https://photos.app.goo.gl/z8z1tdZK64aaQVXv7

Note: almost all of this comes from our tour guide, Zach, whose family has lived on Taveuni for as far back as anyone knows. We’ve done very little fact checking, apologies for any inaccuracies.

Zach’s history lessons started on our first drive in Taveuni, the 40 minutes covering the lower half of Taveuni’s Western side from the ferry dock to the resort. As we passed by empty fields or overgrown abandoned houses, he’d tell us about the Europeans who had built them and how these Europeans came to be on that land. He continued the stories on a full day tour of the island on our penultimate day.

Centuries ago, there had been many local tribes on Taveuni. Over time they fought and intermarried, eventually consolidating into two main groups, one in the North and one in the South. Land distribution was relatively stable, with local chiefs within each of those larger groups controlling all the land for their village. The chief systems were hereditary (though villages differed in whether women could inherit). The system was extremely hierarchical, with both cultural and political power concentrated in the chiefly families.

At first Europeans arrived and set up churches. Zach was okay with this and enthusiastically took us to the first church on the island, the Waikiri Catholic Church. This is also the oldest still-standing building on the island.

But soon Europeans wanted to harness Taveuni’s fertility and start plantations. Rather than take the land by force, they found they could purchase it from the chiefs in exchange for the one thing the chiefs really wanted: education for their sons.  In Zach’s telling, within just a few decades most of Taveuni was given over for the education of just a few boys. The chiefs who sold the land were not literate and “signed” the contracts with “x”s or thumbprints, possibly not knowing the full extent of what they were handing over.

A small number of European families dominated Taveuni and many of their kids and grandkids stuck around, becoming prosperous land owners, eccentric resort owners, or debaucherous outcasts. Relatives of the owners of the resort we stayed at still operate a cattle farm, which may explain why there was so much beef on the menu. It wasn’t very tasty.

Over time, some of the land on Taveuni has returned to the hands of local villages.  In the 1980s, the Fijian government started a Land Buy-Back scheme, donating and loaning money to villages. Unfortunately this has been of limited success because the parcels are not always useful for farming - too steep, or in small chunks too far away from existing lands to be feasible to work. But Zach was hopeful that things were moving in the right direction, and some of the land he worked himself had been recently reclaimed.

Zach’s wife grew up a stone’s throw from Taveuni, on Kioa, but her family history was totally different.

Her ancestors were Tuvaluan, born and raised on the Vaitupu atoll in

Tuvalu, a tiny island nation hundreds of kilometers north of Fiji.

Her grandparents generation helped the Allies during WW2, and were paid by the British after the war. Vaitupu had become overcrowded, and so a group of families pooled their money together and purchased the entirety of Kioa Island in Fiji. In 1947 a few dozen people migrated, but by 1962 there were over 200 people and Kioa became a thriving Tuvaluan community. The Tuvaluan language and culture continues to flourish, though students also learn English and Fijian and some study on Fiji’s mainland for secondary school. This is where Zach met his wife.

Fijian and Tuvaluan culture and language are quite compatible, according to Zach. The only conflict he admitted to in their marriage was over naming their children. His wife wanted their kids to have traditional Tuvaluan names whereas he wanted Fijian names to ensure no one would question their citizenship.  It wasn’t until 2005 that the Kioa community of some 500 people was granted Fijian citizenship.

In 2006, the Australian Don Kennedy suggested that all of Tuvalu should move to Kioa to escape rising sea levels, but this hasn’t become popular. It’s unclear who would pay for their relocation, whether Kioa can handle that many people, and how the Fiji government feels about the whole thing. Tuvalu has to tread lightly with Fiji since they are currently their main connection to the outer world, for example all flights to and from Tuvalu connect through Fiji.

While native Fijians don’t own any of the dive shops on Taveuni, they have tapped into the tourism business by organizing beautiful walking trails and charging small admission fees. We opted for the famous “Lavena Coastal Walk”, a lovely walk on beaches and seaside cliffs, mostly shaded by the edge of the rainforest. The highlight of the out-and-back trail is a beautiful pair of waterfalls providing excellent swimming. A friendly couple staying at our resort joined us for the day.

One of the two gorgeous waterfalls and the river swim leading up to it with refreshingly cool water.

Zach told us the walk was short, only 40 minutes each way, and no need to worry about river crossing or bringing snacks. In fact, it took us more than double that, and none of us made it through the rocky river crossing without slipping, but lunch at the end only tasted all the sweeter for it.

Vera attempts to cross another river without falling, while Andrew (behind) steadies the rope. She did not succeed. 

It helped that our first stop of the day, at approximately 8:30am, had been ice cream.

Taveuni has amazing ice cream (actually sorbet) from a local outfit called Yanuyanu. A Swiss man and his Italian wife moved to Taveuni years ago, realized the soil was excellent for all sorts of delicious foods, and started growing everything they needed to make excellent sorbets - coconuts, soursop, pineapple, lemon, guava, mint, cinnamon, mango, starfruit, cacao, coffee, even vanilla which they have to pollinate by hand. Soursop is a common local fruit and our guide encouraged us to try it, but the stand out favorite was the chocolate.

Part of what makes it so good is the local cocoa nibs but also the cocoa butter. Bigger producers would normally sell cocoa butter to the cosmetics industry and ice cream makers would add a different type of fat. After reluctantly tasting some of Vera’s chocolate scoop on our first visit, Zach agreed it was excellent and he ordered it for himself the next 2 times we returned.

That’s right, we managed to have this ice cream 3 times in our last 2 days. Once after the coastal walk on our way back to the resort, and again the next morning just before our flight. Luckily the market that sells it is only a 2 minute drive from the airport, so even if you forget to go until after your incoming plane has landed, you can still indulge and not miss your boarding call.

As part of our island sightseeing with Zach we also visited the Yanuyanu farm on an .... unscheduled tour, and the owner was nice enough to show us around. The coffee had just been picked the day before but the cacao pods were looking good on the tree!

At the end of our tour we visited the 180 meridian, or as everyone calls it, the “International Date Line”. Fiji is the only country on this meridian besides Russia, and to avoid having neighbors live their life with different dates, the current international date line is routed around Fiji (and has a host of other fascinating detours, see 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Date_Line

). We couldn’t much official information about this, but supposedly this did use to be used as the International Date Line in Fiji at one time. And why let facts get in the way of a good photo opportunity?

We had a great time teaching Zach how to make clone people in photos with the panorama feature on cell phone cameras. Sadly we didn’t get a picture with him.

A New Zealand cruiser (sailboat traveler) and ship designer told us that the 180 meridian is a frequent source of headaches for navigation. Paper nautical charts cover only one side or the other, and don’t always match up perfectly. Even electronic systems can get it wrong - she described a drone set to automatically return to its owner a few feet away across the line getting confused and flying the opposite direction, apparently attempting to circumnavigate the globe.

This is among the reasons the waterway beside the Taveuni village of Somosomo is called the “Somosomo Strait of Doom”.

Fijians love to sing. We rarely had a dinner that wasn’t accompanied by beautiful live singing, and we heard folks singing throughout the islands while going about their days. We have no idea how they managed it but everyone also seems to have a beautiful voice.

Each resort sings its own version of the classic farewell song "Isa Lei" in beautiful harmony. At Paradise Taveuni the head dive master jumped in on guitar, at Volivoli we got a collection of dive staff, line cooks and groundskeepers for the goodbye song, Fijian birthday songs, and even a special song for a guests 100th dive.

Land Tour of Taveuni