Nature’s Way – Travel Fiji

Rising steam blanketed the land as the combination of the previous night’s torrential rain and the morning’s intensifying heat made its presence felt. From the top of Fiji’s Sigatoka Sand Dunes, the effect was eerie, as if a great re burned just beneath the earth. The feeling was heightened by our recent passage through the Driodrio Forest where, as our guide Simon Naruma informed us, local legend has it that souls gather before they depart for the afterlife.

Sigatoka town, on the banks of the river of the same name, lay all but hidden among the greenery and mist, only identifiable by the Hindu temple towering over the trees. In the other direction, a swell battered the beach below. The famous dunes, in the foreground, were wind-sculpted into gentle undulations, almost sensuous against the severity of the surf.

The violence of the waves makes the dunes immensely important. In stark contrast to much of the shore in this part of southern Viti Levu – called the Coral Coast, with its wide light-blue band bordered for miles and miles by breakers in the distance – there is no reef here to protect the shore from the hungry waves.