"Village Feats Of Clay: An Ancient Art Form May Not Be Dying After All"
By Tom Cockrem

I first saw and bought a Fijian terracotta pot at a church fete in Suva seven years ago.  It’s still on prominent display in my home.  I then learnt that Fijian pottery is a very ancient art form that has long been in decline.  In Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island, pottery making is now confined to just three villages.  I set out to find them.

Two of the villages – Lawai and Nakabuta – are near the market town of Sigatoka, 60 kilometres south of the international airport at Nadi.  Both are just a short way up river from the town.  They appeared so idyllic, I felt awfully intrusive just bringing up my car.

At Lawai, I was greeted by Karalaini Turaga.  “You want to see some pottery?” she asked with a knowing smile.  “It’s all in here.”

The entire village meeting house was given over to the wares, will all items up for sale.  They ranged from tiny frogs, pigs and turtles up to full-size cooking pots.

Karalaini offered me a pottery demonstration.  Great! I sat down for the show.

Pottery making Fiji-style demands extraordinary patience and skill.  The clay first goes under foot, a kneading process to rid it of air bubbles and impurities.  The modelling is done by paddle and hand, and with a rounded stone for vessels.

The potter begins with three slabs of clay, one for the base and two for the sides.  These are bonded with slip.  A hole is cut in the side of the pot to allow for the insertion of the stone.  This is held inside while the clay is beaten against it from the outside with the paddle, until the desired shape is achieved.  The hole is then resealed. 

The potters at Nakabuta had a fine array or artworks on sale as well, with a teenage girl, Chippo, directing proceedings with great humour and aplomb.  I came away with a clown-faced pen-holder and a handy knick-knack bowl.

Nasilai, the third pottery village, lies on an island in the Rewa River Delta, a 40-minute drive east of Suva.  You cross over in a ferry.

If Lawai and Nakabuta appear as tranquil hideaways, then Nasilai is as idyll.  The secluded river setting sees to that.  Once duly welcomed, I was sat down on the village lawn.  Then came the pots, and with them my astonishment.

The first one was a water carrier; and what a whopper! Taller than the toddlers, its flagon-like shape was impossibly perfect, and its shoulder and neck embellished with mysterious geometric etchings and appliqué.  Its creator was my hostess, Maraia, who would also perform the demonstration.

This too was a revelation.  The young girls gathered around the potter, each with their own chunk of clay.  They imitated Maraia’s every move.  She soon produced two little pottery gems, plum ready for the firing.  The kids would fetch the kindling – dried coconut fronds and bamboo – as they previously had the water for the slip and the sand for binding.

I left feeling quite inspired.  Pottery making in Fiji serves to reinforce the strong bonds of community that exist within the village. We are told it is a dying art.  But my experiences told me otherwise.  In Lawai, Nakabuta and Nasilai it is thriving.  Let’s hope other villages catch on.

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There is a certain alchemy at work at Likuliku Lagoon Resort.  Factors that contribute to this unusual feeling of magic in the air include it’s neighbourly size and peerless location on a crescent of coralp-strewn sand.

Then there’s the undeniable cleverness of design – here we have Fiji’s first overwater bures, for startes – and a swishness to the interior décor that clearly indicates this is a place ensured entrée to lists of hot hotels and bibles of hip accommodation.

Fiji and hip are not expected bedmates.  What Australians have always loved about Fiji – despite the surprising regularity of coups and states of emergency, we still flock there – is its special variety of dagginess.  Along with the concept of bula time (as tensile as a rubber band, but without the snappiness), we have got used to the islands group’s carefree homeliness.  If Fiji has ultra-glam resorts set to attract lotus-eating A-listers, where will it all end?

For now, it stops very nicely at the Fijian-owned Likuliku Lagoon Resort, which opened in April.  Ahura Resorts, in association with Rosie Holidays, Fiji’s largest and best-known tour operator, is behind the development, which is the first of this scale in the Mamanuca islands, west of Nadi, since 1986.

Fijian-born managing director Tony Whitton talks about delivering “the quintessential Fijian holiday experience” and there has been a commitment to ensuring the resort doesn’t have that stripped-down, global village feel of being, at once, everywhere and nowhere.

Rosie Holidays also owns the mid-market Malolo Resort, around Naroba Point from Likuliku on Malolo Island.  On the western tip of the island is the village of Yarro, where the indigeous landowners and many of the resort staff live; guests can attend Methodist church service there, all starched shirts and soaring voices, on Sunday mornings.

Likuliku means sheltered waters in local dialect; here was an ancient safe harbour for war canoes and it’s a name that resonates with Fijian history and mythology.

Ironically, opening the resort has been a saga of battle-like proportions.  General manager Steve Anstey – formerly of Queensland resorts Lizard Island and Sea Temple Palm Cove, and Silky Oaks Lodge in the Daintree – has somehow kept a grip on his sanity amid bureaucratic impediments, environmental concerns (the cement poles sunk close to coral reefs to hold up the 10 overwater bures, a first for Fiji, were a sensitive engineering feat) and myriad delays.  And don’t get him started on the most recent coup.

Likuliku should have opened months earlier but sometimes crises can have silver linings.  In this case, the resort is running more efficiency than many newly launched ventures and the staff have all bonded in a family-like fashion.  The bula welcomes are particularly heartfelt, says Anstey, as his start are “so pleased to at last see real guests”.

The resort has a choice of those spacious overwater bures – with adjoining bathing pavilions; each is set well part in the lagoon, with bamboo screens for additional privacy – or 18 beachfront and 18 deluxe pool bures.

All the accommodation has sea views, is suite-sized, with roomy sitting areas, and brightly appointed.

Beachfront and deluxe pool bures, enclosed by glossy gardens and reached via crushed coral paths, although cheaper than the overwater bungalows, have real charm.  They feature indoor and outdoor showers and, on a deck by the beach, each has a cushioned and bolstered lounging pavilion (Bali meets the Mamanucas in a successful collision).

But those overwater bures are the star turns; the architects have taken as their reference point the equivalent style of stilted accommodation in French Polynesia and the Maldives.  Despite the generic tropical architecture, Likuliku’s bures are identifiably Fijian in feel, with local textiles and décor.

Dark timber floors are polished to a mirror gleam.  The high thatched ceilings, lacquered for finish and sturdiness, are pitched in the style of a paramount chief’s bure.

Walls are covered in a pale woven material, light fittings are of turned wood, wicker and tapa cloth, and the feel is organic, all in neutral tones with the occasional highlight of watery-pale celadon.

There’s no stinting on the luxury touches, from duckdown pillows and quality bedding to Pure Fiji toiletries in sweet fragrances such as coconut and starfruit.

The overwater bures have flat-screen television sets but there’s no reception; they are for DVD use only.  There’s a good selection on offer and one could do worse than watch Tom Hanks grow a beard and eat crabs and coconuts in Castaway, filmed a flipper’s throw away at Monuriki Island.

Two plate-glass windows are inset in each overwater bure’s bedroom floor so guests can look through to the coral gardens; it’s like snorkeling in an armchair.  The sun glinting on the water below shoots reflections into the room so it seems as if the air is liquefied.  The coral is not brightly coloured, but vivid blue fish whoosh in formation and starfish are dotted about as prettily as if posed.

A metal ladder leads from each bures lower deck and complimentary snorkeling equipment is provided; when the tide is out, we bob about for hours in clear aquamarine water of a holiday-perfect temperature.  There are snorkeling trips much farther afield on offer, too, including Sunflower Reef and nearby Honeymoon Island; divers have a choice of 44 sites around the Mamnuca group, from caves and pinnacles to a sunken B26 bomber from World War II.

The sea round Malolo Island ahs been declared a marine reserve, so this is aquatic heaven for lovers of water sports.  Poles topped with palm fronds are dotted about the reef to signify an official ceremony has taken place to confirm the marine sanctuary status.  The reef starts about 5m from shore, so this really is doorstep snorkeling.

What to do? Likuliku Lagoon’s beachside accommodation is strung along the sand and the overwater bures lie at the end of a runway-like pier, so just walking to and from the  main building (front desk, Fijiana restaurant, the Dua Tale bar, well-stocked boutique and TV lounge and library) provides incidental exercise, which is a good thing given the excellent standard of Australia chef Shane Watson’s cuisine.

My bird-spotting checklist includes white-collared kingfishers, reef herons and Fijian parrot finches, but y partner’s interest lies in the cocktail menu and Zack the barman is an enthusiastic purveyor of natty martinis and infused vodkas.  He makes sure every guest knows the name of the Dua Tale bar means “one more”.

My partner is also taken with the musicians who play ukelele and sing at mealtimes in the restaurant, and do a lot of hoisting of their sulu skirts and running up and down the pier to the reception islet to welcome and farewell guests.  “They are the highest paid members of staff as they have to be on duty almost around the clock.  There’s always a reason to sing,” Anstey laughs.

Their repertoire is wide, including country-and-western crooning and Fijian melodies to which Florence and the dining staff hum along.  But when we ask Terita, Kuli, Veta and Mesake what their group is called, there is some consternation and we are dismissed while they hold a summit.  A while later, Terita comes over to our dining table. “We are, as a matter of fact, the Bula Serenaders,” he announces.  Anstey says he likes the sudden new name and is amused by this sport of entrepreneurial endeavour. 

I have a feeling one could loll about Likuliku listening more or less forever to he Bula Serenaders and do nothing more strenuous than lurch from bar to dining table to bed.  But I am forgetting the possibility of climbing – the island’s tallest peak is 218m Uluisolo – and the likelier prospect of massages, facials and paradise sugar body glows in the Tatadra Spa.  The name means “house of dreams”, which is appropriate given that therapist Lucy and her colleagues seem adept at sending guests straight off to the land of nod.  It’s a smallish spa, in a double-fronted bure with a sea view, and the menu includes modish treatments such as stone massages and relexology; a 60-minute massage is $F90 ($AU67), which is reasonable by five-star resort standards.  Anstey recruited the spa manager from Port Douglas and it’s a professionally run facility, with Pure Fiji products featured in the treatments and not so much slickness that the therapists don’t giggle when guests do drift off and snuffle like contented pigs.

There are afternoon showers during our late May visit and soft rain glazes the landscape.  It is no hardship to stay indoors and stare across the sea to neighbouring islands shape-shifting in the mists.  We decide, in this utterly lazy state, that only two small things jar about Likuliku Lagoon: there is no room service, and the beachfront gad deluxe pool bures are all rather close together.  Horrors, we have forgotten to drop the blinds and can see the next-door neighbours; much more startling for them, we are looking in our underwear.  Things will be more private when the plantings grow and flowering hedges will provide natural barriers.

While listening to the plip-plop of water on to paddle-like leaves, we can hear giggling as housemaids walk past – we have left out do not disturb sign, which is not a boring door-handle card but a coconut half-shell – and the distant sound of the Bula Serenaders sending off guests with Isa Lei, the Fijian song of farewell.

The words of Isa Lei are in the guest compendium on our bure’s desk but we have no intention of learning them.  We certainly don’t want to anticipate saying goodbye. 

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Tori Spelling, 33, and actor-husband Dean McDermott, 39, had an intimate wedding ceremony at the posh Wakaya Club in Fiji.

No guests were invited to the beachside ceremony, which Spelling declared was exactly the way they wanted it.

The couple had a nine-day honeymoon in a $3,200-a-night villa at this magnificent private island, where the superb meals, taken in an open-air pavilion, are announced by lali drums.

More and more couples are looking to honeymoon in one of the few unspoiled magical places left in this world.

Once they discover the Fijian Islands, strung like pearls across the sapphire South Pacific, they are seduced. And who wouldn’t be? With its pristine beaches bordered by curving coconut palms, azure lagoons surrounded by colorful reef, and some of the world’s best snorkeling and scuba diving, Fiji is the perfect honeymoon destination.

The Vatulele Island Resort (www.vatulele.com) is the closest you may come to paradise.

It is a nirvana of barefoot elegance with 18 secluded thatched-roof villas.

All are exquisitely furnished and have king-sized beds, large bathrooms and spacious shaded terraces with hammocks.

Every kind of water sport is available, and the service is wonderful.

On an eco-friendly island jewel with a secluded coastline and a tropical rainforest sits the Jean-Michel Cousteau Fiji Islands Resort (www.fijiresort.com).

It is a knockout place with snorkeling, diving, fishing, tennis, volleyball and basketball as well as a private beach.

The food is excellent, and so is the service.

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Sian Lloyd emerges from her South Seas paradise "feeling like a nymphette out of The Blue Lagoon"

My arrival in Fiji was like no other.

After stepping off my faultless air newzealand flight and clearing customs, there came a veritable assault on the senses-warm fijian smiles, bright pink orchid garland and a melodic welcome sung in perfect harmony.

Best of all, a chauffeur transferred me from Nadi airport to the nearby Fiji Beach Resort and Spa manged by Hilton.

In half an Hour I was in my designer Villa with ocean views, tucked away on the Denarau Peninsula.

The day before, I’d beeen stuck in london traffic pannicking at the thought of missing a live broadcast.

Now the only thing I had to think about was which cocktail to order and whether to have a massage by the beach, the pool or in my room.

Later came the dining decisions. A mango-scented chicken and padi-style chiily rock lobstar at the waterfront restaurant? Or perhaps I could order a barbe cue pack through room service.

Not only would they cook the organic steakes for me but they also took care of the washing dash up.

Decisions, decisions...

I had no difficulty in deciding where to go after two days of sunbathing and effortless luxury.

An hours plane ride from Nadi to the town of Labasa and a thrilling 60 minutes along Vanua Levu’s north coast brought me to Nukubati Island, the ultimate South Sea escape.

With just seven bures- straw-roofed and quietly luxurious cabins- Nukubati has a sense of total seclusion.

Surrounded by a dazzling white sandy beach and a coral reef, its chill-out time.

I spent three happy-go-lucky days swimming, snorkelling, reading in my hammock and scoffing freshly caught seafood.

It’s like being on your own private island.

A 30 minute boat ride takes you to the Great Sea Reef

Nukubati Island is the only resort in Fiji with accesws to this vast underwater treasure and it’s the dive holiday of a lifetime.

Nukubati is especially sensitive to ecology.

The owners, Peter and Jenny Bourke, have built one of the largest solar power plants in the Pacific, so there’s an uninteruppted supply of electricity.

Fresh water is either filtered rain water or comes from their desalination plant.

Fruit and vegetables are organically grown on the island and meats come from free-range farms.

But it was time to cast myslef adrift and move on to Qamea Resort and Spa in sultry Northern Fiji.

Here the ambience is very different from Nukubati.

Not quite as homely but more tasteful and sophisticated- even the cuisine is a bit Californian.

It’s the only resort on Qamea Isalnd and set in 100 acres of tropical landscaped gardens, bushland and soaring jagged volcanic mountains.

The local villagers regularly visit for a special treat- meke.

This traditional Fijian ceremony is am ix of dance and beautiful singing, interspersed with copius amounts of kava drinking

This potent alcoholic drink numbs your mouth- and brain- and is the closest I’ll ever come to doing drugs!

Typical meke songs and dance depict the journey the Fijian ancestors took across the big ocean in search of a homeland, as well as significant battles, joys and tears.

Another must at this resort is a trip to the Bouma Falls.

. Here I swam under three spectucular waterfalls cascading through lush rainforest and managed to convince myself I was a nymphette straight out of the film The Blue Lagoon.

But that’s what Fiji does to you.

The highlight of the resort for me- apart from the cool Egyptian cotton sheets in my beautiful bure- was the beachfront spa.

I’ve had some massages in my time, but none to compared to Fijian ones.

Maybe it was the backdrop of a long white sandy beach, the lapping of the ocean, or the sea breezes caressing my face.

Or perhaps the Pure Fiji products lulled me into a sense of total wellbeing.

Whatever the reason, I think it’s the only time in my life I have ever switched off one hundred per cent.

Time, evn Fiji time, caught up with me.

Matagi Island was just a short boat trip away and this was where I would spend the last three nights of my time in paradise.

If Nukubati was cosy and Qamea elegant, Matagi Resort, set on a 240- acre private estate, was the essence of everything wonderful and authnentic about Fiji.

The island boasts cliffs which are part of a collapsed volcanic crater and are spectucular when viewed close up from the sea.

The Douglas family, who own the resort, took me on a boat tour to view them, stopping for a picnic in Matagi’s Horseshoe Bay, recently listed in 1000 Places To See Before You Die by travel author Patricia Schultz.

The next day, I visited a nearby village where the chiefs were hosting a party to celebrate the buliding of a new school library.

It was another heady mix of haunting melodies, perfumed orchids and lashing of kava.

Our group was inivited to the Lovo traditional feast where food is cooked on the hot rocks under the ground.

We baked pork and fish, meat-stuffed taro leaves and onions cooked in coconut cream, roast sweet potatoes and breadfruit

Pudding was coconut cake and bananas baked in coconut milk. Delicious.

And at least I managed to walk off the calories by bush hiking among the fragrant ginger plants back at the resort.

Unlike the Oz, there are no harmful spiders or land snakes here.

On the day I left for the airport, I even managed a quick visit to the international Dateline on the island of Taveuni- one of the world’s few places on dry land where you can actually have a foot in each day

I bumped into the Auatralian billionaire who not only owns Red Bull but also a nearby island and he tried to persuade me to stay there when I came back to Fiji!

And one thing is certain, I will go back. In fact, I had withrawal symptons when I returned to London.

I found myself paying crazy prices for bottled Fiji water in organic supermarkets and hunting down Pure Fiji products on the net.

Like my homeland Wales.

Fiji really is the land of Song.

The harmonies are perfect and heady and so easy on the ear.

Even the rugby palyers sing.

It’s a beautiful people with warm hearts.

My Welsh is better than my Fijian, but I know hot to say Thank You, I’ll be right back... Vinakaa Vakalevu Na Gade Mai Fiji!

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Sasha Bates loses her heart to a Fijian island where the locals say they are pleased to meet you – and mean it.

I am not a plane-lover.

And I particularly do not like planes that hold only six people, are powered by ridiculously tiny propellers, and are under the control of a pilot who never stops laughing.

So my flight to Taveuni, one of Fiji’s more northerly islands, did not start well and I cursed my husband for yet another stupid idea.

Ten minutes later when I dared to open my eyes, I fell instantly in love.

Back in love with my husband, yes, but importantly with Fiji.

As we flew just above the water, the sheer beauty of these islands floating in their turquoise seas hit me with full force; it was a scenic joyride of such loveliness that fear was banished.

More incredible still was the aerial view of the worlds third largest coral reef in all its splendour – weird and the wonderful shapes promising hours of exotic snorkeling.

Taveuni is the third largest of Fijis 340 islands and its reef has some of the best diving in the world.

It also has world- class fishing sites, boasting huge barracuda, walu, yellow fin tuna and more, and it is a magnet for birdwatchers, thanks to both the variety of species and their rarity values.

There were herons, hawks, parrots, orange doves, kingfishers and even a type of pigeon that barks rather than sings.

This plethora of natural attributes means that most of the islands visitors are divers, fisherman or twitches, all of whom who have a vested interested in making sure that the island remains pure and unchanged.

Taveuni has only four resorts, all of them small and family-run and everyone knows everyone else... including you.

Total strangers greet you by name, ask how you are enjoying your stay, or tell you that their sister is the chef at your resort.

They shook our hands, introduced themselves and said how pleased they were to meet us.

And they did it all in a way that made us believe it.

Our first experience of this Fijian hospitality was at the tiny landing strip.

(it hardly qualifies for the name airport) when we were met by Tomasi, a huge Fijian in a ridiculously loud shirt who could barely stop chuckling long enough to tell us that the drive to Taveuni lake resort would take all of two minutes.

Sure enough three minutes later, we were sitting in the resort’s outdoor dining room, admiring the incredible view of the glistening ocean, the beach below, and the infinity pool, and being served a tropical breakfast, a mouth-watering precursor to the gourmet meals with which we were to be plied throughout our stay.

We were staying at on of the resort’s 12 bures, a fantasy cottage made of local timber, with floor-to-ceiling windows.

Beautifully furnished with tropical decor, it included many a reason to remain prone for the length of the stay – sumptuous sofas, four-poster bed and, on the veranda an unbelievable view, huge sun-loungers.

But I was itching to get in among the coral.

The hotel offered to organize a boat trip to one of the many famous dive sites, but I chose to wander down to the beach and was rewarded with the best snorkeling I have ever know, hard and soft coral of myriad bright colors and a huge array of fish.

When my digits shriveled beyond recognition I helped myself to a kayak on the beach and continued perusing the coral from above.

Tempting though it was never to leave, I allowed myself to be talked into seeing a bit more of the island.

It is tiny, only 26 miles long and 71/2 miles wide and not even all of that is habitable.

The east coast is wide, rugged and impenetrable.

The resort did offer to hire a boat so we could see it from the sea, describing it as huge cliffs, punctuated with cascading water falls, but we declined, fearing the effect on our stomachs.

The road that follows the calmer west coast is paved for only the ten miles or so that run between the airport and the tiny town.

The rest is a dirt track, which we followed to its northern end.

It was not just the bumpiness of the road that made this a slow journey.

There was the unscheduled stop to let a family of piglets cross in front of us, and also the fact that a driver slowed to wave at almost every person we passed "that is my cousin doing spear fishing... that is my neighbour washing her clothes in the stream… those are my children’s friends playing on the side of the road..."

The end of the road having finally been attained, we continued on foot along a coastal path, with views over the beaches to our left, magnificent rainforest to our right

Our knowledgeable guide filled us in on all the remedies the locals derived from the bark and leaves of the various tree.

After and easy couple of hours, this entertaining nature walk culminated with our arrival at a water hole filled by magnificent waterfalls pouring in from either side.

The water was not warm but it was clear and fresh and full of fish, and it was impossible to pass up the opportunity of having such a wonderful place all to ourselves.

Swimming as close as I dared to the raging falls I realised that I was in a microcosm of Taveuni itself, a totally natural place, unspoilt, beautiful – and great fun.

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