Most Beautiful Places In Fiji Islands | Travel Documentary | Island Adventure

Fiji, an archipelago located in the Pacific Ocean. Of its more than 300 islands, only about 100 are inhabited. In these parts, life rolls along to the lazy rhythm of the long ocean swell. There are three colors to the Fijis. The white of the long beaches, the turquoise blue of the lagoons, and the green of the jungle. And rugby is a religion here. Frank, a rugby coach, chose to combine the easy life of the islands with his passion for the oval ball. He combs the villages of the outlying islands, hoping to discover the rare gem of Fijian rugby. Hana is a surfing champion. She and her friend Ise are in search of the perfect wave. Their quest will take them all the way to Cloud Break, one of the most beautiful waves in the world. For Hana, the ocean is her lifeblood. Manasa lives in Benga, an unspoiled atoll where the traditional rituals form the bedrock of the community. In the shelter of the barrier reef, just a stone's throw from the village, Manasa goes diving with his son Toombi to feed their guardian angels, the shark gods. I live in a very little paradise, you know. I don't want to stay overseas, Australia, America, maybe France or Europe. I like my little world. It looks like this. No big, no small. I live this in my heart. The Fiji Islands, located in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, are isolated from the rest of the world. Situated 2,000 kilometres north of New Zealand and about 3,000 kilometres east of Australia, these volcanic islands are made up of mountains covered with tropical forest. It's a corner of the world where time has never mattered, perhaps because the weather is so clement all year round. Before Christianity, many people in Fiji believed that they need a guardian. We're supposed to have a guardian. That is before Christianity. So many people in Fiji, they choose different types of nature. They choose nature, like a little mountain, ocean, moon, sun. But the people from my village, they choose sharks to be their sea god. So the story goes like that. We believe that the sharks in the oceans, those are our guardian. As soon as we jump in the water, we don't have any fear because the same guardian is looking after us. You know, ocean, they rule the ocean, right? Sharks rule the ocean. They balance the ocean. Okay, when we jump in the water to meet them, we respect them. Manasa Bulivu has been diving under the protection of his shark gods every day for the last 15 years. These turquoise waters were part of his childhood and his first dive was a revelation. Ever since, he has been doing his best to preserve this underwater realm and protect the coral barrier reef. Every weekend, Manasa takes his family to the island of Benga, where he was born, across from the main island. The ferry does a daily run and takes two hours to make the crossing. Everyone on the boat knows Manasa. They even call him Papa. He holds a very important position in his community. He is the village spokesman. Rukua is a little village like so many others in the Fijis. A few houses by the lagoon, coconut trees, no roads, no stores, and villagers enjoying the good life. That is my village. This is where I was raised. This is from my ancestor, my great-great-grandfather. And until today, I have a family and this is my home. My son, my daughter, they're all born in this village. I found my beautiful wife in this village. So I don't have to go away. Everything is right there. And the ocean behind me, that is our resources. And we respect the animal in the ocean because we believe that we are one. So it is like a freedom paradise. This is nobody want to leave. We want to stay here forever. Yes. I have a little bit of a heart problem. In 2007, I was in hospital. And since then, my whole life changed. It's changed completely. I choose the way to be a very honest Christian. You know, to worship the mighty God. And I'm very proud to be a preacher and look after a church. The everlasting life is only given by the master himself. By God himself. By the Lord Jesus himself. No one can give this life. It's only him himself. In the Fiji Islands, Sunday is a day devoted to prayer. Several families have come by boat from the island's other villages to attend Manasa's services. Afterwards, the parishioners stay to share a meal together. It's a traditional way to share. Like Fiji, the standard of living is low. So most of the family doesn't have a source of income. So that's why we share. The more we give, the more we get. This morning, they're preparing for a traditional ceremony in the forest. The young men of this island have a special gift. Walking barefoot over burning stones. The fire walk. Tunbi, Manasa's son, is going to participate for the first time. Long time waiting. I've been waiting for a long time. 26 years now. I moved to the mainland when I was small. Just a small boy. And now today I'm here to do the fire walk. It's good. I'm very excited about this. Tunbi must present himself before the sacred fire with a pure heart. And for that, there are a few rules to respect. He's been very honest with the promise. No coconut for four nights and no woman for four nights. It's really tough for the young people. No woman for four nights. I told the priest, I think two nights is okay. But the priest said, oh, four nights. The stones have been heating in the fire pit for five hours. The ceremony can begin. The men are totally concentrated. They're invoking the spirits and asking them for the ancestral power that only the village inhabitants possess. We walked on fire. Yeah, no pain. The stones felt cold. It's the power of the fire walk. We gather it here and we use it to walk over the stones. On the island of Benga, legends and the supernatural encroach on reality. Manasa is proud of his son who has braved the sacred fire and stones for the first time. Tunbi loves diving just as much as his father. Today, like every day, they're going to see their second family, the sharks. So I'm just about to get ready to introduce myself to the underwater world. Most of the animals, they know me very well the last 15 years. So still I have to use this. They know Papa very well. I feel great because when I put my wetsuit on, my fins, my mask with a tank behind me to enter that world down there, it's something that's in my heart. I know because in the underwater world, there is my guardian there. He looks after myself, my son. The life is very different down there because you see the fish. They don't know anything about the war, about what is going on up here. They're very friendly. So I want to put myself just like them. Since he had his heart attack, Manasa doesn't dive more than a few meters down. Tunbi has taken over from his father. He has a rendezvous in the depths with other sharks, the bulldogs. Manasa shares his life between these two worlds. On land, he's actively involved in the community of Rukua. He's one of the pillars of the village. In the depths, he's the privileged witness and guardian of an underwater realm. Manasa knows that these two worlds are inextricably linked and complementary. We want to keep this bay and this place as it is. As you can see, there is no building, no cars, no boat, just us. And we want to keep the population of my village as low as we are. In another 10, 15 years time, I believe in my heart, this place will be still the same. And then we will pass it over to our generation to come when I will be old. My grandchildren, you go there and use the land. I think we should go bow breaking. There's waves, but it's trying. I think it's probably high tide and the swell is probably not big enough. Hannah Bennett and Issei Tukovu are two of the best surfers in the Fijis. They spend days on end in search of the best waves. It's good to, you know, envision yourself before you're out surfing and hopefully it'll be some fun waves. So, yeah, concentrate, but surfing is fun, you know, not too serious. It's for fun. Yeah, so there's my wax, check my fins, make sure they're on tight. Hannah, who's 22 years old, is a surfing champion. She competes under the Fijian flag in international meets and she recently won the Melanesian Cup, a meet open to the best surfers of this part of the Pacific Ocean. It takes one wave to fall in love with surfing, but it also takes one wave to just completely not want to do it again. But when you fall in love with it, it's so worth it. It's, you know, words can't really describe it. You forget about the paddling, how hard it is. You forget about, you know, almost drowning sometimes just for that feeling because it's very in the moment and it's very intimate with the ocean, with nature. Hannah grew up in Rotuma, a remote group of islands in the northern Fijis. Her life goes from one side of the Pacific to the other, from California, where she's finishing up a degree in international trade, to Fiji, where she has her roots and comes to recharge her batteries. Earth is the water planet. It's everything, you know, it's all around us, it's in us. Physically, you can't live without water, but also mentally, I don't think I could live without being surrounded by the ocean. As a person, I need water. I need the ocean to mentally be healthy and stay sane in a way. I could never live in the desert or inland or in cities for years at a time. Wherever I go, you know, it's always based off of where the ocean is going to be. To set sail on the high seas, an adventure that has always inspired humanity. Ever since the dawn of time, the most daring souls have challenged the horizon in search of new lands. It's generally thought that migration to the islands of the Pacific proceeded gradually, starting in southern China. The men and women who would discover the largest ocean on earth first made a sojourn for several generations in Taiwan. Their most intrepid descendants pressed onward to what is now the Philippines and Indonesia. Sailing from island to island, those adventurers explored the Pacific in the hope of conquering unknown lands. Those mariners opened new routes towards virgin territory. Once they had settled Vanuatu, they were within 800 kilometers of the Fiji Islands. The Fijian people have their distant roots in a group of exceptional seafarers. In 2011, a German philanthropist decided to revive that epic journey in his own way. He built several traditional sailing canoes to undertake a sea odyssey across the Pacific to California. Hannah followed the expedition very closely. She was even a crew member when this boat first took to sea off the coast of Fiji. Angelo, a skilled sailor, quite naturally became skipper of this mythical craft, the Uto Niyalo, heart of the spirit. There were seven canoes like this, all the same, different islands, like Samoa, Tahiti had one, New Zealand had two. So we sailed as a fleet, just raising awareness and trying to prove that what our ancestors did, we can still do it. You know, we proved that we don't need fuel to travel so far and we did it, you know. The voyage was 20 months in total, days in the sea. The longest we were out there was 31. No land, no TV, nothing. Yeah, just looking at a lot of flying fish and that's pretty much it. These latter-day seafarers accomplished the entire crossing without the help of any navigational instruments, just like their ancestors. No charts, no GPS, no sextant. The sailors on board were armed with no more than their daring, their keen intuition and the stars to guide them across these vast expanses. That knowledge is being lost now. Only a handful of people, they know it. So one guy in Satawal, in Micronesia, he taught five people. His wish was for that five to teach more. So we were lucky we had three of the five on the voyage. Yeah, that was a big part of people's lives back then, you know. Our ancestors, this is what they did. And to see it, you know, unfold and people try to practice it the same way is a beautiful thing. It's reviving our culture again and it's reminding the next generations of who we are. Every time Hana comes back to the Fijis to train, she connects with Ize. He's like a big brother, but he's also an exceptional surfer who knows these islands better than anyone else. To get out to the open sea and the rollers, Hana and Ize have to cross a vast mangrove swamp, a sort of natural passage from the world of land dwellers to the realm of the surfers. Cloudbreak is one of the most beautiful waves in the world. It's like an El Dorado for surfers. Every year, the world's surfing elite comes here for a prestigious international meet. The jury officiates from a stand built right in the sea facing the legendary wave. For me, the perfect wave is a feeling. That's very hard, I think, when you're surfing. It's very in the moment and it goes by so fast sometimes you don't appreciate or you can only reflect on it after you've surfed the wave. For me, the perfect wave is being able to actually recognize that feeling as you're surfing the wave. So a nice, long, good-sized wave that as you're surfing it, you're aware of how good the feeling is. Yeah, nice babe. It's very easy to shoot waves in Fiji. The waves are so nice here. The light is perfect. Water is blue. You don't have to be a very good photographer to take great photos here. It's really easy. Look at this place. It's beautiful all by itself. Surfers form their own tight-knit community and Stuart is a well-known figure at Cloudbreak. Beautiful. Come have a look at your shots. So many sick ones. Look at this shot. You're gonna freak out. This is like a magazine cover. Check this out. These waves have traveled for thousands of miles from a storm here, off Antarctica, all across the ocean and you wait for them. And then you ride their energy and you can feel the whole energy of the ocean go through your body. And you forget every worry of the world. You can't pay for that. There's no drug. There's no therapy you can do that is better than surfing. It's like being hugged by the entire ocean. It's a really great feeling. Surfers don't pit themselves against the ocean and the waves. They strive to become their accomplices and play with the elements in order to reach a state of pure pleasure. To become one with the forces of nature. A challenge that one throws down only to oneself. You feel very vulnerable but very powerful at the same time. You know, sometimes I'm the biggest scaredy cat out there. I'm terrified. But that's when I feel most alive. The ocean is like my second home. You know, we're brought up around the ocean and nature and you just learn to adapt a lot to your surroundings and that's a great skill to have. This is where I was born and raised and I wouldn't have it any other way. This is my home base. I mean, everywhere I go, it's almost as if it makes me appreciate Fiji even more and it makes it just as special. There were a lot of sailors in my family. My great-uncles, my uncles. They sailed the South Pacific a lot and they brought back a lot of souvenirs that would just stir our imagination. And in particular, when we were little, my brother and I had a book on Tahiti and Polynesia with a picture of an island girl on the beach and she was bare-breasted. It was really quite alluring. That's what set me to dreaming about the South Pacific ever since. It's a bit of a cliché but it's the honest truth. Frank Boisvert is heading for Bukama, a village in the Yasawa Islands isolated in the northwest of the Fijis. Frank has been an international rugby trainer for more than 40 years. Whenever he can, he goes from island to island meeting the village rugby clubs. He's also out to spot the young talents that may someday play in the world's leading clubs. Fiji is a major rugby power in the Pacific and in fact, if it weren't for its international reputation in this sport, the archipelago would be completely forgotten. Frank has been living in the Fijis for 17 years but this is the first time he's come to train the players of Bukama. Still, everyone knows him because he worked with the national rugby sevens team here. Fiji is the furthest island here, it's Yasawa and that's the furthest village there, Sawirara. It's a new adventure each time but more important, there's the notion of sharing. They really like to share their experience, their history. That's part of how they teach the sport here because the rugby in Fiji really meshes quite well with their culture and traditions and also with their history of warring between villages. Now they don't make war anymore but the village over there comes every Saturday to play that village down there. So in a way, they're carrying on their warrior rituals of the past. In Fijian rugby, the clan spirit is an essential element. Each match begins with the Thimbi, a warrior dance designed to provoke and intimidate the adversary. Rugby is a combat sport and in the Fijis, the warrior enjoys a privileged social status, even more so than a school teacher or a doctor. If God invented rugby, he surely invented it for the Fijians and in particular sevens rugby, no doubt about it. And I think that's just what God did. He invented rugby for the Fijians, the Tongans and the Samoans. Seriously, it's a blessing for these countries because it can channel all the energy of the youth and the warrior spirit that goes with it to defend their village, to defend their island. It's essential, so we have to use that. The coach is waiting in the village. Something we don't know, we learn from him. And the first time too, we see Frank. We just hear his name on the radio, see on the TV. First time to see him. Organic goalposts, respect for the environment. We use what we have at hand to construct the goalposts. This is genuine rugby, like we used to play as kids in the villages of southern France, in Catalonia and in Occitania. We used to do things like this, so for me, this is like going back to my roots. There are some 200 Fijians playing in different French rugby clubs, and the demand keeps rising for these rugby artists with their singular style, a mixture of power and improvisation. I've had the good fortune to discover players in their unpolished state. I often cite the example of two players I recruited right from their village. They were practically barefoot, with just a T-shirt and they were fish farmers to help their parents support the family. And six to nine months later, there I am at the National Stadium in France, watching them play in the finals of the top 14 in front of 80,000 people. A thrilling moment, just fantastic. Being a rugby trainer in the Fijis means dealing with the oppressive heat and the slow rhythm that goes along with it. For the moment, there are only children in Bukama, no sign of any players. Yet. I think we're going to be running on Fiji time, meaning practice will begin around 3.30, 4 o'clock. Maybe. Time is a vague notion on the island because no one has a watch. There is no time. So we'll just wait and see. A good coach should always arrive before his players. That's not very hard here. How are you? How was work? Your teammates, they're going to come? All right. Take the coconuts and we're going to go in that part of the field, for now, all right? This part of the field is better. Okay, let's go. Then you go long passes. Ready, go! Get out of the way, guys. Well done! Ready, go! They're not used to training. They're not used to having strict practice sessions, not used to organized drills. So you have to break them into the routine. But once you do, they take the ball and run with it. You just have to give them a few pointers, put a little order into their game. And once that's done, they know how to do the rest. Pass! They play for fun, to relax, which is a strong point because I think you need a playful dynamic to do well in sports. You really have to have fun, enjoy it, and all the rest will flow naturally. The really nice thing about these islanders is that their basic motivation is the joy of playing. Thanks to his reputation, Frank is respected by everyone here. Today, he's training future players, but Fijian trainers as well. He has also set up a prisoner rehabilitation program. Frank is teaching them the profession of referee. I think rugby is a social regulator. You'll notice that in countries where there's not as much rugby, the crime rate's extremely high. But not here in the Fijis. And I noticed the same thing in Tonga. And Samoa. All the young people play rugby. At four o'clock in the afternoon, they get out of school, they get off work, they come in from the fields and they play rugby. And when the match is finished and they've gotten rid of all their aggressive hormones, they're worn out, with no energy left to go out and get themselves into trouble. All right! Crouch! Bind! Set! All right! Beautiful there! Yes! All right! Right! There are no roads to speak of here, so people get around with the village's one motorized perug. In the Yasawa Islands, they even bus the children to school by boat. In Bukama's village school, there are three levels in each class and the children learn English right from the first grade. English and rugby. Both legacies of the British colonization. At recess, Frank organizes a rugby match. It's France versus Fiji. All right! So you score a try over there, got it? And you guys score a try over there. Yes! So you must pass the ball to one girl. All right, and we must have three passes. The women of Fiji are struggling to free themselves from the weight of tradition. And Frank is convinced that sports are one of the best ways they have to achieve that goal. Promoting women's rugby has been a personal crusade of Frank for 30 years. He's convinced that playing rugby in school will bring about a change in people's attitudes. Come on, guys! That was fun, huh? All right. You like rugby, yeah? Yeah. That's very good. And you're going to be a very good player. Yeah, you're going to be a very good player. All of you. Thank you. Women's rugby is really taking off now. And here in Fiji, we have the Fijianas. Maybe you can play for Fijiana. The national team who beat New Zealand back in October and were world champions in sevens rugby. So they have enormous potential, which we'll have to nurture in order to take on the really big teams. OK, let's do a cheer. Let's go. Frank continues his voyage on to the next island, on to the next rugby pitch. As a trainer, Frank has always sought to transmit his passion and love for this sport. It's very important to me that the Fijian trainers and coaches be competent so that they can carry on the work themselves and not depend on the know-how of us Westerners. As the saying goes, it's more important to teach a person to fish rather than fish for them. That has been the guiding philosophy in my work here. I always try to stand back a bit and help them to grow and develop. For Frank, rugby in the Fijis is a lovely romance between a game imported from the other side of the planet and a people born to play it.