Island paradise
FOR one stolen moment picture yourself in a recession-free zone. You’re floating through a great blue ocean. There are carpets of coral reef below, bubbles squirting from your snorkel above. Rays of sunlight are everywhere, and you’re surrounded by the cast of Finding Nemo.
Swimming into the shallows, you stand up, whip off your fins, and plunge a wet foot into hot, white, floury sands. You scamper for the shade of a palm tree, dodging the coconut husks below it. A waiter with a garland around his neck moseys towards you, bearing a fruit cocktail on a tray.
“Bula!” he says, welcoming you to Fiji.
But what makes Fiji different to the next daydream destination? Why are its blissful beaches and azure seas worth ticking off the bucket list before other, closer options like the Maldives, the Seychelles or the West Indies?
One answer lies in that word: Bula! It’s one you’ll hear a lot of in Fiji — a Pacific Islanders’ version of sláinte, delivered not just to the clinking of glasses, but in any scenario involving the arrival of a visitor, anywhere on any of the archipelago’s 333 islands. I first heard it stepping off the plane, as a garland was draped over my neck.
Fijians are generous with their welcomes, chipper with small talk, and keen to include visitors in kava ceremonies (a tradition involving the sharing of a drink drawn from kava root). I was amazed at how many people remembered my name — even after meeting me briefly and not seeing me for days.
Then there’s the laid-back lifestyle. Leave your watch at home, together with any notion of scheduling or jam-packed itineraries, when travelling to Fiji. Everything runs on Fiji Time, a happy-clappy, worry-free and vaguely disconcerting approach to time-keeping.
“It’s something to do with the tropics,” a fellow traveller said, mumbling about heat and humidity and tapping his temple conspiratorially. Around us in the resort big bugs batted off the night-lamps, and a troupe of large Fijian men in tropical shirts strummed well-worn guitars.
For the most part, the relaxed approach works. Once you get used to it, slowing your body clock down to these lazy, tropical rhythms, it seems perfectly suited to a holiday.
Sure, the easygoing attitude can sometimes be annoying, and it’s true that service standards in Fiji are not quite up to their Western equivalents. But the more you get under its skin, the more intriguing Fiji becomes, and the more it marks itself out from identikit paradise islands around the world.
Take Nadi, Fiji’s third-largest town. Its main street looks like it’s been airlifted from India — one long, traffic-choked drag lined with shops owned and run by Fijian Indians. It’s curious to see the Bollywood DVDs, the hand-painted signs and ads, the saris and short-sleeved shirts.
Browsing in one handicraft shop, the owner told me his great-grandparents came from Madras, and after we got chatting, invited me to sip kava from a coconut shell with his buddies.
Take the coups. There have been several of these in recent memory, the last of which took place in December 2006. That’s a hell of a lot of unrest for a population barely brushing one million. Not that you’d notice as a tourist, mind — if anything, value for money in this far-flung oasis has improved since 2006, and business has gotten a little more competitive.
And then, in the middle of all of this, you have a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. My first Fijian sunset was straight out of the manual. A great yellow orb dipped towards the horizon, turning the palm fronds into silhouettes, before melting into a red blob like a piece of molten Waterford Crystal.
Amongst the islands, the Mamanuca group is probably the most popular to visit — tourists often travel from Nadi via smaller planes or boats, skirting around coral reefs and turquoise lagoons as they make for whatever resort they’re making for. It’s a transfer tailor-made for honeymoons.
The Mamanucas was where Tom Hanks was filmed in Castaway. Staying a night at Tokoriki, I took a spin over to his deserted island, Monoriki, where the boatman showed me such exotic locations as “where the Fed Ex boxes washed up” and where Hanks learned to shuck a coconut.
Snorkelling on the reef just off Tokoriki, I found a flitting carnival of fish. Angelfish, trumpet fish, snappers, parrotfish, damselfish... you name it, all frolicking about like circus creatures in the soft coral capital of the world.
On another snorkelling trip, taken during a cruise through the Yasawa islands with the Blue Lagoon company, I watched one of the crew slip into the water in t-shirt and shorts, spear a squishy little octopus, and bring it back onto the boat to use later as bait.
Another stalwart of Fiji’s island-hopping cruises is the traditional village visit.
On my trip, the Mystique Princess disgorged its passengers into Kese on Naviti Island, where passengers could pick through cheesy trinkets made from seashells and other bits and pieces, before taking part in a special kava ceremony. Village elders performed the ritual as hens clucked about, hymns were sung, and a couple of boys chucked a rugby ball about on the beach.
Fiji will see your postcard-pretty beaches, and raise you a complicated history, backpacker-friendly outer islands, awesome diving, traditional culture and the Fijians. Australians and New Zealanders love Fiji — it’s their Caribbean — and they rave about the rainforest too.
I took a seaplane to the northern part of the archipelago, traditionally lesser-visited, but definitely worth the trip. Coral reefs and their sister lagoons were spotted about the ocean like paua shells. Landing at the jetty of a resort outside Savu-Savu, there were more garlands, and that welcoming chant again: Bula!
From here, I took a tour into the Fijian rainforest, an emerald-green wilderness in which vines and roots drip like candle wax, thick canopies make it too dark to take photographs, and a guide led me to a hidden waterfall. I took a shower in its thumping, pummelling, invigorating flow.
Back in Savu-Savu, framed by this lush vegetation, I went walkabout, picking through the Indian shops, a market in which oranges were stacked like little pagodas, and a hot spring where someone had left a pot of chicken, wrapped in a cloth sack, to cook in the steam. I felt what I thought were pebbles crunching beneath my feet. They were actually small pieces of coral.
Wrapping Polynesian, Chinese, European and Indian influences around beautiful beaches, teeming seas and a unique cuisine and language, Fiji is worth the journey to the other side of the earth.
SEVERAL airlines fly to Fiji, including Air New Zealand (airnewzealand.com), and Qantas (qantas.com). Trailfinders (trailfinders.ie) has seven nights at the 3-star First Landing Beach Resort & Villas from €1,559pp, including flights, B&B, taxes and an overnight in Seoul.
Fiji is a year-round destination. The weather is least hot and humid in May/June. Free tourist visas are available on arrival; see fijime.com for more information.
Sonisali Island Resort (sonisali.com) on Viti-Levu is a resort about 25 minutes from Nadi. Standard rooms start at €156 per night. Tokoriki (tokoriki.com) is a good honeymoon bet, with rates starting at around €362 per couple per night. &
THE big boxes to tick in Fiji are underwater — with up to 10,000m2 of coral reef. The Fiji Museum in Suva contains many local artefacts, as well as relics from HMS Bounty.
If you fancy a cruise, Joe Walsh Tours (joewalshtours.ie) has six nights with Blue Lagoon in the Mamanuca and Yasawa Islands from €830pp.
One item you may bag a bargain with is a Fijian pearl. Farmed in the offshore waters, they are surprisingly pure and beautiful — necklaces, for example start at about €60.
Seafood is what to splash out on in Fiji. Traditional dishes like kokunda (coral trout in coconut milk) are complemented by those with an Indian influences.
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