Australasia > Fiji > The North (Vanua Levu and Taveuni) > Savusavu > Articles > A Flavor for Fiji

It’s always seemed slightly bizarre to me to hear Bing Crosby’s “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” creeping around Southern Hemisphere hotel lobbies in December, but if you’re visiting Fiji during this month, chances are that’s exactly what you’ll hear.

But if the song seems at odds with the atmosphere dripping with heat, the colourful cocktail in your hand or the ample, giggling local women thrusting garlands of shells around your neck, you can be sure it won’t concern you. For Fiji is a place which has taken the old Aussie adage “no worries” and turned it into an art form.

Many years of tourism have done nothing to dent this spirit. Even the arrival of television on the main islands has done little to disturb the peace. The local TV station merely reflects the mood of the country in being relaxed, occasionally disorganised and largely unconcerned with the rest of the world.

It’s this that continues to make a holiday here so appealing. Sure, Fiji’s natural beauty - a brochure writer’s heaven of white sand beaches, calm blue seas and nodding palm trees - remains a considerable pull. But it’s the country’s hospitable people which are its major stars.

Take an irrepressible old Fijian like Nuimiaia, whom I met on a recent visit to the Cousteau Resort in Savusavu on the country’s second biggest island, Vanua Levu. Within hours of meeting him he’d invited me to accompany me back to his village, “a few hours walk over the hills”, to meet his extended family. Time didn’t allow me to follow him that far but he took me nonetheless into the nearby rainforest and showed me leaves, berries and plants which the indigenous inhabitants had been using as medicine for thousands of years. The next morning after sitting with him long into the night over an immense bowl of kava (the grainy grey ceremonial drink made from ginger root), I had need for a traditional Fijian cure. For a hangover.

While the Cousteau resort where Nuimiaia works is a ground-breaking exercise in environmental tourism - with an emphasis on sustainable energy resources and growing its own food - the man himself is typical of the Fijian sense of fun, their deep feel for tradition and above all their genuine warmth of welcome.

All these qualities are also available in spades on a Blue Lagoon Cruise around Fiji’s Yassawa Islands. Introduced at the outset of the four-day, three night cruise to the burly all-male crew, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’re about to be looked after by the national rugby team. Until they open their mouths that is. “We like to form a small family”, says one, “we want to get to know you very closely” declares another.

For the following few days, this crew looks after your every need. You lose count of the number of the times when you’re just thinking “a such and such might be nice” when it arrives on the table. They also guide you seamlessly through a number of activities like snorkelling, an intriguing visit to a village for a Meke (a traditional dance of welcome), a Lovo feast (succulent hunks of pork, fish and sweet potato baked in the ground) and an “International Night” during which passengers from countries many and varied offer forth a chunk of their culture. But above all, the crew’s unfussy attentiveness allows you to lie back and watch the wonderful Fijian scenery float by.

Or is it the other way around? As you purr along in a state-of-the-art motor yacht like the MV Mystique Princess, it’s hard to know. To call such a craft luxurious would be close to damning understatement. Its 36 cabins are certainly more than a match for a room in any of Fiji’s five star hotels - featuring queen sized beds, air-conditioning, impressive ensuite facilities, even unnecessary additions like satellite telephones and videos - with the advantage of panoramic windows looking out on an ever-changing scene.

Of course, Fiji’s largest and main island Viti Levu is well-equipped with hotels offering international class facilities. The recently renovated resort - the Fijian, with its golf course, and many restaurants, bars and pools - is one of them. Happily, despite its size - it occupies its own island just off the mainland - it retains a friendly feel. In fact, even the Nadi airport hotels (often a necessity for early morning flights) are not the impersonal tower block monstrosities that they so often are in other countries.

Yet, to get a true sense of Fiji it’s best to head for one of the country’s smaller resorts. Often made up of just a handful of beachside bures (which rarely stint on luxury) they offer a more intimate experience of the country. It’s also far more likely that you’ll meet and more importantly get to know the locals there. Not that this all there is to do at these smaller resorts. While the Cousteau Resort where Nuimiaia works encourages interaction with the local community, it also (unsurprisingly for somewhere bearing that famous name) offers excellent diving on the nearby reefs and a resident biologist with whom to discuss your underwater discoveries. Elsewhere, off the 12 bure Wananavu Beach Resort, on the north-east of the main island, there are both fat red sunsets to view from your verandah and an array of golden soft corals and magnificent fans to see with scuba gear.

Wherever you stay on the main island, a small sense of adventure can easily lead you (by fragrant public bus) to a bustling town like Sigatoka or Nadi, which are the domain of that other part of the Fijian equation, the Indian population. Originally brought over by the British to tend the colonisers’ profit-making crops, nowadays the Indians have contributed their own entrepreneurial zeal to the feel of the country. To experience many of the authentic sights, smells and tastes of their motherland, you need only walk the spice-strewn alleys of Nadi market or pull up a chair in a curry house like the Rattan in Sigatoka.

Back on the streets you’ll hear Hindi music blaring from town centre shops, adding another dimension to the tapestry of sounds that make up Fiji, from the gentle lap of waves through soothing South Pacific song to rousing Christian hymns. Hey, if you listen carefully enough around Christmas time, you might even catch the dulcet croon of a certain Mr Bing Crosby.

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