Tales of the South Pacific - Lautoka, Viti Levu, Fiji Day 1

Cruise Day 24

Thursday, October 23, 2025

Bula (greetings) from Fiji, today we are on the west side of Viti Levu in the town of Lautoka where we’ll spend two days.  Here is a brief description of Lautoka from Google: “Lautoka is Fiji's second-largest city, located on the west coast of Viti Levu, known as the "Sugar City" due to its prominent sugar cane industry and mill. It serves as a key port, offering a less touristy, authentic Fijian experience.”

We moved from Suva on the east coast of Viti Levu to the west coast town of Lautoka where we are spending the next two days.

 

We sail into the Lautoka Harbor.

Today will be a busy day for us as we have two tours scheduled.  The first is a private tour called “A Taste of Fiji” that we booked through our travel agent.  We actually tried to cancel this as it had gotten pretty bad reviews, but it had a fourteen-day cancellation window and we were inside that, so we’re doing that today, we’ll see how it goes.

We were up at seven as we had to meet our tour on the pier at 8:15.  Val still wasn’t feeling well and I had my doubts whether she would feel like going, but she was determined so at 8:00 we headed off the ship.  We were supposed to look for someone holding a sign saying Great Sights Tours and immediately spotted him at the bottom of the gangway.

The first thing we saw as we got off the ship was a line of vendors selling local crafts and souvenirs.

He told us to wait while the others showed up, which surprised us as we were told we were the only ones on the tour.  After a few minutes’ wait, he gathered us all and walked us all to a large bus where we were checked in.  We were confused as it seemed like all the others were on a tour called “Discover Fiji”.  I asked the guide and he said it was all one tour, but when we got all settled in on the bus, someone stepped in and called our names, and we were led off the bus to a car and guide that would be taking us on our tour.  

Our driver’s name was Manassa and after giving us an idea of what we were going to do today, we were off.  As we left by the port area we drove by a huge sugar cane mill.  Sugar is the number on export of Fiji, and this mill is the largest one in the whole Southern Hemisphere.  We drove through town to the Lautoka Market that we were pleasantly surprised to find was our first stop.  I say, pleasantly surprised, because we love visiting the local open-air markets because they give a good look at the local culture.

The market was huge, one of the biggest we have ever visited, and it was definitely for the locals as it was mostly fruits, vegetables, baked goods, spices and other things needed for cooking.  Our guide joined us as we wandered around and he pointed out different plants and vegetables, many that we had never seen before. 

The market was huge, one of the biggest we've ever visited.

 

The prices are in Fijian dollars.  One Fiiji dollar is worth about 44 cents in US currency.

This is a bundle of roots from the kava plant used to make the kava drink.

On the way back to the car we saw a store selling music and wanted to stop as I always like local music for the videos I make of our trips.  Manassa helped us pick out something that was local to the area and traditional and then we returned to the car.

Our next stop was a store selling local crafts, clothing, jewelry, and other local goods.  It was a very nice store that ranged from inexpensive tourist items to some very nice, very expensive things.  Manassa let us wander around there for a while, and Val found some Christmas presents and I picked up a Fiji t-shirt. 

Manassa met us out on the street, and we drove on to Natalau Village where we would be eating a traditional Fijian meal and participate in a Kava Ceremony.  Along the way as we passed through the town of Nadi, Manassa pointed out the very large and colorful Hindu Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple. He pulled into a nearby parking lot so we could take a few photos before continuing on our way.  There is a very large Indian (from India) population who were originally brought in as laborers but now own quite a bit of land and quite a few of the businesses, at least according to our guide.

When we arrived in the village, there were a group of students from Denmark who were taking time off after graduating from high school and entering college.  They were spending a month in Fiji and had stayed overnight in the village and were now participating in some basket making with the leaves of the coconut palm trees.  We watched them for a while and then moved on to see how they got grated coconut from inside the shells.  We were given the opportunity to do it ourselves and it wasn’t as easy as it looked and took some effort.

 

Val and I each took a turn grating the coconut meat from the coconut.  It took more effort that we thought it would.

Next, we were shown how they got coconut milk from the grated coconut.  That seemed quite difficult and time consuming as they take a handful of grated coconut and surround it with strands from the trees and squeeze and knead it until all the liquid is extracted, then they put what’s left in another container and start again.  It looked very hard and very tiring, but the lady said she could do the whole bucket in less than an hour.

Squeezing the grated coconut to get the coconut milk out of it.  This really took a lot of work, but this lady was quite efficient at it.

After that we were given the traditional Kava Ceremony to welcome us to the village.  I didn’t quite understand why, I think it must have been some sort of honor for visitors, but they said after I participated in the ceremony I was now the chief of the village. Since we had done the similar Ava Ceremony with a tour group in Samoa, we knew what to expect. This time it was a little different since it was just the two of us and we each had two cups of Kava and then it was time for our dinner.  Our guide had told us that in Fiji, not only is the Kava Ceremony used to welcome someone to the village, but also to welcome someone to your home.

Preparing the kava juice for the Kava Ceremony.

We were served quite a large lunch of eggplant, sweet potatoes, fish, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, pineapple, watermelon, cassava melon, and the coconut milk that had just been squeezed to pour over it.  The fish and the fruit and vegetables were very good, but we didn’t care much for the eggplant or spinach as it was pretty bland, but overall, it was a good and a very authentic meal as everything we ate was grown and cooked in the village.  After we finished eating, we said our goodbyes and started back to the ship.

Our lunch being prepared.

It was quite a feast and Manassa joined us.

A couple of pictures of the village.

The main road back to the ship was a two-lane road with a lot of traffic so the trip took a while, but Manassa pointed out various things along the way, and we talked a lot about his life living in Fiji.  He drove us right up to the gangway to let us out and we said our goodbyes and got back on the ship.

It was a great tour today, Manassa was a great guide and we really enjoyed our day, thank goodness we didn't cancel it.

This was a wonderful tour today; we are so glad that we weren’t able to cancel it.  I guess that shows you, you shouldn’t always go by reviews.  The visit to the market and the village were very special experiences and we really enjoyed it all.  Manassa was a wonderful guide and a very nice person. 

When we got back to our room it was time for rest, especially for Val, as we have another tour scheduled for 5:00 today.  I didn’t know whether Val would be up to it, but as we neared five, she said she wanted to go so we got ready and we were off the ship and on the bus just after five.  There was a damper (so to speak) on the evening though, when we got off the ship, it was raining and as we would find out later, it would play a big part in our evening.

Rain clouds were coming in that would affect our evening.

Our tour tonight is dinner and local entertainment at the Crown Plaza Resort.  Donna from our trivia team is also going to this so we met her on the bus.  It was supposed to be held out on a patio with a view of the sunset over the ocean as we ate and then local traditional entertainment afterwards, but the rain changed all of that and we were switched to a conference room.  Also now, instead of the entertainment after the meal, they did an abbreviated show before dinner in a rather cramped space.  It was disappointing, but there was nothing we could do about it.

Dinner was served buffet style and was pretty good, but not great, but we enjoyed it anyway.  After dinner, we were given an hour at the resort since the entertainers wouldn’t come back, but this was just time to kill for most of us as we weren’t even familiar with what was there.  The trip back was a little shorter as there was less traffic, and we arrived  back at the ship at 9:30.

Beautifully lit outdoor pool at the hotel.

Inside the hotel lobby.

Some of the entertainers for the evening.

As you can see, not the best place to watch the entertainment, unless you sat near the front, you didn't see the entertainers very well.

It was straight to bed for us as Val was worn out.  I can't believe she made it through the whole day; she wasn't going to let being sick spoil our tour.  Despite the change of plans at the resort and my underwhelming review of dinner, we still had a good time tonight.  The entertainment was really good, bit I felt bad they had to perform in such a limited space.  Things happen when you travel, you just have to go with flow and make the best of it, no one can control the weather.