All too often we associate Fiji with a flop-and-drop holiday, complete with a golden beach and azure water, but here’s an experience that showcases Fiji’s cultural merits, writes Sarah Pollok
I’m deeply regretting my choice of bra as I stand, wearing very little else, in a hotel room surrounded by three Fijian women.
Fortunately, Halei, Anastasia, and Adi appear unfazed by my lacey bralette situation. They’re too busy wrapping me in a traditional Fijian wedding dress as quickly as possible, as my husband-to-be, whom I’d never met before, waits outside with a crowd of spectators.
Chattering and clucking, the curvy women toss strips of fabric across the room to one another, soft papery material made from tree bark and painted with patterns using soil-based dye. Eventually, three large pieces are wrapped around my hips, waist and chest, a large lei is draped over my shoulders and a ‘virgin lock’ of fake hair pinned into my hair, completing the Masi ni Vakamau (wedding dress).
As wedding mornings go, it isn’t far off my own, which happened exactly one month earlier. A special room, a special dress and a group of women fussing over the dress. Things diverged from there. Today, I’m not actually getting married, but participating in a ‘cultural fashion show’ on Captain Cook Cruises’ M.S. Caledonian Sky.
Minutes later, the women step back, nod at their handiwork and ask how it feels to wear the traditional dress. I answer by returning the question. “We love it, we appreciate it, as long as you respect the culture when you wear it,” Adi says. Respect is an understatement. It’s moving to wear a wedding dress from another culture; something few visitors could ever do.
Similarly, few travellers visiting Fiji can participate in a sacred kava ceremony with village chiefs, attend an island’s church service with the 40 full-time residents or dance amongst a crowd of children as they sing local songs.
It’s this intimacy that travellers like myself crave (why go somewhere just to observe from a distance?) and exactly what you can find when you trade Fiji’s polished mainland for its remote Northern islands. Places where you will, with almost absolute certainty, be the only visitors that day.
Read More: Full review of Captain Cook Cruise’ Remote Fiji itinerary
Makogai
In the remote North, you’ll find islands like Makogai, which was home to a leper colony until the late 1960s. Today, it’s owned by the government’s Ministry of Fisheries and occupied by just 40 people, mainly workers and their families. It’s a Sunday when we visit, which means one thing on most Fiji islands; church.
Church looks different around the world and on Makogai Island, the church itself is a large corrugated iron shed on the edge of the beach while ‘Sunday best’ is a bouquet of floral patterned dresses and sulus. As Bill, an elderly pastor who grew up here, offers welcoming words, families and couples filter in and find spots on the flax mat, jostling and overlapping with no care for ‘personal space’.
Flipping to the book of Luke in the bible, Bill preaches about sin and redemption and while it may not resonate with the nonreligious travellers around me, one can’t deny the morning is an unpolished peek into real island life. Like any congregation, the focus is scattered; some gaze down at bibles or cellphone screens and youngsters whisper and fidget until Bill concludes the service with several hymns and they sprint outside to play in the nearby mango trees.
Levuka
Curious travellers could also fall asleep on a Captain Cook Cruise and wake up so close to Levuka, on Ovalau Island, you can make out the trucks zooming along the single coastal road and the bright-coloured houses climbing the lush mountain behind. Once Fiji’s capital, the town is now home to just 10,000 people, a major fish processing plant and the memories of many of Fiji’s ‘firsts’ (hotel, newspaper, post office, hospital, bank), which we explore with Knox, a Levuka local and tourist guide/landscaper/mechanic/builder/bnb host/anything-else-that-needs-doing.
“Here, we have Levuka time, it’s slower than Fiji time. So no rush, we’ll see everything,” he said and sure enough, we do. In three hours, we leisurely cross from one end of the town to the other, passing dusty, darkened shop fronts and quiet schoolyards before sweating our way up a staircase hastily cut into the mountain for a view of everything from above.
Yet, the experience that impresses upon my mind comes later, back on the ship, when children from Levuka West City Chapel come aboard to share several dances and songs with us. Like any group of children, they start as a pack of whispers and stares, sitting cross-legged on the ground, sizing us up.
Yet, several songs later, they soften; emboldened by the buoyant music and enthusiastic applause. Some let their cheeky grins loose and prance across the deck, delighted by our attention while others pull out cell phones to snap photos of us, giggling to their friends.
One hour and countless songs later, it’s time for the final performance, which ends with the children running towards us, reaching little hands towards elbows and skirts and pulling us into the mosh of bodies. I don’t know the lyrics but we share the movements, hips twisting, hands circling and a large conga line forming as we whoop and clap.
Taveuni
It’s on a cruise like this, around islands like Taveuni where you’ll cliff-jump off a waterfall that would typically heave with tourists but here is occupied only by the birds. Nestled in Bouma National Heritage Park, Tavoro Waterfall is a spot you can find if you know where to look and fortunately, our crew do.
They also know exactly how to clamber up the algae-covered rocks, behind the waterfall, where you can, ignoring the anxious thud of your heart, take two strong steps forward and throw yourself off, into the cool water below. After we all try the leap, it’s the crew’s turn and it doesn’t take long for things to devolve into a boyish competition of increasingly performative jumps, flips and bombs, each accompanied by a rally of whops and ‘cheeee-hooo’s.
Spectating from the sun-soaked shallows, I realise that, much like Magokai’s church service or Levuka’s impromptu dance party, chasing waterfalls with brazen young Fijians or listening to them pass a guitar around during the bus ride later, this moment isn’t one often found on a culture-focused itinerary. Sure, you may watch a traditional fashion show but rarely be pulled in to participate, try kava at a cafe but not sit crosslegged in a circle beside elderly village chiefs.
These are bread-and-butter moments, people-just-living-their-lives moments that can’t just be bought, but cultivated through relationships; the kind our cruise’s crew have with the locals of each island. And what we, for a moment, are invited into, with an intimacy that leaves you feeling like you’ve seen a slice of the ‘real Fiji’, or as much of it as a visitor can experience.
Which, at the end of the day, is so often what travel is really about.
CHECKLIST
FIJI
Getting there
Fiji Airways and Air New Zealand regularly fly direct from Auckland to Nadi, Fiji.
Details
Captain Cook Cruises Fiji’s seven-night Remote North Discovery cruise is set to sail every one to two months in 2024. Prices start at $8221.49 per person for a two-person standard suite or $12,332.78 for a single standard suite.
For more information, visit captaincookcruisesfiji or fiji.travel.