Should you find yourself in Fiji on a weekday between 6.30am and 2pm, here’s what you should do. Point your rental car south, putting 60km between yourself and Nadi, until you reach Sigatoka. Scoot a little further along the Coral Coast and you’ll arrive at Bula Coffee.
Here, tucked between a thick clot of coffee trees, you’ll find Luke Fryett. Originally from Tauranga, Fryett started Fiji’s first coffee business almost by default.
“I’d been visiting Fiji for years and discovered what I thought were cherry trees but were actually coffee trees growing wild in the highlands,” says Fryett. “The beans weren’t being used and although I don’t have a background in coffee, I realised we could do something with them.”
Roll the clock forward 14 years and Bula Coffee now uses beans from around 5000 growers across Fiji, most of them women. Not only has the business helped support women’s co-operatives and taught local farmers how to plant, prune and process their coffee crops, it’s also funded university educations and a boat to transport village kids to school.
Saying Fiji is popular with Kiwis is a bit like saying Liam Lawson is a fast driver. Alongside so many others, I’ve often escaped winter with a well-earned flop and drop holiday in this archipelago of 300+ islands strung across the Pacific like a necklace.
But there’s another Fiji beyond the cruises and increasingly ritzy resorts. On a 16-day Intrepid Travel tour of Fiji and Samoa, I discover that getting off the beaten track can be just as rewarding as drinking cocktails while staring at a sea so blue it looks AI generated.
Once caffeinated at Fryett’s waterfront cafe, we drive to Sigatoka Sand Dunes National Park, Fiji’s first national park. The heat is so thick we could almost lean on it, so it’s a relief to wander through shady mahogany forests to the dunes where, it’s rumoured, the Fijian rugby team often trains.
Sadly there’s no sign of rugby players today, just 263ha of sculpted sand and a windswept coastline where the Pacific meets the land in dramatic style. One of Intrepid’s core pillars is benefiting local tourism providers and on a whitewater rafting trip of the Upper Navua Gorge, we do just that.
Rivers Fiji was started in 1998 and the company has subsequently created a conservation area alongside the river. As local guide Semi Naivalu expertly steers us through a dramatic landscape which appears to have borrowed its blueprint from Jurassic Park-towering gorge walls, thick rain-forest and endless waterfalls – he tells us how the venture has generated more than FJ$1 million (NZ$744,920) for communities along the river. For this whitewater rafting novice, it’s also a lot of fun.
We tick off another Intrepid value – a deeply personal encounter with local communities - at our next stop, Naga Village. Deep in Fiji’s heartland, where few tourists seem to tread, is this village of 100 or so people, who open their kitchen and their hearts to us.
I wasn’t expecting to be served such a delicious meal out in the middle of nowhere. More fool me because the generous spread, which reflects Fiji’s multicultural makeup, includes taro and meat from the lovo (hāngī) as well as spicy dahl, rice and roti.
Full and happy after a traditional kava ceremony, we roll out mattresses to sleep marae - style in the village hall. It’s so surprisingly comfortable that it’s hard to spring out of bed at dawn to hike to Nabutautau Village – an 11km route that follows goat tracks used by local farmers through grassland and rainforest.
We do three river crossings, scramble over boulders as big as my car and rappel down a cliff - face before finishing with a near vertical path.
Baked by the midday sun, it’s one of the hardest treks I’ve ever done. But the reward of a swim in the clear river, a late lunch at Nabutautau Village, and the kind of untouched scenery you only get in travel brochures, more than makes up for it.
After decadently long, hot showers, we’re ready for some urban action. If you’re visiting Suva, and there’s every reason you should, definitely seek out Peter Sipeli.
The multi-talented poet, artist, gay rights activist and all-round nice guy started his company, Guided Walking Tours of Suva, in 2022. His 2.5 hour tour of the capital and Fiji’s largest city is, stresses Sipeli, a decolonised tour.
“I’m not interested in talking abut the colonial history of Suva but in the Fijian and Indian experience,” he says. We start our tour at the gloriously chaotic bus terminal, used by more than 10,000 passengers a day, to the Suva Municipal Market. Here on the ground floor, locals snack on boiled fish and cassava before heading to work.
“You should see how busy this place is on a Saturday,” says Sipeli of the market which opened in 1932. At the downstairs produce market we pass stacks of tropical fruit and vegetables such as yams, taro, coconut and the biggest mangoes and pawpaw I’ve ever seen.
Bundles of yaqona root, which is shredded and soaked in water to create Fiji’s favourite drink, kava, are piled near fragrant spices that form the backbone of Indian cooking.
We walk through Suva’s CBD, popping into the compact Reserve Bank to admire the world’s only $7 note, issued to commemorate Fiji’s first Olympic medal when its Fiji men’s rugby sevens team won gold at the 2017 games, and stroll past gracious government buildings to Thurston Gardens. The site of Suva’s first village, it’s now a lush botanical garden, where Sipeli treats us to one of his poems.
Thurston Gardens is also home to the compact Fiji Museum, which tells the nation’s story from pottery shards dated 800-900BC to an ocean-going dura, or double-hulled canoe, and the arrival of indentured Gujarati labourers in the late 19th century.
Of particular interest is the 19th century tabua, or whale’s tooth, presented by chiefs to the Methodist Church to atone for the killing of Reverend Thomas Baker, a minister trying to spread Christianity during a time of tribal warfare and cannibalism.
It’s a Fiji far from the social media dream of palm trees and sheets with high thread counts, but when you need a diversion from sun and sea, there’s a whole other side to these stunning islands.
Fact File
- Intrepid 16-day Samoan and Fiji Adventure, from NZ$9819. See: intrepidtravel.com
- Getting There: Air New Zealand and Fiji Airways operates daily nonstop flights from Auckland to Nadi, and from Wellington to Nadi on Fiji Airways. See: airnewzealand.co.nz; fijiairways.com
- Carbon footprint: Flying generates carbon emissions. To reduce your impact, consider other ways of travelling, amalgamate your trips, and when you need to fly, consider offsetting emissions.
The writer was hosted by Intrepid Travel
https://www.thepost.co.nz/travel/360790298/where-adventure-meets-soul-fiji-curious-traveller
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