Nadi, the Coral Coast & the Mamanucas

The west holds some of the oldest evidence of people in Fiji. The Sigatoka dunes have yielded pottery more than 2,600 years old, along with one of the largest burial sites in the Pacific. Fortified hilltop villages guarded the river valleys inland; Tavuni Hill Fort above the Sigatoka River, an old Tongan fortified settlement, is the best known. Oral tradition places the arrival of the first Fijian ancestors, led by Lutunasobasoba, at Vuda near Lautoka.

The interior stayed beyond outside control long after the coast accepted Christianity. In 1867 the Methodist missionary Thomas Baker was killed at Nabutautau in the Navosa highlands, and in 2003 the village held a ceremony of apology with his descendants. After cession in 1874, the hill peoples of the upper Sigatoka resisted colonial rule, and the British crushed them in the "Little War" of 1876.

Sugar then remade the region. Mills at Ba, Lautoka and Rakiraki, run for decades by the Australian Colonial Sugar Refining Company, drew indentured labourers from India onto the western cane lands, and their descendants became the majority in many western towns. Nadi's airfield was built during the Second World War and became the country's international gateway. Western politics shaped the national story too: the Labour-led government ousted in the first 1987 coup was headed by Timoci Bavadra, from Viseisei near Lautoka, and the expiry of cane-land leases displaced many Indo-Fijian tenant farmers.

The west is where Fiji's two main communities live most closely together. iTaukei villages of the provinces of Ba, Nadroga-Navosa and Ra sit among Indo-Fijian cane farms, and towns such as Nadi, Lautoka and Ba have large Indo-Fijian populations, Hindu temples and mosques alongside Methodist and Catholic churches. Diwali lights up houses and shops across the cane belt in October or November, and Nadi's Sri Siva Subramaniya temple, built in the South Indian Dravidian style, draws worshippers and visitors alike.

Many western villages speak dialects belonging to the West Fijian language group, which differs noticeably from the Bauan-based standard Fijian of the east. Village life follows the same rules as elsewhere: a visitor brings yaqona root for a sevusevu, is received by the chief or his spokesman, removes hats and shoes, and dresses modestly. In the Yasawas and on the Coral Coast many lodges and resorts are owned by, or lease land from, the local mataqali, and villagers work in them, so meke performances, lovo feasts and kava sessions for guests are a real meeting point between tourism and village life.

Towns hold annual carnival-style festivals, among them Lautoka's Sugar Festival, named for the city's main industry. Rugby is played everywhere, from village fields to the provincial competitions in which Nadroga is a traditional power.

The Western Division has about 340,000 people, spread across Viti Levu's western half and the islands. Lautoka, the "Sugar City", is Fiji's second city and main western port; Nadi is the tourism town that grew around the airport; Ba, Tavua, Rakiraki and Sigatoka are market towns serving the farms around them.

The economy rests on two pillars. Tourism centres on Denarau, the Coral Coast and the islands, where resorts are the largest employers and most village families have at least one member working in hospitality. Sugar cane covers the plains from Sigatoka round to Rakiraki, and the crushing season fills the roads with cane trucks and the small cane-train lines with wagons bound for the mills. The Sigatoka valley grows vegetables for the whole country, Fiji Water is bottled in the Yaqara valley in Ra, and gold has long been mined at Vatukoula near Tavua.

Days start early with the market and the minibus to work; Sundays are quiet, with church in the villages and family gatherings in Indo-Fijian homes. Current issues include the long decline of the sugar industry, secure access to leased land, flooding in Nadi, cyclone recovery and the pull of work in Australia and New Zealand.

Western food is the most thoroughly Indo-Fijian in the country. Nadi, Lautoka and Ba are full of curry houses serving roti with chicken, goat, fish or vegetable curries, dhal and chutneys, and rice, dhal and a meat or vegetable curry are everyday home food.

iTaukei cooking in the villages and resorts centres on the lovo, an earth oven of hot stones in which pork, chicken, fish, root crops and palusami — taro leaves wrapped around coconut cream — are steamed under leaves and earth for a feast. Kokoda, raw fish marinated in lime and finished with coconut cream, chilli and onion, is on every menu. Fresh reef fish is widely eaten, and markets sell duruka, the young, unopened flower head of a wild sugarcane, nicknamed Fiji asparagus.

The Sigatoka valley supplies tomatoes, cabbages, eggplant and other vegetables to markets across Viti Levu. Yaqona is drunk in the villages and at every welcome, and in town the local beers and cold coconuts do the rest.

Most visitors pass through Nadi, whose best-known sight is the Sri Siva Subramaniya temple, the largest Hindu temple in the Southern Hemisphere. Denarau, a resort development reached by a short causeway north-west of Nadi, has the big hotels, a golf course and Port Denarau marina, the departure point for most island boats.

Offshore, the Mamanuca Islands are the closest resort group to Nadi: small islands of white sand and reef such as Malolo, Malolo Lailai, Mana and Tokoriki, day-trip beaches, and Monuriki, where the film "Cast Away" was shot. Near Tavarua lie Cloudbreak and Restaurants, surf breaks of international reputation. Further north the Yasawa Islands run in a line of steep volcanic islands — Waya, Naviti, Nacula and others — with village-run lodges and the beaches around Nanuya Levu, where the film "The Blue Lagoon" was made.

South of Nadi the Coral Coast follows the Queens Road past Natadola Beach, one of the finest on Viti Levu, and a string of resorts and villages behind a fringing reef. The Sigatoka Sand Dunes National Park rises at the river mouth, and inland the Sigatoka valley leads to Tavuni Hill Fort. Inland, the Koroyanitu heritage park rises between Nadi and Lautoka, the Ba highlands hold the thatched village of Navala, and Rakiraki faces the reefs and islands of the north coast.