Travel and Tourism in Fiji

Mamanuca Islands

The Mamanuca Islands are the first taste of Fiji's island geography for most visitors, and they do not disappoint. The group consists of approximately 20 islands ranging from small sand islets that disappear at high tide to larger islands supporting multiple resorts. All of them sit within a barrier reef that creates calm inner waters of extraordinary color, and all of them can be reached from Port Denarau by high-speed catamaran in times ranging from 30 minutes for the closest islands to about 90 minutes for the most distant ones in the northern reaches of the group.

Malolo Island is the largest island in the Mamanuca group and the one with the most substantial permanent community beyond the resorts. It is home to Likuliku Lagoon Resort, which holds a distinction unique in Fiji: it is the only resort in the country offering genuine overwater bungalows, the iconic Polynesian accommodation type in which individual rooms are built on stilts extending over the lagoon, with glass floors revealing the water below. The overwater bungalow concept originated in French Polynesia and has been widely replicated across the Pacific, but Fiji's reef ecosystem does not always permit the construction of stilted rooms over living coral in an environmentally responsible way. Likuliku worked around this by situating its overwater bungalows over a sandy lagoon floor where construction could proceed without destroying coral habitat, and the result is a genuinely luxurious experience with morning fishing off your private deck.

Malolo also hosts Musket Cove Island Resort, which has been a fixture in the Fijian sailing world for decades. The resort's marina is the primary gathering point for the yachting community that traverses the South Pacific, and the annual Musket Cove Regatta draws sailing vessels from across the hemisphere. The resort has a relaxed, somewhat bohemian character that reflects its long association with long-distance sailors, and it functions as a social hub for the independent travel community in the Mamanucas in a way that the larger resort properties do not.

Mana Island, further west in the group, is perhaps the most recognizable of the Mamanuca islands from a cinematic perspective. The 1980 film The Blue Lagoon, starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins, was filmed here, and the island's geography of twin beaches separated by a rocky central spine creates one of the more striking island profiles in the group. The resort on the island occupies both the northern beach, which faces the open ocean with stronger surf, and the southern beach on the sheltered lagoon side, and day trippers regularly arrive by boat to spend time on the beaches.

Monuriki, a small uninhabited island in the northwest of the Mamanuca group, is famous as the filming location for the 2000 Robert Zemeckis film Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks. The film's desert island sequences, including the iconic scenes of Hanks alone on the beach, were shot on Monuriki's dramatically beautiful coast with its backdrop of volcanic rock and dense jungle. The island remains uninhabited and can be visited on day trips, and visitors who have seen the film find the correspondence between the screen location and the actual island to be remarkably faithful.

One of the more unusual attractions in the Mamanuca group is Cloud 9, a floating platform anchored in open water between the islands that functions as a bar, restaurant, and social venue. The concept is essentially a luxury pontoon with a pizza restaurant and a bar serving rum-based cocktails, surrounded by open Pacific Ocean, accessible only by water taxi from Denarau or from the nearby resorts. Day-trippers arrive in groups, the music plays, the drinks flow, and people spend hours swimming off the floating deck while the sun moves across the sky. It sounds absurd and it works entirely.

Beachcomber Island holds a place in the mythology of South Pacific budget travel that is well earned. The island is genuinely tiny, perhaps 200 meters across, and it is ringed by white sand and clear water. The single resort on the island operates 70 beds, most in dormitory configuration with shared bathroom facilities, and caters almost exclusively to young backpackers looking for a social, party-oriented beach experience at the lower end of the budget spectrum. The island's smallness and the dormitory configuration means that all guests share the same communal space, eat the same meals, and participate in the same evening activities, which tends to create a gregarious social atmosphere unlike anything found at the larger resort properties.

Treasure Island, shaped as its name suggests like a circular atoll completely surrounded by white sand beach, is one of the family-oriented properties in the group, offering calm lagoon swimming in all directions and activities designed for children. Tokoriki Island, at the northern end of the Mamanuca chain, takes the opposite approach with an adults-only policy and a more tranquil, romantic orientation.

The diving and snorkeling on Mamanuca reefs is good rather than exceptional by Fijian standards, with abundant reef fish life and accessible coral gardens that make for enjoyable time in the water. The soft coral density increases as you move further into the open ocean, and the outer reef walls on the western edge of the group offer more compelling diving than the protected inner lagoon areas.

Yasawa Islands

The Yasawa Islands stretch in a long volcanic chain 80 kilometers to the northwest of the Mamanuca group, and the transition from the more developed Mamanucas to the more remote Yasawas is one of the most significant experiential shifts available to travelers in Fiji. The 20 islands of the Yasawa group are dramatic in their topography: steep volcanic ridges rising sharply from the sea, with narrow beaches tucked into coves and bays between headlands of dark rock. The population is small and clustered in traditional villages whose residents have only relatively recently begun to participate in tourism in significant numbers.

Access to the Yasawas is by one of two means. The Yasawa Flyer, a catamaran ferry that departs Port Denarau each morning, makes its way up the chain in a journey that takes between five and thirteen hours depending on the destination island, stopping at a succession of resorts and villages to drop passengers and supplies. The trip itself is an experience: the slow unfurling of the island chain from the deck of the ferry, watching the water change color from the green of the inner lagoon to the deep blue of open ocean passages, seeing the villages come into view around headlands and then recede again, provides a completely different relationship with the archipelago's geography than an air transfer would offer. The alternative is a seaplane, which covers the same distance in 15 to 35 minutes depending on destination and drops passengers directly at their resort or at a point near their village destination.

The Blue Lagoon, in the southern Yasawas near the island of Nanuya Lailai, is among the most photographed locations in the Pacific. Two separate films have used this location to represent the ultimate tropical paradise: the 1949 British production of The Blue Lagoon with Jean Simmons, and the 1980 remake with Brooke Shields. The actual location consists of a double lagoon formed by the arrangement of surrounding islands and reefs, creating an enclosed body of water that shifts through shades of turquoise, emerald, and ultramarine depending on depth and light conditions. Reef walls drop away on the ocean sides while sandy floors create the glowing green of the shallow inner lagoon. Boats anchor here for days while passengers swim and snorkel and simply look at the water. It is one of those places where photographs fail not because they capture it poorly but because no two-dimensional image can convey the experience of being immersed in water that color.

The Sawa-i-Lau Caves, accessible by boat from nearby resorts and from the Yasawa Flyer, are among the most unusual natural features in Fiji. The caves are formed within a massive limestone formation that rises from the sea near the island of Sawa-i-Lau, and they contain a large inner chamber accessible through an underwater entrance that requires a brief submersion of several seconds in water that is cool, clear, and slightly eerie. Inside the main chamber, light filters through openings in the ceiling to illuminate walls of pale limestone, and a freshwater lake occupies the cave floor. A second chamber, accessible through an additional underwater passage, is darker and more enclosed, and the swim between the chambers in the dim light is an exercise in mild courage for people who are uncomfortable in enclosed spaces. In Fijian oral tradition, the caves are sacred: it was from within these limestone formations that the first Fijian man emerged into the world, according to the creation narrative maintained in the Yasawa villages. The story gives the caves a significance beyond their natural beauty.

Village life in the Yasawas follows rhythms established long before tourism arrived, and the communities that have built guesthouses and small resorts have done so largely while maintaining the structures of traditional Fijian village organization. The kava ceremony, known in Fijian as yaqona, is the entry point into any village relationship. Before approaching a village, visitors are expected to obtain a gift of kava root, known as sevusevu, to present to the village chief or his representative. The presentation follows a formal protocol: you approach the chief, announce your purpose and origin, and present the kava root with both hands. The chief accepts it, a ceremony of welcome is performed, and you are formally received as a guest. Without this ceremony, you are essentially an uninvited stranger in someone's communal home. With it, you are a welcomed visitor with responsibilities and privileges that flow from the relationship of host and guest.

The kava drinking that follows the sevusevu ceremony is a communal experience that can last for hours. The kava root (Piper methysticum, a plant in the pepper family) is pounded into a fine powder, mixed with water in a large carved wooden bowl called a tanoa, and strained through cloth into a brownish liquid with a slightly earthy, mildly bitter taste. The effect is not strongly psychoactive in the amounts consumed in social settings: a gentle relaxation, a slight numbing of the lips and tongue, a drift toward sociability and unhurried conversation. Each cup is served in a half coconut shell called a bilo, and the etiquette requires you to clap once with cupped hands, say "bula" or "vinaka" (thank you), accept the bilo, drink it in one draft if you can, and clap three times after drinking. The rhythm of the ceremony, the passing of the tanoa, the conversation that flows around it, constitutes one of the most authentic social experiences available to visitors in Fiji.

The Nacula Island area in the northern Yasawas supports several small resorts and offers some of the best snorkeling in the group, with coral gardens and reef fish populations that benefit from the relative remoteness of the location. Waya Island, with its dramatic rocky peaks rising steeply from the sea, offers the best walking in the Yasawas, with trails that climb through scrub and forest to viewpoints overlooking the chain of islands stretching in both directions. The Yasawa Island Resort at the very northern end of the chain represents the luxury end of the island's accommodation spectrum, an exclusive retreat with private beaches and villas whose prices reflect the extraordinary combination of remoteness and comfort.

The meke performance, traditional Fijian song and dance, is another experience available in village contexts throughout the Yasawas. Meke combines music, sung poetry, and choreographed movement to tell stories of battles, love affairs, historical events, and the lives of ancestors. Male performers carrying war clubs execute dramatic stylized battle movements while women in grass skirts and hibiscus flower adornments perform the more flowing feminine dances. The performances are not merely entertainment: they are a form of historical memory and cultural transmission, and the best meke performances carry an emotional weight that transcends the tourist context in which they are often presented.

The Yasawas at their best represent the intersection of extraordinary natural beauty with living traditional culture, an intersection that requires care and reciprocity on the visitor's part to be truly meaningful. The communities of the Yasawa Islands have chosen to welcome visitors on their own terms, and the experience of being genuinely welcomed, rather than being served as a customer, is one of the most valuable things Fiji offers.

Lau Islands and the Remote Pacific

The Lau Group, also known as the Eastern Division, consists of 57 islands scattered across a large expanse of ocean between Fiji and Tonga, and it constitutes one of the most remote and least-visited parts of Fijian territory. This remoteness is not incidental: the Lau Islands are genuinely difficult to reach, accessible by inter-island shipping services that run on irregular schedules and by occasional charter flights to the few islands with airstrips, and the infrastructure for tourist accommodation is minimal by any standard. For those travelers who reach the Lau Group, however, the experience is unlike anything available in the more developed parts of Fiji.

The cultural character of the Lau Islands is distinct within Fiji, reflecting centuries of close interaction with Tonga that produced a hybrid culture with elements visible in the language, the music, the crafts, and the ceremonial life of the communities. The Lau dialect of Fijian is recognizably different from the standard Bauan Fijian that serves as the national standard, and Tongan words and phrases appear throughout the everyday vocabulary. The lali drum tradition of eastern Fiji, in which hollow wooden signal drums are used for communication between villages, is particularly strong in the Lau Group, and the ceremonial use of the lali in marking important occasions and summoning community members retains its traditional function in many islands.

The islands of the southern Lau Group, including Ono-i-Lau, Moce, and Kabara, are among the most isolated inhabited islands in the South Pacific. Communities on these islands maintain traditional weaving and woodcarving traditions that have been preserved because the islands' isolation has protected them from some of the homogenizing forces that have affected craft traditions elsewhere in Fiji. Kabara in particular is known for its woodcarving, and the pieces produced there are considered among the finest traditional Fijian artifacts available. The island has historically been the source of some of the best carved tanoa bowls and canoe decorations in the archipelago.

Access to the Lau Group is most commonly by the cargo and passenger ferries operated by Goundar Shipping, which serve a circuit of islands on a schedule that visitors need to understand is subject to change according to cargo loads, weather conditions, and the various logistical realities of small-island supply logistics. The ferry journey to the southern Lau Group takes multiple days from Suva, and the experience of traveling on an inter-island cargo ship, sleeping in a bunk in a shared cabin or on deck under the stars, eating simple meals in the ship's galley, and arriving at a succession of small island communities where the ship's arrival is the major event of the week, constitutes a form of Pacific travel that connects modern visitors to the maritime traditions on which the entire region has always depended.

The Lomaiviti Group, lying between Viti Levu and Vanua Levu in the geographic center of the archipelago, is a small cluster of islands that includes Ovalau, the home of Levuka, and several smaller islands with their own ecological and cultural characteristics. Gau Island in the Lomaiviti Group is noted by marine biologists and dive operators as one of the most reliable locations in Fiji for encounters with manta rays, the enormous filter-feeding rays whose wingspan can exceed five meters and whose graceful underwater flight creates one of the most memorable wildlife experiences available anywhere in the ocean.