap from hand-built towers with vines at their ankles — the ancient rite that lent the world the bungee.

The Guide's practical counsel: 'the strongest kava' is not marketing — one shell is cultural immersion, two is a nap —; cyclone season runs November to April and the forecasts are watched like scripture; kastom villages welcome visitors who ask first, dress modestly and leave drones grounded; inter-island flights are small and weather-ruled, so pad the schedule; and the happiness statistics, after three days of this pace, stop seeming mysterious at all.