Taveuni Travel Guide
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Cigar-shaped Taveuni, Fiji's third-largest island, lies just 6.5km (4 miles) from Vanua Levu's eastern peninsula across the Somosomo Strait, one of the world's most famous scuba-diving spots. Although the island is only 9.5km (6 miles) wide, a volcanic ridge down Taveuni's 40km (25-mile) length soars to more than 1,200m (4,000 ft.), blocking the southeast trade winds and pouring as much as 30 feet of rain a year on the mountaintops and the island's rugged eastern side. Consequently, Taveuni's 9,000 residents (three-fourths of them Fijians) live in a string of villages along the gently sloping, less rainy but still lush western side. They own some of the country's most fertile and well-watered soil -- hence Taveuni's nickname: The Garden Isle.
Thanks to limited land clearance and the absence of the mongoose, Taveuni still has all the plants and animals indigenous to Fiji, including the unique Fiji fruit bat, the Taveuni silktail bird, land crabs, and some species of palm that have only recently been identified. The Ravilevu Nature Preserve on the east coast and the Taveuni Forest Preserve in the middle of the island are designed to protect these rare creatures.
Taveuni's most famous sight is Lake Tagimaucia (Tangi-maw-thia), home of the rare tagimaucia flower that bears red blooms with white centers. A shallow lake whose sides are ringed with mud flats and thick vegetation, it sits among the clouds in a volcanic crater at an altitude of more than 800m (2,700 ft.).
Bouma Falls are among Fiji's finest and most accessible waterfalls, and the area around them is an environmental park. Past Bouma at the end of the road, a coastal hiking track begins at Lavena village and runs through the Ravilevu Nature Reserve.
By tradition, Taveuni's Somosomo village is Fiji's most "chiefly" village; that is, it's chief is the highest ranking in all of Fiji, and the big meeting house here is the prime gathering place of Fiji's influential Great Council of Chiefs. (Hence, Taveuni's coastal road is paved if only from just east of the airstrip to Somosomo, the better to enable the chiefs to attend their meetings.) Adjoining Somosomo, the predominately Indo-Fijian Nagara village is the island's commercial center.
The administrative village of Waiyevo sits halfway down the west coast. A kilometer (1/2 mile) south, a brass plaque marks the 180th Meridian of longitude. This would have been the international date line were it not for its slicing of the Aleutians and Fiji in two and for Tonga's wish to be on the same day as Australia. The village of Waikiki sports both the Meridian Cinema and a lovely 19th-century Catholic mission built to reward a French missionary for helping the locals defeat a band of invading Tongans.
In stark contrast to the rest of unspoiled Taveuni, the paved roads, uninhabited condominiums, and often shaggy golf course of Soqulu Plantation south of Waikiki stand as a reminder that not all real estate developments work. A few expatriates have homes here, but the project has never really gotten off the ground since its conception in the 1980s.
The little airstrip and most of the Taveuni's accommodations are on the northeastern end of the island facing the small, rugged islands of Qamea and Matagi, homes of two very fine little offshore resorts.
