Fiji
Upper Navua Gorge
Black basalt canyon walls drip with waterfalls as the raft drifts through a jungle cathedral.
The waterfalls that come off the walls have no floor to land on: they hit the river. The raft moves through on a current that swings from glass to white, and the sound inside the canyon is water with nowhere to go but down and forward.
The Upper Navua cuts through Viti Levu's interior like a miniature Grand Canyon stacked in black lava rock, a waterfall around almost every bend, and rafting as the way visitors move through it. Nine landowning mataqali, two villages and the rafting outfit created a conservation corridor here in 2000, ten and a half miles of protected river recognised as a Ramsar wetland in 2006, with trip fees flowing back to the owners of the land. Rafting days alternate quiet drifting reaches with Class II to III rapids, Moce Falls the biggest drop of the day, on water that runs gloriously fresh from highland springs.
Solo
Group departures from Pacific Harbour fold single paddlers in easily, and the raft is how the gorge shows itself, bend by bend from the water.
Friends
Shared paddling through rapids and drifting reaches is the most communal adrenaline day Viti Levu offers, built for a boatload of you.
Couple
One active day trades the beach for basalt walls, ferns and moving water, an experience with no equivalent anywhere in resort Fiji.
- The gorge is a miniature Grand Canyon in black lava rock, with a waterfall around almost every bend.
- Nine landowning mataqali and two villages created the conservation corridor in 2000, and trip fees fund it.
- The corridor was recognised as a Ramsar wetland in 2006.
- Rafting runs Class II to III, with Moce Falls the largest drop of the day.
Mid-gorge, guides spread a riverside picnic of meats, cheeses, vegetables and bread with all the fixings.
Fresh fruit, biscuits and juice follow, eaten on the rocks with waterfalls in earshot.
Tomanivi
Fiji
Cloud forest so thick the trail vanishes, Fiji's highest peak at 1,324 metres above the canopy.
Namosi Highlands
Fiji
Bamboo rafts still run the cold green rivers under Namosi's cloud-hung jungle walls.
Nukubati Island
Fiji
A handful of bures on a speck of sand beside the world's third-largest barrier reef.