Fiji's real capital — muddy, lively, genuinely Fijian, and nothing like the resort brochures
Suva is the antidote to Fiji's resort-island fantasy — a real working Pacific capital with good curry, a raucous municipal market, the finest museum in the South Pacific, and a downtown that hums with buses and street food well into the evening. The Fiji Museum holds one of the world's best collections of Pacific artefacts including the sailing canoe that brought the first Tongans to Fiji. It rains a lot in Suva, and that is entirely the point.
Suva replaced Levuka as Fiji's capital in 1882 under British colonial rule, chosen for its deep harbour suitable for larger ships. Fiji was ceded to Britain in 1874 after a period of inter-tribal warfare, and the colonial government transformed Suva into the administrative centre for British interests across the western Pacific. Fiji gained independence in 1970; two military coups in 1987 and a further two in 2000 and 2006 have repeatedly disrupted democracy, with ethnic tensions between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians (descendants of indentured labourers brought from India in the 1870s–1…