Savusavu, Fiji 2026
We spent January 23 in Savusavu, the first of three stops in Fiji, a country we had never visited before. The name is pronounced with emphasis on the 1st and 3rd syllables (unlike Robin Williams, when he emphasized the 2d and 4th syllables while intoning “Nanu nanu” on a popular TV show you might be old enough to remember). Originally settled by Polynesians around 1700 BCE, Europeans arrived in the mid-19th century and it became a trading post for sandalwood, copra and sea cucumbers. It was incorporated as a town in 1969. Located on the island of Vanua Levu, the town has fewer than 3,500 people with little in the way of notable landmarks. We often explore new ports on foot and with the town’s small size this seemed like a good plan. So we tendered to shore to see what was to be seen.
The weather here was unreasonably hot and humid so it turned out we really weren’t going to walk very far. It was a good thing this town was so small and had nothing we felt we really needed to see. The island of Vanua Levu has a reputation as a natural paradise, surrounded by good beaches and snorkeling venues, with some nice seaside resorts. And maybe that is accurate, but that’s not what we experienced. This was basically a one street town and apart from a waterfront park near the tender dock and a reasonably interesting craft store, that street was mostly lined with small glass front businesses and traffic.
There was at least one other street running parallel on top of a hill and there is supposed to be a small hot spring there where people cook food. But we have seen hot springs like that before and it was really too hot to go uphill to look for this in the oppressive heat. So we didn’t. The one notable thing we found in our walk was the local library, always a highlight of our city walks. This one was a glass storefront like the businesses along the street and it was closed so we couldn’t go inside. Upon examining the orange notice taped inside the glass door we discovered that it advertised an event to be held in . . . 2023, two years before. From this we concluded that this library is closed permanently and we had no idea whether it might have reopened in another location.
So that was it for us. We walked back to the dock and boarded the tender to go back to the ship. From the tender dock there was a nice view of the water and the shoreline. The tender pilot was climbing through a hole above his seat as we waited for others to board, presumably looking at the view but mostly escaping from the heat inside the metal boat. If we return here we will look into better options to spend a day on this island.
BADER JOURNAL 
