Mai Dive Resort Fiji

The Mai Dive and Astrolabe Reef Resort (tel. 679-603-0842) opened recently on Ono Island near Kadavu, Fiji. The resort is on a spacious 19-hectare property with green jungly slopes and a lovely one-kilometer beach. Mai Dive is fully owned and operated by local Fijians from Tiliva village on Kadavu and resort guests are introduced to the culture. Most of the resort’s fruit and vegetables are grown on-site, the sea provides abundant fish, and the power is solar.

The resort’s three beachfront bungalows begin at $180/270/360 Fijian single/double/triple with discounts after four or seven nights. Meals, non-alcoholic drinks, kayaks, snorkeling gear, and tax are included. The units have private bath, open air shower, window screens, mosquito nets, fans, bar fridge, deck and chairs, and hammock. Campers with their own tents are most welcome at $75 per person including meals. Roundtrip boat transfers from Vunisea Airport on Kadavu are $140 Fijian per person. Pacific Sun flies to Vunisea from Nadi, while Air Fiji arrives from Suva.

Mai Dive’s specialty is scuba diving, and their location near the fabulous Astrolabe Reef means easy access to some of Fiji’s finest soft coral diving. Two-tank dive trips cost $150 with reductions on three- and five-day packages. Gear rental is $30 a day, if required. Mai Dive is a PADI five-star dive resort offering dive training programs at all levels, from beginner to advanced certification. The company also provides dive services for those staying at Kenia Resort and Tiliva Resort.

Aside from the diving, Mai Dive is a perfect base for sea kayaking, and experienced guides from Tamarillo Tropical Expeditions are available to lead kayak tours of one or more days. Fishing charters are $500/900 Fijian a half/full day, and you can even hire a sailing yacht at $900 Fijian a day. The snorkeling is great right off Mai Dive’s beach and guided snorkeling tours by boat to see manta rays are possible. Mountain hikes can be arranged.

Be aware, Mai Dive is not a large international resort like those around Nadi or along the Coral Coast. It’s perfect if you want to enjoy nature or relax in a friendly unspoiled environment. While the resort does have 24-hour electricity, wireless internet, and a bar, things like shopping, organized entertainment, bus trips, and air conditioning are best sought elsewhere.

Inventing Easter Island

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as it is known to its inhabitants, is located in the Pacific Ocean, 3,600 kilometers west of South America. Due to its intriguing statues and complex history, the island has been a source of worldwide fascination since the first visit by Europeans in 1722. Inventing Easter Island examines narrative strategies and visual conventions framing the European image of ‘Easter Island’ as distinct from the Polynesian conception of ‘Rapa Nui.’ It looks at the geographic imaginary that pervaded the eighteenth century, a period of overwhelming imperial expansion.

Beverley Haun begins with a discussion of the forces which shaped the European version of island culture and goes on to consider the representation of that culture in the form of explorer texts and illustrations, as well as more recent texts and images in comic books and kitsch from off island. Throughout, Inventing Easter Island is used as a case study of the impact of imperialism on the perception of a culture from outside. The study hinges on three key points – an inquiry into the formation of ‘Easter Island’ as a subject; an examination of how the constructed space and culture have been shaped, reshaped, and represented in discursive spaces; and a discussion of cultural memory and how the constraints of foreign texts and images have influenced thought and action about ‘Easter Island.’ Richly illustrated and unique in its findings, Inventing Easter Island will appeal to cultural theorists, anthropologists, educators, and anyone interested in the history of the South Pacific. Published by the University of Toronto Press, April, 2008.

Bula Bula Fiji Me

This six-minute promo video is intended to convince Australian travel agents to book their clients on Fiji holidays. In most parts of the world, such a film would be a poor introduction to a country, but Fiji is a magical place where dreams become reality. Even those on the barest of budgets will experience much of the fun shown here.

Savusavu Fiji Airport Closing

Savusavu Airport on Vanua Levu, Fiji, will close on July 14, 2008, for four months of reconstruction work. Those who have flown into Savusavu in past may have noticed that the runway is rather short, with the ocean at one end and a hill at the other. Presumably, it will be lengthened at the expense of the lagoon. There haven’t been any major accidents at this airport as yet, although an Air Fiji Twin Otter swerved off the runway in 1983 and plowed into a fence. No one was injured. In 2005 the wing of a Sun Air Twin Otter hit an Air Fiji aircraft parked in front of the terminal, prompting the aviation authorities in Fiji to prohibit more than one aircraft on the ground at a time.

With tourism to Savusavu growing fast, the current upgrading was urgently required. The present terminal building is little more than a shed next to the Hibiscus Highway, three kilometers east of Savusavu town. Until the facility reopens around the end of this year, all Vanua Levu flights are to be diverted to Labasa Airport, 10 kilometers southwest of the city of Labasa on the north coast. This means that persons flying to the popular resorts around Savusavu are now looking at a two-to-three-hour ground transfer upon arrival rather than the usual 10-minute taxi ride. On the plus side, the drive from Labasa to Savusavu is one of the most scenic in Fiji and the mountain road is in excellent shape.

Personally, I rarely use Savusavu Airport when visiting Vanua Levu as the overnight ferry connection to/from Suva is good and inexpensive. You’ll need to reserve a few days in advance if you want a cabin, but aircraft-style seating in the first class lounge on the ferries is usually available. I just spread my mat on the carpeted floor and go to sleep.

Zip Fiji Takes Off

Pacific Harbour on the south coast of Viti Levu, Fiji, is a world class scuba diving and whitewater rafting center. Now Zip Fiji is offering 1.5-hour rides on a series of eight cable runs through the rainforest canopy. Clients securely attacked to lines up to 200 meters long can attain speeds of 60 kilometers an hour as they zip between platforms from seven to 45 meters high. This sport was invented in Costa Rica, and in 2008 Zip Fiji became the first canopy tour operator in the South Pacific. The rides take place at Wainadoi village, 20 km east of Pacific Harbour, and transportation from the Arts Village is included in the $120 Fijian price ($60 for children under 12). You can save 10 percent by booking online through the website. There are six tours a day and it’s quite a thrill.

Tonga-Samoa Now Online

The complete text of Tonga-Samoa Handbook is now freely accessible on Google Books. You can scroll through all 321 pages, or use the "Contents" button to jump directly to a specific chapter. You can search inside the book, or reach the index by typing 315 in the "Page" box and clicking enter. When you’ve found a topic you want to check, type the specific page number in the "Page" box again and click enter to go to the exact spot.

Be aware, however, that this first edition dates from 1999. Much of the background information on Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa, and Niue is still relevant, but some of the practical information is now outdated. Unfortunately, sales of Tonga-Samoa Handbook were low due to the limited market and I was unable to convince Moon Handbooks to produce a second edition. For more recent hotel and restaurant listings from the same countries, consult the 2004 edition of Moon Handbooks South Pacific which is also on Google Books. Both guidebooks have found a second life on the web.

Pacific Magazine Ceases Publication

The July-August 2008 issue of Pacific Magazine will be the last. After 32 years, the Hawaii-based news magazine will cease to be a print publication. Publisher Floyd K Takeuchi cited flat circulation, rising postal costs, and competition from the internet as reasons for Pacific’s demise. The magazine intends to carry on as a web-only news portal, but online it will be competing with dozens of other South Pacific internet news sites while as a print publication its sole competitor was Fiji-based Islands Business.

The loss of Pacific Magazine is a sad landmark in the history of Pacific journalism. Pacific’s coverage of events in Micronesia and American Samoa was unsurpassed, and their format was visually pleasing. Departments like High Tide, Pac Notes, Air + Sea, Stuff We Like, Pac Travel, and People Briefs contained little gems of information not found elsewhere. The photography was excellent, making each issue a joy to peruse. And for readers in US postal zones, the subscription rate was much lower than that of Islands Business.

Of course, Pacific Magazine’s situation is not unique. Newspapers and magazines worldwide are hemorrhaging readers and advertising revenue to the internet. Travel guidebooks are also feeling the pinch as people surf for free information. Moon Handbooks South Pacific was discontinued after 28 years when the cost of production exceeded income from book sales. Only amateurs work for free, and much of the travel information currently on the web is the unedited and incomplete work of amateurs. Most of the rest is paid advertising.

I sincerely hope Pacific Magazine’s advertisers stick with them online so they can continue covering the Pacific islands as they have up until now. Nevertheless, I’m going to miss the printed magazine which I’ve indexed and used as a primary reference for three decades. My thanks to editor Samantha Magick and publisher Floyd Takeuchi for all their hard work, and I wish them every success in their new web-only format.

Write to Travel Interview

I’ve been interviewed by Write to Travel, a blog intended for those interested in a career in travel writing. I explain how I got started as a guidebook writer, tell about my first big break, provide advice for those just starting out, and reveal a few tricks of the trade.

Google Books South Pacific

The entire text of the eighth edition of Moon Handbooks South Pacific is now accessible on Google Books. You can scroll down through the 1,091 pages or click the Contents link to jump to a specific section. Buttons at the top of the page allow you zoom in, view two pages at a time, or switch to full screen. From the righthand column, you can search inside the book. Moon Handbooks South Pacific is rich in detail and you’ll find specific information on thousands of islands.

Anyone seriously interested in the Pacific islands will want Moon Handbooks South Pacific in their library and the “buy this book” links on the Google Books page make it easy to order online. At US$16.47 from Amazon.com, this fully indexed handbook is a bargain. A ninth edition will not be published for reasons explained in South Pacific Handbook RIP, so don’t bother waiting for the new edition because it isn’t going to happen. I’ve given Google Books permission to post my book on their website to make its full contents easily accessible to people the world. Downloading, copying, saving, or printing out pages from Google Books is restricted as Moon Handbooks South Pacific is protected copyright.

The Semi-Invisible Man

Julian Evans may be known to some readers of this blog as the author of the 1993 travel book Transit of Venus, an account of a journey to the heart of the US nuclear-missile testing programme in the Pacific. Julian’s second book, The Semi-Invisible Man: A Life of Norman Lewis, will be released on July 22, 2008, to mark the centenary of Norman Lewis. This biography will send readers hurrying to the books of an overlooked master.

Graham Greene described Norman Lewis as "one of the best writers not of any particular decade, but of our century". He was perhaps the best not-famous writer of his generation, and certainly a better writer than most who were. He was not-famous because of an English prejudice: because critics who judged his works of travel and non-fiction as ultimately inferior to the yardstick of artistic genius represented by the novel ignored the truth that over four decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s, he wrote books that have survived better than all but a handful of novels.

His account of south-east Asia before the Vietnam war, A Dragon Apparent, remains required reading. Voices of the Old Sea, a glimpse of pre-tourist Spain, is a classic in the literature of the Mediterranean. His memoir of wartime Naples, Naples ’44, about the time he spent as an Intelligence officer in the occupied city, is a masterpiece. To label him a travel writer would be a mistake – he was a suburban fugitive and adventurer and a unique witness to the twentieth century.

Lewis was born on June 28, 1908, the son of a north London pharmacist, and died in 2003 at ninety-five. A natural daredevil, his hunger for adventure began in the inauspicious setting of suburban England. He went on to race Bugattis before the war, lived in Ibiza after it, and was a crack shot, flamboyant host, and businessman with mafia connections, leading a life of such self-pleasing hedonism that his existence at times was closer to a rock star’s than anyone else’s.

For more than twenty years he used his expertise at penetrating the glorious, and inglorious, surfaces of our planet to spy for the British government (Ian Fleming was one of his controllers – and admirers). In appearance he was someone you could pass in the street without realising anyone had gone by, yet his self-effacing quality, which allowed him to observe unnoticed, concealed extraordinary glamour. In Julian Evans’ essential biography, Lewis is shown to be an inimitable figure: prophet, revolutionary stylist, master storyteller of the modern world, the Defoe of our times.