Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Lal's Curry Place
888 0705.
Tiny Indian restaurant with home-style cooking served from
the wooden veranda of Mrs Lal's house. It's a bit hard to find, tucked down a driveway op-
posite the supermarket, but the chatty Mrs Lal cooks the finest curries in the north. She will
also offer deliveries if you call a few hours in advance.
Mon-Sat dinner only.
Restaurant Tramonto
888 2224.
Perched on a hilltop at the southernmost point of
Matei, this pizza restaurant offers the most spectacular waterside dining in Fiji from a wooden
veranda overlooking the placid waters of the Somosomo Straits. The pizzas are thin crusted
and delicious (from F$30) and there's a bar serving cocktails.
Daily 10am-9pm.
Vunibokoi Restaurant
At Tovu Tovu Resort 888 0560.
Resort restaurant specializing
in delicious Fijian food, with mains starting at F$15. The creamy
rourou
(vegetable leaf)
soup is divine, and there's usually fresh
qari
(crab) and
kari
(prawns) cooked in
lolo
(coconut
cream). They also offer home-made burgers for the less adventurous.
Daily 7am-2pm &
6-9pm.
The offshore islands
The three offshore islands of
Qamea
,
Matangi
and
Laucala
, scattered across the deep Tas-
man Straits from Matei, possess some of the best private island resorts in Fiji. Almost 30km
north of Taveuni, the remote
Ringgold Islands
pop out of the horizon, just about visible from
Matei on a clear day.
THE RINGGOLD ISLANDS
Almost 30km northwest from Taveuni, the remote
Ringgold Islands
are a collection of
small islands supporting thousands of breeding
seabirds
, including the red-footed booby
and black noddy on Vetaua island. The only inhabitants live on rolling Yanuca island where
farming is viable. To visit these enchanting islands you need to join the
Tui Tai Adventure
Cruise
which spends a day exploring the sunken crater of Cobia Island with hiking and
snorkelling in the lagoon.
Nuku
, an atoll surrounded by tiny coral islets, has some of the
finest white sand in Fiji, where hundreds of sea turtles lay their eggs between September
and January.
Qamea
Just over 2km offshore,
Qamea
is the closest and largest of the islands, with a rugged coast-
line and hilly peaks thick with tropical forest. It boasts a picturesque beach although note that
it's exposed to the strong southeasterly trade winds between May and October. Much of the
island is freehold land and there are no roads.
Matangi
Matangi
was purchased in 1853 by the Mitchell family, planters from England, who farmed
copra here for over a century. The Mitchells' fifth-generation descendants have turned the is-
