Taveuni Travel tips

Taveuni is a remote Eastern island of Fiji, and is actually the third largest land mass in the country. It is extremely remote and hopefully these tips will be useful for anyone who goes there and will stop them getting caught out on a few things.

1. Restaurants – You can’t just turn up, you must phone all of them before lunch time on the day of dining to make a reservation as they need to specially order in the food of course. They normally open just for your reservation and don’t expect a buzzing atmosphere with the exception of Tramonto which is a local night hub. BTW: Don’t eat pizza in Tramonto, it’s awful but fish is good.
2. Money – Contrary to advice in The Lonely Planet, the Colonial National Bank in Nagara does now have an ATM, but it is the only one on the island so taking plenty of cash is advisable. You can pay by credit card in all of the supermarkets, though there may be a percentage tarif .
3. The bus service – is, a complete waste of space. The locals claim to know some sort of timetable but you really need to dedicate about an hour to the act of waiting for the bus to guarantee getting on one. It is erratic, sometimes early (!) and frequently late beyond belief. Sometimes it just stops short of the place you want to go to and it breaks down a lot, give it a miss. Taxis are reasonable.
4. Wairiki Mission – Lonely Planet says the path to the cross on the hill is behind the church, it’s not. It is about 500 yards to the right just past the school (big rugby pitch). There is a lovely wide driveable road rather than the ridiculous thing LP recommend which simply ceases to exist, we ended up walking through peoples back gardens… not that they minded.

More to come as I remember them.

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