We went in February, over midwinter break — seven nights, a two-bedroom sunset villa, and our second time on the island.
The arrival
The trip begins in a private hangar at Nadi International Airport, which is Kokomo's first signal that the ordinary rules of travel have been suspended. The helicopter is the island's own. The flight is about an hour.
I am not overly excited about helicopters, and I will not pretend otherwise. What settled me was the man in the left-hand seat: an Australian who had spent forty years flying these machines in every corner of the world, and who carried that history lightly. Experience of that order is its own kind of reassurance. We took a seaplane back out on departure, which gave us the island from above a second time, and from a different angle.
We came down into bright weather under clear skies and were met by dozens of staff who sang us a Kokomo welcome song — the kind of greeting that would feel staged anywhere it was not sincere. A golf cart carried us to the villa. We unpacked, found our swim trunks, and were in the water within the hour.
The beach
The beach faces west. That single fact shapes every evening you will spend there, because the sun goes down directly in front of you rather than somewhere behind the resort, and the whole length of the sand turns to brass while you watch.
The water is turquoise and warm enough to stay in for hours, which we did. We snorkelled over the coral just offshore. There is a floating trampoline, which is where my three kids installed themselves and from which they were difficult to extract. There is a floating dock for sunbathing and diving. There is a clear-bottomed kayak you can take out across the lagoon and watch the reef scroll past beneath you.
Dinner that first night was at Walker de Plank, the island's Asian restaurant, where the chef came out to introduce himself. It was an exceptional meal, and it set the standard for the week.
The shape of an ordinary day
The honest version of a Kokomo day has very little architecture to it.
We woke early, walked to the main restaurant, and took our time over a buffet breakfast in weather that was warm without being oppressive. Afterwards we went up to the pool at the centre of the island. We found the ice cream shop. We looked in on the kids club. We walked the perimeter of the island, which takes no more than twenty minutes end to end and tells you everything about the scale of the place.
The rest of that day we spent in water: the villa's own pool, then the lagoon directly in front of it. The rest of the week followed the same unhurried pattern. The only real decision on offer was which body of water to be in next, and there are three restaurants — the one beside the central pool, the main restaurant, and Walker de Plank — to punctuate the day between swims.
The engineering tour
The most unexpectedly compelling thing we did had nothing to do with the water.
Kokomo runs a tour of its physical plant — the desalination, the power, the machinery that keeps a private island habitable — led by the head of engineering. The infrastructure underneath the postcard is genuinely impressive, and seeing it changes how you read everything above the waterline.
The waterfall
One morning we took a boat out and walked an hour and more through the jungle to a waterfall, climbing steadily under a canopy that closed over the trail.
It rained for most of that hike and turned sunny later in the afternoon. The weather made no difference whatsoever to the children, who were thrilled to be muddy and thrilled again to wash it all off in the falls. We swam, ate a snack, and walked back out.
The reef
The best half day available to you is the barrier reef — the third largest in the world, and no more than forty-five minutes from the island by boat.
We spent half a day on it with a guide, in calm weather over beautiful seas. The coral and the fish were extraordinary. I have snorkelled a great many reefs, and this is the finest I have seen with the single exception of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which I visited years ago. That is high company, and Kokomo's reef holds its own in it.
What it costs
Kokomo is not cheap, and the journey out to it is not cheap either. This is a luxury proposition in the strict sense of the word, and it is not for the faint of heart from a budget perspective.
What takes the sting out is that the island is all-inclusive. The food and everything else is covered, so the figure you commit to at the outset is close to the figure you actually spend — a rarer thing at this end of the market than it ought to be.
If what you want is a genuinely world-class island, it is worth the money. If that is not what you are shopping for, no amount of turquoise will make the price make sense.
Going back
We ate well at all three restaurants, snorkelled the reef, hiked to the falls, and spent the remaining hours doing very little in extremely pleasant surroundings.
This was our second visit, and I would not claim the two trips differed much — they were both superb, which is the most useful thing I can tell you about a place you are considering paying to return to. We are already thinking about a third.