A blog by the staff and management of Matava about adventure travel in and around the Fiji Islands including trekking, kayaking, cultural experiences and birdwatching.
iBike Fiji was founded with a passion for experiencing the beauty of Fiji without boundaries.
On electric-bicycles, you can feel the thrills of an off-road ride while hardly breaking a sweat!
For roughly four hours, you are no longer just a tourist.
You are an adventurer, and in the company of our competent local guides, you are invited to explore the off-road tracks of Fiji, pedaling your way through paradise.
Adventure and immersion are the essence of iBike Fiji, and what you see can vary from day to day.
During cutting season, you will meet sugarcane farmers toiling the fields of western Viti Levu.
During mango season, you will stop beneath laden mango trees and listen to stories of childhood in Fiji.
Whatever the season, iBike Fiji gives riders a front row experience to the heartbeat of Fiji’s interior, all while taking them on a thrilling adventure.
iBike Fiji endeavors to be a sustainable and environmentally-conscious venture, with the future of e-bicycles opening up opportunities for healthier, cleaner transport culture amongst tourists and locals alike.
The people of Vusama Village in the district of Malomalo in Nadroga/Navosa are richly endowed with nature and history.
According to information passed down orally through countless generations, their ancestors were regarded as Fiji’s first traditional salt makers.
They produced salt by cooking seawater in large handmade clay pots and used it as a barterable commodity and traditional item of value.
Today, the saltwater wells that used to provide the raw material for salt production sit idle on the maqa, the expanse of mangrove mudflats located over a kilometre outside the village.
The barren brine pits remind villagers of the past and their former glory days.
In olden times, the area may have possibly been a region that bustled with activities.
But salt and salt making are not the only popular features of Vusama.
Archaeological excavation in Bourewa. Picture: WIKIEDUCATOR.ORG
A few kilometres from the village, adjacent to a beachfront on what is called the Rove peninsular, is a place villagers call Bourewa, believed to be the first place to be settled in Fiji before the birth of Christ.
In the local dialect, the word bourewa translates to two words, ‘bou’ meaning a bure post and ‘rewa’ meaning high rising.
“Bourewa was where we used to go to catch fish using fishing nets,” said former village headman, Saula Nadokonivalu.
The place rose to prominence in 2003 when local archaeologists led by University of the South Pacific professor, Patrick D. Nunn, discovered at Bourewa the oldest human settlement in Fiji.
Then, it was part of a sugarcane field.
Through radio carbon dating, experts believe Bourewa was established about 3100 years ago, that is, 1150 BC, on what was then a smallish island off the coast of Viti Levu.
That island has since joined the mainland.
According to Nunn the first people who arrived and settled at Bourewa had “probably travelled across at least 950 kilometres of open ocean from the islands of what we now call Vanuatu”.
“Attracted to Bourewa by its massive and pristine fringing coral reef, the people built stilt platforms across the inner reef and lived there for a few hundred years before the sea level fell and the amount of food obtainable from this reef declined,” Nunn said.
Why the Lapita people favoured living in structures built on stilts on the reef rather than simply living on one of the hills, 30-40 metres away, was a mystery that baffled Nunn and his team.
Vusama Village elders have no recollection of traditional dances (meke) or specific stories that explain how Bourewa came to be.
However, they said that according to old stories passed down from their ancestors, in the days canoes arrived at Vuda, smoke was first spotted rising from Bourewa, suggesting people already settled there.
“All those stories connected with the excavations and discoveries by Patrick Nunn and his team in 2003,” Ms Nadokonivalu said.
Nunn and his close colleagues, Sepeti Matararaba and Roselyn Kumar, spent six years excavating the Bourewa site.
In December 2008, through a grant from the Government of France, a series of six posters illustrating different aspects of the Bourewa discoveries were published and displayed at the 18th Annual Conference of the Pacific History Association in December 2008.
The Sunday Times team was invited to visit Bourewa in late August.
Bourewa is today covered by an undergrowth of shrubs and coastal trees.
The original settlers of Bourewa lived largely on seafood such as seashells and fish and were amazing potters.
In fact, pieces of pottery excavated from the area showed designs consistent with other Lapita settlements and potsherds.
They featured intricate repeated geometric patterns that occasionally included faces and figures.
The patterns were etched into the pots before firing with a comblike tool used to stamp designs into wet clay. Lapita pots were not formed using a potter’s wheel but by the use of bare hands.
Nunn’s archaeological team also found stones believed to be tools for “woodworking, shaping and smoothing”.
“That’s where the remains of a woman holding her child were dug out from,” Mr Nadokonivalu explained.
“Here a bowl of jewellery pieces was found.”
The early settlers of Bourewa seemed exceptional jewellery designers.
They made ‘bracelets’ and other jewellery using conus shells (which is suited for making rings and pendants), dilled beads and were able to carve shells and drill fine holes in them.
In January 2008, Matararaba discovered an upturned base of a pottery bowl and along both sides, in a parallel manner, was a line of three conus shells.
When he turned the bowl, he saw that it was filled with a collection of shell jewellery.
The excavators concluded the jewellery was a prised collection that had been deliberately buried, perhaps belonging to a Lapita princess.
Looking out to sea, one cannot stop wondering what lured the first settlers at Bourewa to chose the place.
“Was it the weather, the vegetation, an abundance of food, water source or the natural asthetics?” I asked myself.
Information gleaned from text on the Bourewa excavations between 2003 and 2009 trochus shells (tovu) and two local species of extinct clams or vasua were also found at Bourewa, suggesting they were exploited as sources of food protein by early settlers.
Note: This article was written using information sourced largely from the site https://patricknunn.org/ and interviews with Vusama elders.
• History being the subject it is, a group’s version of events may not be the same as that held by another group. When publishing one account, it is not our intention to cause division or to disrespect other oral traditions. Those with a different version can contact us so we can publish your account of history too — Editor.
When I arrived at the Kila Eco Adventure Park in Suva - part of a day trip excursion on my P&O cruise - what I was expecting was a walk in the dense rainforest with a few landscape snaps to send to the family at home. What I wasn’t expecting was the longest zipline in Fiji and a 12-metre-high obstacle course - not for the faint of heart.
Unfortunately, my lovely tour group was riddled with back problems, knee pains and severe cases of nerves, leaving a helpless people-pleaser such as myself to brave the course by my lonesome - a task I would never take on if it weren’t for my unwavering dedication to journalism and constant fear of letting people down.
This was going to be great.
What I said “yes” to on a whim led to me being suited up with a helmet and harness, and a safety briefing, that included signing my rights away should I plummet to my death - or worse - embarrass myself extraordinarily.
So, with a big inhale and a few pats on the back, I mounted the ladder and climbed 12 metres up to gaze across the Kila rainforest. There truly is no better place to see tropical Fiji, I thought, before realising that I was, in fact, a very long way up.
Braving the obstacle course - one breath-catch at a time.
Within the next 30 minutes, I was balancing on logs, jumping off frighteningly high platforms, performing mini bungee jumps and facing my fears in the name of peer pressure.
Perhaps, the most shocking of tricks was climbing up one of the tallest ladders on the course and being told to “just step off” at the top, which saw me swing across the valley on a harness, scream like a foul-mouthed banshee and gain a rather large adrenaline rush while doing so.
Though the experience might not sound like it’s for everybody when visiting the tranquil shores of Suva, I couldn’t recommend it enough.
Not only did I win the respect and praise of my tour guide colleagues for days to come, but I truly felt that I could do anything. I was on top of the world, with my head in the sky. What’s more, I treated the rest of my trip around the Fiji islands with a sense of daring and wonder as a result.
The experience allowed me to see Fiji with new eyes and say yes to things I may have felt too scared to try if I hadn’t faced my fears on our first day in Suva. I now think that every trip should start with a 10-metre plummet, if not only for the plot, for the confidence.
A walk through the rainforest
We took the beaten track along the jungle paths. Photo / Supplied
As my adrenaline buzz wore off, we marched into the rainforest to discover what the 50 hectares of land that stretched before us had in store.
We took the beaten track along jungle paths and discovered waterfalls, the rare native flora and fauna of the region - including Fiji’s only linear botanic garden - and were treated to expansive valley and mountain views straight from a postcard.
We smelt sweet citrus lemon leaves, spicy pepper plants and cinnamon trees while gazing at the green paradise that sprawled on for acres.
Our tour guide educated us on the natural flora of the Kila rainforest. Photo / Supplied
The tour guides made the trek. Their immense knowledge of the inbound jungle and inherent connection to its offerings was a really special thing to see - we couldn’t have hoped for better mentors to teach us about the ways of the land.
They pointed out a potato-like fruit used by the locals to dye their hair brown. They showed us a plant that, when cut and boiled for 10 hours, could allegedly cure cancer. They had an understanding of the rainforest that was deeply ingrained in their Fijian heritage and expressed a perspective on life that was refreshing, particularly for someone who had escaped the hustle and bustle of Auckland for a change of pace.
I walked out of the jungle a changed woman with a thought that lingered long after my trip to Fiji - perhaps, life’s biggest lessons could be summed up by a few hours in the Kila rainforest.
I walked out of the jungle a changed woman. Photo / Supplied
Here is what I learnt: experiencing different cultures is a great way to connect to the world around you in a deeper sense. Listening to people and their stories is a privilege, for they show you parts of the world you couldn’t see by yourself. Surprises should be embraced and welcomed, they always make for good tales. A walk never fails to clear the mind and cleanse the soul.
And, most importantly, never be afraid to jump!
Megan Watts is a Lifestyle and Entertainment digital producer for the New Zealand Herald whose passions include honest journalism, star sign columns and doing things for the plot.
Locals call the Upper Navua River — which flows through a tropical canyon in Fiji — "the highway to our ancestors".
Kasimiro Taukeinikoro's company Rivers Fiji offers rafting experiences along the river, but as visitors arrive he asks them to treat the place with the same respect they would their own homes.
Concerned the area — located in one of Fiji's most valuable mahogany forests — would be compromised by logging or mining, Mr Taukeinikoro said Rivers Fiji convinced the Indigenous land-owning clans, the Mataqali, that low-impact tourism would be a better economic investment.
It was Fiji's first public-private conservation tourism area focused on sustainable tourism and creating economic opportunities for local communities.
"What we have here, it’s why the tourists come in the first place. They come because of our culture, they come because of our friendliness, they come because of our pristine environment," MrTaukeinikoro said.
Tourism development has typically focused on coastal communities, but this initiative and others like it are providing an economic alternative to areas where mining or forestry would have been the only development option in the past.
Kasimiro Taukeinikoro says Rivers Fiji aims to help tourists understand local customs and traditions. (The Pacific)
Rivers Fiji guides tell visitors about the ecosystem, cultural traditions, heritage sites, and local preservation issues, and offer tourists the opportunity to understand daily life of Indigenous Fijians in the rural highlands.
Meanwhile, Rivers Fiji compensates landowners through employment opportunities, lease payments and protection of the area.
Why is tourism important in the Pacific?
Tourism contributes nearly 40 per cent to Fiji's GDP and employs more than 150,000 people both directly and indirectly.
Across the Pacific Islands, tourism is a core economic activity and creator of employment.
The border closures during the pandemic cost the region more than $1 billion in lost income according to Apisalome Movono, a senior lecturer in development studies at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Tourism is a primary driver of Fiji's economy.(Unsplash)
Dr Movono said the pandemic laid bare the volatility, gaps and weaknesses of the tourism sector.
"People are trying to build resilience within the tourism system [for] when the next shock comes — and it will — and the frequency will increase, the volatility and the density of the storms will increase," he said.
"We need to be innovative, we need to think of how we can insulate, not just our golden goose, but also the many lives that tourism supports in the region."
Low-impact, sustainable tourism
Dr Movono said there were now calls for the sector to use the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink the entire tourism system, so that any new investment supports a recovery that delivers long-term benefits to local people and environments.
Last year, more than a dozen Pacific states and territories signed a regional commitment to promote sustainable tourism.
Dr Apisalome Movono says Pacific people want to build resilience in tourism.(Supplied)
Its aim — to flip the narrative.
Rather than Pacific nations being seen as dependent on tourism, regional tourism itself depends on the Pacific and its people surviving and thriving, Dr Movono said.
As such, Pacific countries are calling for fairer and more meaningful relationships with tourism partners.
"After COVID-19 we've sort of realised in the Pacific … we're not tourism dependent countries, rather, tourism depends on us, our people, just as much as we depend on them," Dr Movono said.
"And so I believe that there is a shift in the Pacific in how Pacific leaders are viewing their tourism industries."
Palau pioneers conservation focus
In 2017, Palau launched the Palau Pledge, a world-first immigration law requiring visitors to sign a mandatory environmental pledge to Palau's children.(Palaupledge)
In 2017, Palau began requiring tourists to sign a pledge on arrival promising to act in an ecologically and culturally responsible way during their visit.
Hawaii has since followed suit.
"He pilina wehena 'ole ke aloha honua (One's love for the planet is an inseverable relationship)," reads the homepage of Hawaii's Pono pledge website.
"I pledge to be pono (righteous) on the island of Hawai'i."
Tourists to Hawaii have been known to trespass and post photos to social media in places where they're forbidden, such as closed hiking trails on the island of Oahu.
Ho’omaluhia Botanical Gardens in Hawaii.(Unsplash: Darren Lawrence)
Hawaii's passport pledge also includes, "I will mindfully seek wonder, but not wander where I do not belong".
So far, more than 22,000 people have signed the online pledge.
Last year, Palau launched the "Ol'au Palau" app which tourists use to "unlock experiences not by how much they spend, but rather how respectfully they act".
Palau's tourism sector introduced the Ol'au Palau app, an initiative to encourage responsible tourism.(olaupalau.com)
Points can be accrued on the app by activities such as using Palau's carbon calculator and reef-safe sunscreen, visiting culturally-significant tourism sites, eating sustainably-sourced local food and avoiding single-use plastics.
Rewards include access to parts of the island normally only for the local community, meeting elders and touring historic sites, visiting villages for taro patch tours, lunches with community members and traditional fishing at secret spots.
"Ol'au" is a way of calling out to a friend to invite them into your space.(Palau Legacy Foundation: Cristina Mittermeier)
Ol'au Palau also highlights the importance of striking a balance between development and conservation.
"By launching Ol'au Palau we get to reward our most conscientious guests and protect our most highly-prized tourism asset: our pristine environment and unique culture," Alan T Marbou, board member of Palau Visitors Authority, said in a statement on the campaign's launch.
"The pandemic has provided our planet with a much-needed wakeup call and an opportunity to see what's possible when nature has a chance to rebalance itself."
As foreign dollars return to the Pacific, there's a growing movement to preserve and protect.
"This is our golden egg, it is why we are unique," Mr Taukeinikoro said.
"Our different landscapes and our culture which we are so proud of, and that's why we cannot afford to lose it."
I was expecting to spend most of my time in Fiji, a nation of more than 300 islands, on or in the water, but I'd mostly been thinking of the ocean. Yet, on a warm morning in May, I found myself deep within the mountainous interior of Fiji's largest island, Viti Levu, roaring in a red jet boat down a winding, mud-brown river, past sheer cliffs, dense jungle, and gentle banks where locals watered their horses or fished for tilapia or mud crabs. The river was one of Viti Levu's longest, the Sigatoka, whose fertile, farmable banks are known as Fiji's “salad bowl.”
Jack Johns
A welcoming ceremony at Nanuku Resort Fiji in south Viti Levu
Jack Johns
Surf crashing along Fiji’s Coral Coast, an offshore reef
After a while, the boat driver, an Indigenous Fijian who introduced himself as Captain Nox, steered us into some shaded shallows and cut the engine to tell his 14 passengers a story. Missionaries and reverends, back when the nation was first ruled by the British, in the late 1800s, met their violent deaths along these riverbanks at the hands of the island's tribal members, at times for committing acts of tabu (or taboo, as Captain James Cook imported the word to English in 1777) like touching people's heads. “Fiji was the worst cannibal island,” Nox said. “But now Fiji is the friendliest island, eh?”
It's true; nothing compares to the plosive enthusiasm of the Fijian greeting: “Bula!” It's a word that floats like a bubble. Everyone says “Bula!” to everyone, even passing strangers. And historically, many have passed through here. A crossroads in the heart of the South Pacific, Fiji spans from eastern Melanesia, the region populated in prehistory by ethnically African people, into the western edge of Polynesia, which was inhabited later, by people who migrated from Southeast Asia by outrigger and double-hulled canoe. A little more than half of Fiji's 900,000 people are Indigenous, or iTaukei, and nearly 40 percent are ethnically Indian, descended from indentured laborers brought to work on sugar plantations during the British colonial rule.
Captain Nox steered the jet boat back out into the middle of the placid Sigatoka, and we roared off. We were now on our way to the village (1 of the 17 this excursion visits), and someone asked—due diligence—what tabus we should know about. All the women had been given sarongs to wrap modestly around their waists, so there was that. And still no head touching, Nox said, and no hats. But things seem to have relaxed since the day of those ill-fated colonialists because as soon as we arrived in the village of Mavua, our guide, a local who said to call him Jerry, told us we could leave our hats on. “It's okay,” he said. “It's hot today.”
Jack Johns
Kokomo’s private seaplane takes guests on aerial adventures, including over the island’s mountain ranges.
Jack Johns
At Korou, a village along the Sigatoka
Mavua is a humble place, typical of a rural iTaukei village: a few dozen brightly painted cement houses with corrugated roofs, a church, a community hall, and roaming chickens and children. Its residents are mostly subsistence farmers. On the weekends, women take surplus produce to local markets to sell, while the men hunt for wild pigs using dogs and spears. “We are trying to live in the life of our forefathers,” Jerry said.
In the community hall, a big, open-raftered room with louvered windows, 30 villagers welcomed us with a kava ceremony. Beloved throughout the South Pacific, kava is an earthy-tasting, sediment-forward brown beverage made from the macerated root of a shrub in the pepper family (black, not bell pepper) called yaqona. On first sip, kava makes your tongue go a little numb, and if you keep drinking, it induces a state of mellow good vibes. Drink enough of it, and you may find yourself more or less immobilized. Fijians are passionate about kava, which they call grog, and the slo-mo communal act of drinking it has long served as a tool for forging relationships and mitigating disputes.
As the kava was prepared, the village chief and the oldest man in our jet boat (by default, our chief) engaged in a ritualized dialogue, punctuated by clapping and eventual sipping. As the bilos—cups for drinking kava—were passed around, a heavy rain fell, drumming on the roof. Women in brightly printed dresses draped us with salusalu, or leaf garlands. The village dogs, drawn by the smell of lunch, waited hopefully outside the open doors. Sitting in long rows on the floor, we ate cassava and banana, greens, roti bread, sweet fried bread, ramen with curry sauce, chicken. Afterward, while men played guitars and ukuleles, everyone danced together, shuffling back and forth across the hall side by side with arms around one another's waists, laughing and sweating, and then we jet-boated away in driving rain, engine growling ferociously as Captain Nox spun us in circles.
Jack Johns
A beach hut at Kokomo
Jack Johns
The pristine, warm waters off Nanuku island
Later, back at the sprawling Nanuku Resort Fiji on Viti Levu's south coast, where I was staying, I would have a private kava ceremony of my own. Organized by the resort's cultural ambassador, an iTaukei man named Josua Cakautini, it was performed by four burly, bare-chested men who sat around a huge wooden bowl, in which they prepared the kava. During the ceremony, Josua explained that, pre-COVID, the yaqona root was often chewed by women rather than pounded. “COVID clashed with everything we stand for,” Josua said. “Unity and sharing. But you have to survive. And now we can welcome you here, and we say ‘Bula!’ to you to show we are respecting you as a human being.” He showed me how to clap to receive my bilo, or coconut shell, of kava. Then, he instructed, I was to say “Bula!” and drink it all in one gulp. I did. My lips tingled. “Fijian culture is changing,” he said. “The language. The way we dress. The way we live. But kava is the same.”
Bula means “hello,” but it also means life. And indeed Fiji is a place that drums on your senses, reminds you that you are alive. It's lush and colorful, busy. No one will let you arrive at or leave a place without singing a song of welcome or farewell. The roadsides are full of grazing horses and children in school uniforms walking or hitchhiking, the boys in dapper narrow skirts called sulus, the girls in sleeveless shirtdresses in mint green or coral. Snack bars try to outdo one another with clever names: Road Krill, Cannibal Country, Cuppabula. People sell fruit, yaqona root, and strings of fish from simple stands. Outfitters offer cage-free shark dives and advertise snorkeling and scuba excursions with laminated photos of reefs bustling with fish. Water, always water.
One day I went out snorkeling at Nanuku's teensy private island with Kelly-Dawn Bentley, a native of nearby Pacific Harbour and the resort's resident marine biologist. We glided over a reef in water so shallow I barely dared move my fins. Little black reef fish bustled out of the coral as though to shoo us away. A school of silvery thumbprint emperors flashed around us like a swarm of UFOs. Kelly-Dawn explained that a familiar practice was being used to conserve Fiji's aquatic resources. “We are working with the local chief to hopefully designate this area as tabu,” she said, gesturing at the water between us and a nearby outlying island.
Throughout the South Pacific, tabu is a sacred prohibition that, traditionally, wasn't used only to forbid offensive behaviors but also to manage community resources. For example, if a chief decided a mountain had been too heavily hunted for pigs, he might declare it tabu until the pigs had time to recover. After overfishing in Fiji reached crisis levels in the '90s, communities banded together to resurrect the practice of designating reefs as tabu so that fish could breed and mature in peace. The system is not perfectly effective (enforcement is a problem), but it's an intriguingly modern application of an ancient idea. “Sustainability isn't just environment,” Kelly-Dawn told me. “It's socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental.”
Jack Johns
Kokomo’s reception area, replete with rattan decor
Jack Johns
Mateo Vuniyalo, Kokomo’s surf instructor, on his board in the Outer Island Reef Pass at Kokomo
At Kokomo Private Island, the luxury is so assured and pervasive as to seem effortless and casual, even homey. The passion project of Australian real estate billionaire Lang Walker, Kokomo occupies all 140 acres of an island south of Viti Levu called Yaukuve Levu that is a 45-minute seaplane flight from Fiji's international airport at Nadi. As we approached, the barefoot pilot descended over the aquamarine shallows of the surrounding Great Astrolabe Reef, circled once over a green, bottle-shaped dollop of land with villas studding the long sandy beaches on either side of its neck, and splashed gently down.
Kokomo has 21 villas and 5 larger residences nestled in grounds that have been manicured into an idealized version of Fiji's wild jungles: dense, rustling green ranks of thriving palms and shrubs and broad-leafed banana plants, punctuated with vibrant maroon ti plants and sprays of white frangipani blossoms. The clientele tends to be Australian or Kiwi—and often families. There is a spa, of course, and a terraced 5.5-acre organic farm, and a floating platform off the main beach where guests can have drinks delivered by paddleboard. You know the room-service sashimi is fresh because the person on the other end of the phone will have to check with “the boys” to see if any fish has been caught yet. A grand, open, timbered, and thatched building known modestly as The Beach Shack serves as the lobby and main restaurant. A second restaurant, Walker d'Plank, is perched above shallow waters patrolled by black tip reef sharks.
My aquatic lifestyle flourished. I could swim in my private pool or walk a few steps down to the beach, passing under a budding tree swarmed by black butterflies. I could snorkel off my beach, or I could go out on one of the resort boats with iTaukei marine biologist Viviana Taubera to see Kokomo's coral-restoration project or, as we did one afternoon, to search for manta rays. (One of the resort's conservation projects is manta tagging.) We motored across water made dark by an overcast sky, headed for a cleaning station off a neighboring island, a place where the massive creatures were known to hang out and let smaller fish nibble the parasites off their bodies. “It's too quiet out here,” Viviana said, scanning the sea. Just then the water around us exploded with a silvery disturbance: mackerel. “A school of thousands!” Viviana said, lighting up. On the remote island where she grew up, she'd spent all her time in the ocean. “Marine biology was always a passion,” she told me. “For a while I regretted studying it, because I couldn't find a job. But now…” She smiled. Now there was Kokomo. When no mantas showed, she was as bummed as a first-time visitor who didn't chase mantas every day. “I really wanted to see one!” she exclaimed.
Jack Johns
Preparing kava to share and drink in Korou village on the Sigatoka
Jack Johns
Fresh mussels at Kokomo’s Beach Shack restaurant
My second-to-last morning, I was on Kokomo's main dock before dawn. A two-level, 51-foot fishing boat was waiting for me, as was Jaga Crossingham, an Australian transplant and master sportfishing guide and spear fisherman. I'd seen recent photos on Instagram of guests with giant wahoos—“slime logs,” Jaga called them—which he said had shown up early this year. “The kitchen officially told me no more fish,” he added. Showing me around the boat, he pointed out the padded bolted-down chair at the stern, complete with a seat belt and footrests, where I would theoretically sit to reel in a big fish. “This is where we fight,” he said. A pile of neon rubber squid-like lures and silver decoy fish with hooks as long as my hand lay at the ready.
When the fish weren't biting inside the reef, we went outside to where waves were breaking on the protective coral of Astrolabe. As the boat rolled heavily, we trolled along, booms extended like wings, trailing six lines. One zinged out, and I was sent to the chair. I reeled and reeled until my arm burned, finally pulling in a rainbow runner about three feet long. “Just a little one,” Jaga said, dropping the fish in an ice-filled cooler against the kitchen's edict. “It'll make good sashimi for the staff.” We stayed out for a couple more hours, but the fish showed no more interest. “You did well,” Jaga said when I stepped back onto Kokomo's dock, and at first I thought he meant reeling in my little big fish. But then he added, “99.9 percent of people would have been very seasick.”
Out on that reef, I am reminded that any ocean nation is inherently a wild place, governed by water, for better or for worse. We may have missed the manta rays, but it's nice to think that they may be busy elsewhere; thrashing waters may have the ability to turn a seaman green, though their energy is in part sheltering the marine life below. Warming seas endanger the reefs that protect the islands and the creatures that live in and around them, feeding Fiji's people. You'll never see or do everything there, but it's worth leaving the resort, getting into all the different waters. There's life there, in all its complexity. There's bula.
Jack Johns
Paddleboarding at sunset in front of Kokomo Private Island’s Beach Shack restaurant
Getting there
Fiji Airways, which is part of Oneworld Connect, has direct flights to the gateway city of Nadi from Los Angeles and San Francisco. There are also nonstops from various New Zealand and Australian cities, should you wish to make Fiji a tack-on during a trip elsewhere in the region. The best time to enjoy its good weather and beaches is May through September, after cyclone season.
Where to stay
The majority of Fiji's resorts are located off the shores of its two main islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, and many include private transfers for guests. The pristine Kokomo Private Island, in Fiji's southern archipelago, sits at the intersection of high-end luxury and sustainability. Local artisans create the atmosphere, and the fish on your plate has never been out of the water for more than a few hours. The reef beyond the resort's doors is a snorkeler's dream, and top-notch staff see to every desire, from diving with manta rays to ordering a perfectly seared Tomahawk steak at 3 a.m. (The all-inclusive rate includes 24-hour room service.) Back toward Viti Levu, Nanuku Resort Fiji is a smart choice for those wanting to explore the villages and culture of the larger island between ocean dives and spa treatments. While there, guests can whitewater raft through volcanic tunnels and hike mangrove forests. Closer to the airport, the sophisticated Intercontinental Fiji Golf Resort and Spa is set amid 35 acres of tropical gardens and coconut groves right on the Pacific Ocean.
What to do
Though you can expect activities like snorkeling and sailing at all of Fiji's resorts, there is much to discover off-property. On Viti Levu, the mighty Sigatoka is one of Fiji's longest rivers, and the Sigatoka River Safari will take you past emerald hillsides and local villages with tales of its history. The eco-minded Talanoa Treks bring hikers through Fiji's lush interiors, with dense forests and waterfalls.
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