Savusavu

Savusavu lies in Cakaudrove, whose paramount title, the Tui Cakau, is the chiefly title of the province and of the Tovata confederacy and is historically tied to the village of Somosomo across the strait on Taveuni. The bay's shelter and deep water made the place useful to outsiders from early in the 19th century: the town began as a trading post for sandalwood, bêche-de-mer and copra, on an island Europeans once called Sandalwood Island.

What made the town was copra. From the 1860s settlers from Australia and New Zealand planted coconuts around Savusavu, intermarried with Fijian families and produced a mixed-race planting elite, and the town became the point where the dried coconut flesh was bought, stored in waterfront sheds and loaded onto ships; a large copra mill still works here. Planters' families, Indo-Fijian traders and Chinese storekeepers gave the single street its shops, and the plantations shaped the landscape east along what is now the Hibiscus Highway, where rows of old palms still stand.

Copra prices collapsed with the Great Depression of the 1930s and the trade declined through the rest of the century, and Savusavu reinvented itself. Diving on the reefs off the south coast, above all around Namena, brought the first tourism, and the sheltered bay made the town a natural stop for yachts crossing the Pacific, with the old copra shed renovated as a marina and yacht club. Government offices, the airport and a small hotel and lodge sector followed, and building around the bay continues. Cyclones remain the recurring setback: Winston passed just south of the island in February 2016, cutting power across the whole of Vanua Levu and driving a storm surge onto the south coast.

Savusavu is a village-centred place with an unusually international edge. The surrounding land belongs to iTaukei clans whose protocols govern access to beaches, waterfalls and forest, and where a visitor's first act is a sevusevu — presenting a bundle of kava to be received by the village. Kava drinking in the evening, from a tanoa bowl passed around a circle, is the standard way of spending time together, and church on Sunday, with Methodist hymn singing in harmony, sets the pace of the week.

Onto that is layered a cruising community from a dozen countries, dive crews and a scattering of foreign residents, which has made the little town more used to outsiders than its size suggests. There are Indo-Fijian families with shops and farms, a smaller Chinese business community, and returning Fijians who have worked in New Zealand or Australia. English is widely spoken alongside Fijian and Fiji Hindi.

Local identity is tied to Cakaudrove and to the north generally: people distinguish themselves from Suva and the resort west, value the slower pace, and take pride in the reefs and forest around them, several of which are protected by community agreements rather than by government. Rugby dominates the sporting calendar, with village and school sides taken seriously; meke dancing and lovo feasts mark weddings, church openings and visits by chiefs.

The town and its immediate surroundings hold roughly 5,000 people, which makes Savusavu small even by Fijian standards, though it serves a much larger rural area. Work comes from government offices and the school and hospital, from shops and transport, from copra, dalo, kava and vegetable farming in the hills behind the coast, from fishing, and from diving and tourism along the shore.

The day begins early: carriers bring produce in for the market, boats go out at first light, and offices and shops open soon after. By late afternoon the street is quiet again, stores shut early, and kava circles form in houses and halls. Sunday is close to silent apart from church. Many households rely partly on money sent home by relatives in Suva, Australia or New Zealand.

The pressures are those of a remote small town. Transport is expensive and weather dependent, the mountain road to Labasa is tiring, medical treatment for anything serious means a flight to Suva, and power and water supplies can be interrupted. Young people leave for the capital or overseas; at the same time the building around the bay has brought construction work, and property prices are followed closely.

Savusavu eats from its gardens and its reef. Dalo (taro) and cassava are the staples, boiled or baked, with rourou — taro leaves cooked in coconut cream — and palusami, leaf parcels baked with coconut cream. Fish is the main protein: reef fish grilled or fried, walu and tuna when the boats have been lucky, octopus, mud crab and freshwater prawns from the streams. Kokoda, raw fish cured in lime juice and coconut cream, is on almost every menu.

Two things are particular to the town. The hot springs behind the main street are still used as a cooker, with taro, breadfruit and other food wrapped in leaves and lowered into water that comes close to boiling — a practice visitors are sometimes shown. And the coconut that built the place remains everywhere in the cooking: as cream in stews and puddings, as fresh drinking nuts, and as oil.

Indo-Fijian food is the everyday alternative, with curries of fish, chicken and vegetables, dhal and roti, and snacks such as bhajia sold at the market; Chinese cooking has left chop suey on local tables. Bakeries sell bread and coconut buns in the morning, roadside stalls sell mango, papaya and pineapple in season, and kava, grown in the hills of Vanua Levu, is the drink that matters most, alongside Fiji Bitter and tea.