Levuka Travel Guide

Introduction

Fiji's Eastern Division consists of the Lomaviti Group of islands lying east of Viti Levu and south of Vanua Levu. On the largest of these, ruggedly beautiful Ovalau, some 32km (20 miles) off Viti Levu, Levuka was Fiji's first European-style town, and it still looks much as it did during its heyday before the government moved to Suva in 1882. In contrast to Suva, Levuka remains a charming example of what South Pacific towns were like in the 1870s.

Indeed, you may think you've slipped into the "Twilight Zone" as you stroll through Levuka, which has been nominated as Fiji's first World Heritage Site. Everything here seems to be from a century earlier: ramshackle dry-goods stores with false fronts, clapboard houses with tin roofs to keep them dry and shaded verandas to keep them cool, and round clocks in the baroque tower of Sacred Heart Catholic Church that seem to have stopped over a hundred years ago. Where the regular streets end, "step streets" climb to more houses up near...