Bula Bula Fiji Me

This six-minute promo video is intended to convince Australian travel agents to book their clients on Fiji holidays. In most parts of the world, such a film would be a poor introduction to a country, but Fiji is a magical place where dreams become reality. Even those on the barest of budgets will experience much of the fun shown here.

Savusavu Fiji Airport Closing

Savusavu Airport on Vanua Levu, Fiji, will close on July 14, 2008, for four months of reconstruction work. Those who have flown into Savusavu in past may have noticed that the runway is rather short, with the ocean at one end and a hill at the other. Presumably, it will be lengthened at the expense of the lagoon. There haven’t been any major accidents at this airport as yet, although an Air Fiji Twin Otter swerved off the runway in 1983 and plowed into a fence. No one was injured. In 2005 the wing of a Sun Air Twin Otter hit an Air Fiji aircraft parked in front of the terminal, prompting the aviation authorities in Fiji to prohibit more than one aircraft on the ground at a time.

With tourism to Savusavu growing fast, the current upgrading was urgently required. The present terminal building is little more than a shed next to the Hibiscus Highway, three kilometers east of Savusavu town. Until the facility reopens around the end of this year, all Vanua Levu flights are to be diverted to Labasa Airport, 10 kilometers southwest of the city of Labasa on the north coast. This means that persons flying to the popular resorts around Savusavu are now looking at a two-to-three-hour ground transfer upon arrival rather than the usual 10-minute taxi ride. On the plus side, the drive from Labasa to Savusavu is one of the most scenic in Fiji and the mountain road is in excellent shape.

Personally, I rarely use Savusavu Airport when visiting Vanua Levu as the overnight ferry connection to/from Suva is good and inexpensive. You’ll need to reserve a few days in advance if you want a cabin, but aircraft-style seating in the first class lounge on the ferries is usually available. I just spread my mat on the carpeted floor and go to sleep.

Zip Fiji Takes Off

Pacific Harbour on the south coast of Viti Levu, Fiji, is a world class scuba diving and whitewater rafting center. Now Zip Fiji is offering 1.5-hour rides on a series of eight cable runs through the rainforest canopy. Clients securely attacked to lines up to 200 meters long can attain speeds of 60 kilometers an hour as they zip between platforms from seven to 45 meters high. This sport was invented in Costa Rica, and in 2008 Zip Fiji became the first canopy tour operator in the South Pacific. The rides take place at Wainadoi village, 20 km east of Pacific Harbour, and transportation from the Arts Village is included in the $120 Fijian price ($60 for children under 12). You can save 10 percent by booking online through the website. There are six tours a day and it’s quite a thrill.

Tonga-Samoa Now Online

The complete text of Tonga-Samoa Handbook is now freely accessible on Google Books. You can scroll through all 321 pages, or use the "Contents" button to jump directly to a specific chapter. You can search inside the book, or reach the index by typing 315 in the "Page" box and clicking enter. When you’ve found a topic you want to check, type the specific page number in the "Page" box again and click enter to go to the exact spot.

Be aware, however, that this first edition dates from 1999. Much of the background information on Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa, and Niue is still relevant, but some of the practical information is now outdated. Unfortunately, sales of Tonga-Samoa Handbook were low due to the limited market and I was unable to convince Moon Handbooks to produce a second edition. For more recent hotel and restaurant listings from the same countries, consult the 2004 edition of Moon Handbooks South Pacific which is also on Google Books. Both guidebooks have found a second life on the web.

Pacific Magazine Ceases Publication

The July-August 2008 issue of Pacific Magazine will be the last. After 32 years, the Hawaii-based news magazine will cease to be a print publication. Publisher Floyd K Takeuchi cited flat circulation, rising postal costs, and competition from the internet as reasons for Pacific’s demise. The magazine intends to carry on as a web-only news portal, but online it will be competing with dozens of other South Pacific internet news sites while as a print publication its sole competitor was Fiji-based Islands Business.

The loss of Pacific Magazine is a sad landmark in the history of Pacific journalism. Pacific’s coverage of events in Micronesia and American Samoa was unsurpassed, and their format was visually pleasing. Departments like High Tide, Pac Notes, Air + Sea, Stuff We Like, Pac Travel, and People Briefs contained little gems of information not found elsewhere. The photography was excellent, making each issue a joy to peruse. And for readers in US postal zones, the subscription rate was much lower than that of Islands Business.

Of course, Pacific Magazine’s situation is not unique. Newspapers and magazines worldwide are hemorrhaging readers and advertising revenue to the internet. Travel guidebooks are also feeling the pinch as people surf for free information. Moon Handbooks South Pacific was discontinued after 28 years when the cost of production exceeded income from book sales. Only amateurs work for free, and much of the travel information currently on the web is the unedited and incomplete work of amateurs. Most of the rest is paid advertising.

I sincerely hope Pacific Magazine’s advertisers stick with them online so they can continue covering the Pacific islands as they have up until now. Nevertheless, I’m going to miss the printed magazine which I’ve indexed and used as a primary reference for three decades. My thanks to editor Samantha Magick and publisher Floyd Takeuchi for all their hard work, and I wish them every success in their new web-only format.

Write to Travel Interview

I’ve been interviewed by Write to Travel, a blog intended for those interested in a career in travel writing. I explain how I got started as a guidebook writer, tell about my first big break, provide advice for those just starting out, and reveal a few tricks of the trade.

Google Books South Pacific

The entire text of the eighth edition of Moon Handbooks South Pacific is now accessible on Google Books. You can scroll down through the 1,091 pages or click the Contents link to jump to a specific section. Buttons at the top of the page allow you zoom in, view two pages at a time, or switch to full screen. From the righthand column, you can search inside the book. Moon Handbooks South Pacific is rich in detail and you’ll find specific information on thousands of islands.

Anyone seriously interested in the Pacific islands will want Moon Handbooks South Pacific in their library and the “buy this book” links on the Google Books page make it easy to order online. At US$16.47 from Amazon.com, this fully indexed handbook is a bargain. A ninth edition will not be published for reasons explained in South Pacific Handbook RIP, so don’t bother waiting for the new edition because it isn’t going to happen. I’ve given Google Books permission to post my book on their website to make its full contents easily accessible to people the world. Downloading, copying, saving, or printing out pages from Google Books is restricted as Moon Handbooks South Pacific is protected copyright.

The Semi-Invisible Man

Julian Evans may be known to some readers of this blog as the author of the 1993 travel book Transit of Venus, an account of a journey to the heart of the US nuclear-missile testing programme in the Pacific. Julian’s second book, The Semi-Invisible Man: A Life of Norman Lewis, will be released on July 22, 2008, to mark the centenary of Norman Lewis. This biography will send readers hurrying to the books of an overlooked master.

Graham Greene described Norman Lewis as "one of the best writers not of any particular decade, but of our century". He was perhaps the best not-famous writer of his generation, and certainly a better writer than most who were. He was not-famous because of an English prejudice: because critics who judged his works of travel and non-fiction as ultimately inferior to the yardstick of artistic genius represented by the novel ignored the truth that over four decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s, he wrote books that have survived better than all but a handful of novels.

His account of south-east Asia before the Vietnam war, A Dragon Apparent, remains required reading. Voices of the Old Sea, a glimpse of pre-tourist Spain, is a classic in the literature of the Mediterranean. His memoir of wartime Naples, Naples ’44, about the time he spent as an Intelligence officer in the occupied city, is a masterpiece. To label him a travel writer would be a mistake – he was a suburban fugitive and adventurer and a unique witness to the twentieth century.

Lewis was born on June 28, 1908, the son of a north London pharmacist, and died in 2003 at ninety-five. A natural daredevil, his hunger for adventure began in the inauspicious setting of suburban England. He went on to race Bugattis before the war, lived in Ibiza after it, and was a crack shot, flamboyant host, and businessman with mafia connections, leading a life of such self-pleasing hedonism that his existence at times was closer to a rock star’s than anyone else’s.

For more than twenty years he used his expertise at penetrating the glorious, and inglorious, surfaces of our planet to spy for the British government (Ian Fleming was one of his controllers – and admirers). In appearance he was someone you could pass in the street without realising anyone had gone by, yet his self-effacing quality, which allowed him to observe unnoticed, concealed extraordinary glamour. In Julian Evans’ essential biography, Lewis is shown to be an inimitable figure: prophet, revolutionary stylist, master storyteller of the modern world, the Defoe of our times.

Airline Fuel Costs Jump

With oil priced well over $100 a barrel, airlines worldwide are reeling. Air Pacific had budgeted $45 million for increased fuel prices this year but the real cost is now estimated at $105 million above last year’s cost, an unforeseen shortfall of $60 million. Fuel now accounts for over 40 percent of Air Pacific’s expenditure, a staggering $800,000 a day or $300 million a year. Soaring fuel prices played a major role in the bankrupcy of Hawaii’s Aloha Airlines earlier this year and many other airlines may soon be forced to merge or cease operations altogether.

Well managed carriers like Air Pacific are able to economize somewhat by adjusting their schedules and aircraft types, but rising ticket prices are inevitable. Beginning May 26, 2008, Air New Zealand will be charging three percent more for all flights to the South Pacific. This is on top of a previous three percent increase announced by Air New Zealand in March. There’s no known alternative to oil as a fuel for jet aircraft, and like peak oil, peak mass tourism could come sooner than most of us expect. Getting to the South Pacific is destined to become a lot more expensive in future years.

Moai of Easter Island

This short film in the Pacifica series by British traveler Simon Bradfield introduces the mysterious moai or living faces of Easter Island. Around 1,000 of these giant stone statues remain on Rapa Nui today, nearly half of them in the quarry at Rano Raraku. All were toppled by the islanders themselves soon after the arrival of Europeans, but many have since been re-erected by archaeologists.