Fiji's hidden harbour — natural hot springs on the waterfront, copra-plantation yachting culture, and the most authentic market on Vanua Levu
Savusavu is the main town on Vanua Levu — Fiji's second-largest island, 60km north of Viti Levu across the Koro Sea. The town wraps around a sheltered natural harbour (one of the finest anchorages in the South Pacific, which is why it has become the primary yachting hub for transpacific passages stopping in Fiji) with a Copra Shed Marina, a bustling morning market (one of the most genuine in Fiji — no tourist modifications), and natural hot springs that bubble up directly from the volcanic earth on the waterfront — the local sellers heat their lunchtime food by suspending it on ropes in the b…
Vanua Levu was colonised by the British as a copra (dried coconut meat, the source of coconut oil) plantation economy in the 19th century; the plantation infrastructure (copra sheds, deep-water wharves, Indian indentured labour, later free Indian settlement) shaped the island's character. Savusavu's current Copra Shed Marina building was an actual copra processing facility from the colonial period, now converted to a marina and tourism facility while maintaining its original architecture. The Indian Fijian community (descendants of indentured labourers brought by the British from the 1870s to…