Nadi & Denarau

Nadi is the front porch of the South Seas: the crossroads airport where half the Pacific changes planes, a sugar-and-market town under the profile of the Sleeping Giant mountains, and the marina gate from which the Mamanuca and Yasawa islands — the Fiji of every screensaver — lie an easy morning's boat away. The town's own crown is unexpected: the Sri Siva Subramaniya temple, a color-stacked Dravidian tower that is the southern hemisphere's grandest, serving Fiji's Indian heritage since the sugar years.

The traveller greets the temple barefoot and clockwise; browses the produce market where kava root is weighed like treasure; soaks in Sabeto's warm mud pools under the Giant's chin and rinses in the orchid garden next door; learns the tanoa bowl's etiquette at a village kava ceremony — clap once, drink whole, clap thrice —; and then does what Nadi exists for: a morning boat to the reef islands, where the water runs turquoise scales no card ever oversold.

The Guide's practical counsel: 'bula' opens every door in the country — use it constantly and mean it —; May to October is the dry, bright season, and the warm months carry a cyclone watch the forecasts flag honestly; dress modestly and remove hats in villages, where courtesy is constitution; the islands run on booked boats, so lock the morning transfers; and Suva, the capital of government and rugby rain, waits across the island for travellers with a second Fijian chapter in them.