South Pacific Cruise, Part 3 – Fiji: Lautoka and Ba

Sugar City Lautoka… again; source of Fiji water; to market, to market; pathetic negotiator hits a luck with the tour touts; to Ba in Ram’s taxi; cultural tidbits; coffee, shopping and curry, in that order

I would like to start by pointing out the huge inconvenience of having two Fijian destinations with such confusingly similar names: starting with Suva, the second-largest city in Fiji; and Savasavu, a pretty harbour town. But that’s only coming up in Part Four. First, we take a look at Lautoka and Ba.

Two Days in Lautoka, Viti Levu Island, Fiji

Lautoka is Fiji’s second-largest city. (Suva is the largest.) It’s nicknamed Sugar City, as it’s in the heart of the sugar growing region. With its sugar mill built in 1903 that’s reminiscent of Durban Sugar Terminal, and its 19th-century history of indentured Indian labour, it reminds me a bit of my hometown.

Sugar cane fields along the road from Lautoka north to Ba

Again, Roy and I had already done a lovely tour of Lautoka on our previous South Pacific cruise – see here.

Flashback to Lautoka tour April 2028 – The Boat Shed looks out over a pretty marina

Another day in Paradise, another container port

Seaward view from Lautoka, Fiji taken from *Westerdam*‘s Deck 3

Land view of Lautoka container port from the *Westerdam*

Tour touts on the wharf in Lautoka, Fiji – these are often better value than the tours sold onboard

Day 1 in Lautoka

This time around, we had two days in port. On the first day, we took the shuttle from the container port to the city centre: Jack’s of Fiji department store and Tappoo City mall, located across the main drag from each other. It being a Sunday, nothing much else was open.

The highlight of Tappoo City was the food court on the fourth level with stalls selling curry, curry and curry. I had the curry.

We walked down the road, across a park and to Marine Drive, where we found Tanoa Waterfront Hotel and some great coffee. And then chilled for the rest of the day, before having dinner with our new Dutch friend Annette at our regular Table 21 in the Dining Room.

Source of Fiji Water

Enjoying a bottle of Fiji water at Lautoka waterfront

Having bought a couple of bottles of the stuff at Café Bonjour in Lautoka (the French company Total seems to have the monopoly on Fijian service stations here, oddly enough), I was wondering about the source of the world-famous Fiji water.

Apparently, the company is owned by the Fijian government (good for them), and the water comes from an artesian aquifer in Vitu Levu’s remote Yaqara Valley. “The water falls as tropical rainfall high above the South Pacific, purified by equatorial trade winds before filtering through volcanic rock, gathering electrolytes and minerals.” It tastes good, too.

Lautoka Market

Word has it that the market produce is best on a Monday, as the local farmers deliver it fresh after Sunday closure. Today was Monday.

Ginger

Chillies

Taro

Papayas

Ladies’ fingers, okra or bhindi

Eggplants, brinjals or aubergines

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Day 2 in Lautoka – up to Ba

While Roy worked on his beauty sleep, I stepped ashore to run the tour-tout gauntlet… and hit a luck, as we Durbanites like to say. When I asked about alternatives to (a) a group tour to the usual tour destinations or (b) an island-hopping boat trip, I was directed to a warm and friendly woman called Vive. She turned out to be the president of a local tourism body and a veteran of the travel industry.

Despite my usually pathetic negotiating skills (either age is toughening me up a bit, or Vive took pity on me), she arranged a private taxi at an amazingly reasonable price to take Roy and me up the coast to the town of Ba, rather than south to Nadi (pronounced a bit like “Nandi”), where all the tours go. She even offered to come along for the ride, but I thought that might be a bit much for all concerned. (Especially Roy.)

Ba is where many of the indentured Indian labourers came ashore during the 19th century, and still has a largely Indian population. It’s a pleasant 40-minute drive through the cane-fields up the coast to Ba, Vive assured me. We would stop at a lookout; we would mosey around the town (and shop a little, as it turned out); and we would have authentic Fijian curry for lunch. And so we did.

On the roadside to Ba – Ram’s comfortable-enough and very well-priced taxi

Stuck with us for four hours, Indian chauffeur Ram proved both patient and kind. Best of all, he provided just the right amount of information on local culture – from his own wonderful perspective, of course:

Fijians own all the land, and often lease it to the Indians and Chinese; previously, it was for a period of 99 years, which is now 50 years that can be extended by another 25 years.
Fijian land-owners are lazy, he opined, highly politically incorrectly. Since the Chinese arrived and started leasing the farmland from them, the market price of “a big heap” of cassava has tripled in price from F$5 to F$15. (It’s currently about 2.3 Fijian dollars to the US dollar.)

“Hearthouses” on the way to Ba – accommodation for the poor or needy

“Hearthouses” is, if I understood Ram right, the name for a string of low-cost accommodation built by a European man – poor or needy people, such as single mothers, live four in a flat and pay $20 a week. (I couldn’t verify any of this online, by the way.)
He showed us the Chinese-owned saw mill. We’d already seen a mountain of wood-chips at the port, possibly being loaded on to the Cosco bulk carrier in Lautoka harbour, we thought. But no – he explained that the Chinese have a contract for dredging the harbour, and the stuff they’re bringing up has enough value in it to be loaded into the Cosco vessel and shipped somewhere else. (What is in it?) Also unverified.

View down to the sea along the road from Lautoka to Ba

A roadside stall was selling large, firmly trussed mud crabs, $150 (local currency, so less than half that in US$) for a pile of six or seven.Yum!
Passing through villages with names like Navigayo, Tuvu and Karavi, we saw many nice-looking schools and colleges, not to mention churches. Most Fijians are Christians, including Methodist, 7th Day Adventists, Latter Day Saints and others.

One of many picturesque churches on the road from Lautoka to Ba

Ram is nearing the end of nine days of special worship for the revered Hindu god Hanuman, also known as the Monkey God, during which Ram has been vegetarian. Normally, he and the other Hindus here are vegetarian three days a week.

Scenes from Ba

Ba is a small town but with a lot of money, according to Ram. Between coffee at The Coffee Hub and lunch at Rahmat’s, we did a spot of shopping at Meenoo’s – a cotton shirt for Roy and a Fijian rugby shirt for Sam, much better priced than they would have been in Lautoka. As for me, I wasn’t in a sari-shopping sort of mood.

Catching up on local news at blissfully air-conditioned The Coffee Hub, Ba

The Fijian fish curry I’d demanded for lunch turned out to be at Rahmat’s Restaurant in central Ba, right next to the The Coffee Hub. Goat curry, fish curry, dahl tadhka, plus a can of Fiji Bitter lager kindly bought for me by Ram from across the road and smuggled in wrapped in a paper bag. (He was still fasting, of course.) A gang of electrical workers at neighbouring table didn’t mind having their photo taken. Tourists never come this way, we are told.