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The essentials of Fiji in eight sunny questions. Easy to join in for everyone, young and old, with a few surprises along the way.
Beach wanderer 0–3 · Welcome village guest 4–6 · Part of the island family 7–8
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Bula literally means 'life', so the greeting wishes you life and good health, and you will often hear the longer 'Bula vinaka' too. Fijians also say it when someone sneezes, while 'Aloha' belongs to Hawaii, about 4,500 km away.
Photo: CrimsonMagma, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
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Fiji lies in the South Pacific Ocean, north of New Zealand, and has more than 330 islands, from big, mountainous ones to tiny islets. People live on only about 110 of them all year round, and almost nine in ten Fijians live on the two biggest islands.
Photo: Kelisi at English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Meat, fish, taro and cassava are wrapped in leaves, covered with earth and left to cook slowly for several hours. Parcels of taro leaves filled with thick coconut cream, called palusami, often go in too, and because a lovo takes many hands to prepare, it belongs to big family gatherings.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5.
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The sulu is a length of cloth wrapped around the hips, worn by men and women alike, and it arrived from Tonga in the 1800s. Today it is seen as Fiji's national dress, and police officers and soldiers wear smart ones as part of their uniform, with a zigzag hem along the bottom.
Photo: Jared Wiltshire, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
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When it feels threatened, the crested iguana can turn from bright green to almost black in moments. Scientists think its ancestors drifted about 9,000 km across the Pacific Ocean from the Americas, probably on rafts of floating plants.
Photo: Michael Howard from Australia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
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The lali is a kind of drum, and its deep boom tells people it is time for church, a meeting or a celebration; many hotels also play it for their guests. Some villages even give their lali a little house of its own, so that rain cannot fill it up.
Photo: Hsz282, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.
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A Beqa legend tells of a man who went looking for an eel but caught a spirit instead, and in return for its freedom the spirit gave him power over fire. His people, the Sawau, still walk across river stones heated until they glow white, and visitors come from far away to watch.
Photo: Aidan Jones from Oxford, U.K., Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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Cast Away came out in 2000, and in it Tom Hanks's only friend on the island is a volleyball with a face drawn on it. Nobody lives on Monuriki, but boat trips now bring visitors to what many call 'Cast Away Island', which is also one of the last homes of the crested iguana.
Photo: KhufuOsiris, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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