It's an idyllic Pacific Island setting -- gentle breeze singing through the palm trees, ocean lapping over the coral reef onto the beach, the leaf and pole bures waving in the wind...
   
Absolutely abandoned now, not even locals have taken residence in the "village" on the shores of Mana Island, off the western coast of Fiji's main island, Viti Levu.
   
The "village" just sits there, abandoned, like the Marie Celeste.
   
There are a dozen Fijian bures arranged in two neat rows behind the gently arcing beach. There's a central eating hall, and a head man's house, outside which there is a "wishing well", toppled and leaning and exposing the truth of its construction.
   
At the "village's" far western end, behind the beach, there's a "temple" supposedly representing the religious traditions of old Fiji.
   
Look closely at the "temple", however, and you'll see it's made of chipboard and masonite, synthetic "rock", plastic tiles, pretend vines, cheap pine floorboards and lots of make believe.
   
It's surrounded by a stone wall. The stones are real.
   
Idyllic, indeed, and a fiction. Like the "temple", the "village" was all made up.
   
On a pretty bay on Mana's north-eastern shore, the "village" was one of three locations used in Survivor: Fiji, the 14th series of the phenomenally successfully tv show.
   
Producers built their own village from scratch, shipping in the materials and, we hope, engaging local labour to build it. There's a real Fijian village just over the hill, but that would not have been authentic enough for Survivor.
   
Far from remote, rustic and challenging, however, the Survivor "village" is a two minute walk from Mana Island Resort's holiday bures, and just five minutes from Mana's North Beach bar and restaurant.
   
Not all that hard  or challenging for the survivors.

Survivor: Fiji premiered in the US on February 8, 2007.
   
As well as the village on Mana Island, the show was shot on location in the village of Vunivutu on Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island, and around Sigatoka, on the southern Coral Coast of the main island, Viti Levu.
   
Mana Island is in the Mamanuca island group, which is the focus of the country's island resort industry off Viti Levu's west coast.
   
The more cynical amongst us have long suspected that Survivor is not as tough as the show likes to make out. Visiting Vanuatu during shooting of an earlier series, we found the main location on an island off the west coast of the main island of Efate. We also found the fabrication shop, where the sets were made, in the capital, Port Vila, a 45 minute drive away.
   
Stories abounded of the "survivors" coming back to the capital each night to stay with family in local hotels.
   
Later, during shooting of Australian Celebrity Survivor, also in Vanuatu, our table backed onto one occupied by the host, Ian "Dicko" Dickson. Perhaps Dicko left them to it every night.

The "temple", where the "survivors", when they weren't back at Mana Island Resort, would vote each other in and out.

A prospective contestant on Fiji Survivor arrives late for filming. Three years too late. They provided this unfortunate erstwhile celebrity with disinformation, about an entirely different island. Only too late did he discover the truth. And here he stands, forlornly.

So, how real is the surviving?
   
The abandoned village on Mana Island gives the casual visitor the opportunity to see for themselves.
   
The quickest way to get there from Mana Island Resort is to head down to the easternmost bures, on Mana's North Beach, then look for the track heading into the "jungle" and over the point.
   
Literally, it's a two-minute walk, and it's not difficult.
   
The track brings you out behind the beach and behind the synthetic "temple", styled as a castle with imposing stone walls overgrown with "vines".
   
The front door is barred, but there's a rear door which is open. Hoist yourself up, and you can walk yourself through the "temple" with its ceremonial statutes, its fake vines, and its recessed central floors.
   
Head east along the beach. About 50 metres down, you run into the body of the village.
   
There are two rows of buildings, the rear row of domestic bures, and the front row, ten metres back from the beach, of more bures and the eating hall.
   
At the far end, there is a more elaborate head man's house, perhaps where decisions of gravity affecting the survivors were made, before they gathered at the temple at the other end of the bay to boot out their most threatening rivals.
   
The bures have doors, windows, floors elevated from the ground, and front steps.
   
The eating hall is on a raised floor, too. There's a kitchen sink leaning on its side.
   
Whilst thrown together for tv, it's not inconceivable that squatters could make use of this place: the structures are solid enough, and have survived three years so far.
   
A tourist wanders along the beach with a fishing rod. "How are the fish biting," he's asked.
   
"What fish?" he says.
   
What surviving? he might have added.