Best Fijian Yasawa Islands, Mamanuca, Coral Coast, Suva Bula Culture, Taveuni Kava Ceremony, and Fiji Deep Pacific Heritage Tour Destinations
Browse more guides: Fiji travel | Oceania destinations Best Fijian Yasawa Islands, Mamanuca, Coral Coast, Suva Bula Culture, Taveuni Kava Ceremony, and Fiji Deep Pacific Heritage Tour Destinations (Levuka UNESCO 2013) The first time I stepped off the Yasawa Flyer onto a flour-white sand spit on Naviti Island, the captain handed me a plastic cup of room-temperature kava and said one word that pretty much explains Fiji: "Bula." Five hours earlier I had been on Viti Levu, the main island, sipping a Fiji Gold lager at Port Denarau Marina while waiting for the 8:30 a.m. catamaran. Five hours later I had been welcomed into a village with a sevusevu ceremony, watched a chief accept my half-kilo bundle of Yaqona root, and felt my tongue go pleasantly numb. That ritual, performed almost identically across the 333 islands and 110 inhabited specks of this Melanesian archipelago, is the spine of any honest Fiji trip. The beaches are the marketing. The Bula is the country. I spent 18...