Travel with Indigo

If you were to count every scrap of soil or rock above high tide, these islands would number in the thousands and you would have one of life’s more boring preoccupations.  But of these only 322 are large enough for human habitation and just 106 actually have people living on them. The remaining 216 islands are prohibitively isolated or lack fresh water and are, it would seem, mostly for sale, some at attractive prices if remote island living is your thing.

About ninety percent of the country’s land area is contained within its two largest islands, Vanua Levu and Viti Levu. Of these, the latter is by far the more settled and developed, with seventy-five percent of the population. It also is home to the nation’s capital sited in the city of Suva. The entire country is just a tad smaller than New Jersey, a good bit warmer and without a mafia.

Fiji is a polyglot country but one that is decidedly ill at ease with the poly part. It began life eons ago as essentially Polynesian, then migratory and enslaved Melanesians, some Tongans, and even Europeans got added to the mixture to make modern day Fijians. All was just swell until the British, who used to own the place, brought in indentured workers from India to meet a labor shortage. In due course, Fijians were equaled in number by Indians, and this was when the real trouble started. Today after three coups, military governments, assassinations, disbanded governments, rigged votes– and all of this just since 1987– things are still pretty much a mess.

A few statistics will paint the ugly picture.  Of the 5,000 or so businesses operating in Fiji, fewer than 100 are owned by native Fijians, the rest by the ever thrifty and industrious Indians.  These Indians earn 70 percent of the income and pay 80 percent of the nation’s taxes. Despite having lived, shopped, dined, and rocked and rolled in close proximity, the two groups never did the Hokey-Pokey together. There are no intermarriages between Fijian and Indians, though Fijians hook up with about every other ethnic group you can imagine. To be fair, this is due in large measure to the Indian practice of arranged marriages within their caste, though racial animosity plays a role too.

But the real underlying reason for all the fractiousness concerns land. Fijians, through their hereditary tribal chiefdoms, own 83 percent of all land in the country but are prohibited by law from selling it. They may, and in the past have, leased it for periods of up to thirty years. But these days, as racial and political antagonisms have grown sharply, the chiefs are refusing to renew the leases, and guess who the tenants were? The Indians– the group that produces most of the income and pays most of the taxes–are now being dispossessed of their livelihood and as a result are fleeing Fiji for more hospitable locales, like America and Australia. The Fijians, in effect, are evicting from the country the very people who are their most productive, indeed only productive, citizens. If you have the misfortune of owning stock in a Fijian enterprise, my advice is sell now. It’s as if the Fijian government, such as it is, attended the Kingdom of Tonga School of Economic Development. Two thirds of the people of Fiji have no electricity and the way things are going aren’t likely to get it any time soon.

Suva, we learned from others who have been there, as well as from the numerous guide books we consulted, is a place where the word dereliction leaps easily to mind. Quite like nearly every other town or village we’ve visited in the South Pacific, the place is said to be hangdog. In short, not a place for the discerning crew of Indigo. Instead we opted for the quasi-resort town of Nadi, Fiji’s third largest, with its South Florida-like marina and adjoining shops, including some fine curry restaurants.  It even has a Hard Rock Café perched merrily alongside the marina.

After securing Indigo to the dock and giving her a thorough wash down, the crew departed for a much deserved two-day stay ashore at a hotel of their choosing.

Being usually cooped up in tiny quarters, working and taking meals at each others elbows, the crew was delighted to spend some time apart in a commodious hotel room.

For my getaway, I selected a resort on a small island just a thirty-five minute charter flight away, a place called Yasawa Island Resort, which generously awards itself four stars. Now seventeen years old and poorly maintained, it is deserving of two stars on its best day.  Along with a family of four, I was the only other guest out of a total potential occupancy of thirty-six. It’s the off season, which coincides with the rainy season.  The five of us held on tight as our little plane touched down gently on the grass airstrip mowed from the jungle.

My thatched roof bure (local term for bungalow), set beachside not more than thirty yards from the crashing ocean waves, was spacious and habitable if a tad shabby. It stormed rather vigorously during most of my brief stay giving me time to start and finish a fine new book, A Small Murder in Lisbon, and spend many gleeful hours depleting the bar’s inventory of tasty spirits. The bartender was an amiable fellow with whom I in due course became well acquainted. He, as the entire staff, is from one or the other of the local villages, unfortunate places where abstinence is thought to be a virtue. Bartenders who don’t drink are as a rule dark and suspicious characters whose company should be avoided, but Sammi, I decided, was an exception. It’s not his fault that he was raised and still lives in a remote village still bearing the effects of humorless, temperance mongering missionaries, Methodist in his case. His convivial manner persuaded me that there is room on earth for one or two abstemious mixologists, but I wouldn’t allow for more than that.

On my last day at Yasawa Resort, the climate gods smiled, the storm passed and all was once again balmy. I took a couple of guides and their outboard dive boat around to the lee side of the island to an outcrop of limestone in which was hidden a wonderful high-ceilinged and roomy cavern perfect for a nice swim in its slightly brackish water.   Much of the film Blue Lagoon with Brook Shields is said to have been shot here. From the cavern’s main room, I dived down about five feet to find a short tunnel through which I managed to transit twenty feet or so into another even larger but low ceilinged set of rooms. These, though, were filled with the ever present backpackers, giggling merrily.

One decided advantage to the place being filled with mostly sweet water is that its nooks and crevices contain none of those creepy, not to mention murderous, sea snakes. They don’t have, in fact, any creatures at all. The place is utterly barren of all life, not of course counting the gigglers.

One of Fijians’ most charming attributes, among many, is their word for hello and its ever cheerful manner of delivery. The word is Bula, commonly doubled up and enhanced as Bula! Bula!, to express their sincere delight at greeting you. It is announced with a vigor not commonly found in the more taciturn colder climes and is always accompanied by an enormous toothy grin. Beats g’day mate, buenas dias,  hola, bon dia, oi, and especially the tepid hello. It’s also a considerable improvement on whazzup?

You will search in vain, as I did, for a for real five star hotel in Fiji. There just are none. You will find Hiltons, Radissons, Soffitels and the like. There are a few of the overpriced, boutique, twenty-room sort of places that attain that exalted level of refinement but no hotels. Just why this is so I can’t say for sure, but the aforementioned racial and economic strife, along with the screwy land policies, surely have something to do with it.  What the place does have—and quite a lot of it, I must say—is youth hostels, backpacker camp sites and assorted accommodations for the devoted trekker.  Not, to be sure, the sort of places for you and me.

On the day of my return from the Yasawa Resort, I hopped into a rental car and drove out of the gated development in which the marina is located to visit the town of Nadi. I wanted to get a glimpse, not more, of a real Fiji town, albeit at a population of 32,000 this is a large one by local standards. I drove into the town, passed slowly and observantly along its main street to the far end, and turned around and drove back to Indigo. That was it. It is just another of the all too familiar careworn, ill conceived, scuffed up places found all over the South Pacific. One could make the case that I’ve become so accustomed to Indigo’s tasteful and refined ambience and professional service that I am instantly and decisively put off by any place of a lower standard. There is something to be said for this.

Now it’s on to what may prove to be one of our most intriguing stops, the islands of Vanuatu.