Over the past eight decades the paradise isles of the legendary South Seas have provided a backdrop for many Hollywood productions. French Polynesia has been the most popular location by far, followed by Fiji and Samoa. Both Hollywood films set in Solomon Islands, Guadalcanal Diary (1943) starring Anthony Quinn and The Thin Red Line (1999), were about the Pacific War. Easter Island features in Kevin Costner’s Rapa Nui (1994) while The Other Side of Heaven (2002) deals with Mormon missionaries in Tonga. The earliest Hollywood films about the South Pacific […]

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Tourism is the world’s largest and fastest-growing industry, accounting for 10 percent of world economic activity and one in 15 jobs worldwide. Some 750 million people a year currently travel abroad compared to only 25 million in 1950, and each year over 100 million first-world tourists visit developing countries, transferring billions of dollars from North to South. Tourism is the only industry that allows a net flow of wealth from richer to poorer countries, and in the islands it’s one of the few avenues open for economic development, providing much-needed […]

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Avalon Travel Publishing has launched the 7th edition of Moon Tahiti by David Stanley. Since 1989, Moon Tahiti has been the leading travel guidebook to French Polynesia and this new edition incorporates the latest restaurant, resort, and transportation news. Stanley has been covering the South Pacific for over three decades and he knows the region better than any other travel writer. Packed into Moon Tahiti’s 353 indexed pages are 53 maps and 122 photos. The maps are clearly labeled without the confusing legends and keys which make other guidebooks hard […]

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GoNanaimo.com announces the creation of the Nanaimo 50-Kilometer Holiday with seven self-guided tours within a 50-kilometer radius of Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. As gasoline prices continue to rise, vacationing locally becomes more attractive and Vancouver Island has so much to offer. The 50-Kilometer Holiday includes two walking tours within Nanaimo and five driving/bicycling tours to nearby mid-island destinations. Each tour is carefully crafted with a printable version and map which website users are invited to use on their trips. Nanaimo’s waterfront and downtown are explored on walking tours which combine […]

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Boomtown Nanaimo, British Columbia, is currently one of the hottest housing markets in Canada. Baby boomers all across the country are casting their aging eyes west in their quest for a retirement haven, and the many advantages of Nanaimo, BC, are becoming known. First off, there’s the mild climate moderated by warm Pacific currents arriving from Japan. Nanaimo only gets a couple of weeks of snow a year, quite a contrast to central and eastern Canada which can be snowed in from December to April. There’s enough rain to keep […]

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Since the age of explorers Wallis, Bougainville, and Cook, legendary Tahiti has tickled imaginations worldwide. More recently, Tahiti became the most famous Polynesian island of all when Clark Gable (1935), Marlon Brando (1962), and Mel Gibson (1984) played the role of Fletcher Christian in three blockbuster Mutiny on the Bounty films. Even the horrendous French nuclear testing program from 1966-1996 did little to dampen this image. For the modern traveler, there’s no getting around the fact that French Polynesia is expensive. Bora Bora is easily the most upscale tourist destination […]

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It used to be that backpacking trips to Fiji involved a bus ride from Nadi to Suva, then a ferry to somewhere like Ovalau, Savusavu, Taveuni or Kadavu. No more. These days young budget travelers are lining up to go to the Yasawa Islands, a chain of 16 large volcanic islands and dozens of smaller ones roughly 35 km off the west coast of Viti Levu. The dazzling white beaches, clear warm waters, colorful coral reefs, and sunny dry climate make the Yasawa Group an ideal tourist destination, but until […]

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The owners of Fiji’s largest budget accommodation chain have decided to counter the burgeoning bus and package tour trade by refocusing on the independent traveler. With more and more visitors being booked onto pre-arranged itineraries straight off the plane in Nadi, Cathay Hotels (Fiji) Limited has made a conscious choice to do things a lot differently. They’re betting on the market niche of those who prefer to make their own decisions about where to go and what to do. Guests at their flagship property, Tubakula Beach Bungalows on the Coral […]

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The islands of Samoa are emerging as an exciting new South Pacific travel destination between Hawaii and New Zealand. This “Heart of Polynesia” is politically split into two distinct entities 80 miles apart. The country Samoa is a former German colony, captured by New Zealand in 1914 and granted independence in 1962. In 1997 the name was changed from Western Samoa to Samoa. American Samoa is the only U.S. territory south of the equator. Annexed by the United States for use as a naval base in 1900, the territory no […]

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“Ouvea is everything you’d expect in a South Pacific island. Twenty kilometers of unbroken white sands border the lagoon on the west side of the island and extend far out from shore to give the water a turquoise hue. The wide western lagoon, protected by a string of coral islands and a barrier reef, is the only one of its kind in the Loyalties. On the ocean side are rocky cliffs, pounded by surf, but fine beaches may be found even here. At one point on this narrow atoll only […]

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We’ve all heard about whale watching from boats or shore, and a few companies are now offering the possibility of actually swimming and snorkeling with whales in the wild. Is this a good thing? Some whale watching operators in the Kingdom of Tonga, South Pacific islands, advertise the possibility of swimming and snorkeling with humpback whales during the cetacean’s annual migration from July to October. This activity sounds appealing, yet there are a number of things to consider. To drop clients off within snorkeling distance of a whale, the swim […]

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Over the years, Tahiti and Polynesia have provided novelists and moviemakers with colorful subject matter. Early travelers told of wanton women on tropical shores, and Fletcher Christian added drama to the plot by leading a mutiny against the tyrannical Captain Bligh. In 1934 American writers Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall brought out the Bounty Trilogy. This three-part novel deals with Christian’s mutiny on the Bounty, the escape of Bligh and his loyal crew members to Dutch Timor, and the colonization of Pitcairn Island by Christian and his fellow mutineers. […]

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Ask me which Pacific island has the most to offer hikers and I’ll probably answer Easter Island. Here on an island 11 km wide and 23 km long you’ll find nearly a thousand ancient Polynesian statues strewn along a powerfully beautiful coastline or littering the slopes of an extinct volcano. The legends of Easter Island have been recounted many times. What’s less known is that the island’s assorted wonders are easily accessible on foot from the comfort of the only settlement, Hanga Roa. Before setting out see the sights, however, […]

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