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Surfer’s paradise

In search of that perfect wave

The writer travelled courtesy of Fiji Tourism and My Fiji.

Brian Mcdonald has no idea how many perfect waves he has surfed in Fiji. ‘‘During Covid alone when they shut the borders here, I probably got a thousand to myself. Maybe 2000?’’

If you are a surfer, you will hate Mcdonald. You may spend hours in crowded, often cold-water city surf breaks battling for one wave decent enough to bring you back again next week, next month or next year, but Mcdonald and wife Donna run a surf resort beside seven of the best surf breaks in the South Pacific.

The luckiest surfer on Earth lives deep within a littoral rainforest beside a lagoon, in a house suspended above the forest floor. His guests are close by, connected along a platform a metre above the forest.

It weaves between 500-year-old fig trees, giant swamp taro plants with leaves the size of a person, a yoga room, a day spa and an organic garden. It spills out onto an outdoor restaurant and bar, beside a pool and Jacuzzi, next to a beach where three boats wait at anchor, ready to take us surfing.

And this whole surf resort and surfing-fora-living caper was an accident of fate. Mcdonald never actually meant to own a surf resort. He is a librarian.

‘‘I was working at Suva’s university and Donna was running a B&B,’’ he says.

‘‘I’d seen there was a nice white sandy beach here going past in my boat, and I figured it’d make a good spot for a surf camp.

‘‘The villagers here wanted to meet us, so we just asked about it and they said we can have it. We’d never even set foot on the property.’’

It is a heck of a job even finding Matanivusi Beach Eco Resort. That is how the Mcdonalds planned it. In a country renowned for world-class surf, it is worth keeping a secret or two.

I am driven an hour or so east along the Coral Coast on Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, past locals selling chestnuts and coconuts beside the road.

We take a sharp right turn down a dirt road with no signage. It passes through a small village where locals wave, then takes me beneath a rainforest canopy before it funnels into a single lane with a drop to the ocean below.

There is a hairpin bend ahead, then you are there, where the road ends and the lagoon begins.

There are as many non-surfers when I arrive as there are surfers; the Mcdonalds didn’t want to build a surf camp for ‘‘boys’ trips’’. They had seen too many in their travels. They wanted surfers with partners and families.

Mcdonald tells me about diving trips, yoga sessions, spa treatments, village visits, waterfall hikes and kayaking for non-surfers.

‘‘We didn’t want a thatched hut in the bush,’’ he says. ‘‘If surfers want a cheap boys’ trip, there are plenty of places in Indonesia. We wanted a place where a woman by herself would feel just as comfortable. It’s all communal, like we’re all friends on a holiday together.’’

Fiji is where the luxurious, all-inclusive surf resort concept was conceived. Surfers in the 1960s and 70s roughed it in rudimentary surf camps.

But in 1984, Tavarua Island in Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands, offered the first all-inclusive, exclusive surf resort, for US$100 a day – 24 surfers had exclusive rights to some of the best waves on Earth.

Surf resorts became big business. As surf travel hit the mainstream, competition for uncrowded waves became cut-throat.

Finding the perfect wave – and having it to yourself – became something surfers spent tens of thousands of dollars on.

And Fiji is where every surfer knows that the perfect wave breaks. It has the world’s third-largest continuous reef, a 200km strip of coral that is home to some of the planet’s best surf breaks. Unlike Hawaii, waves are consistent year-round (Hawaii’s famous big waves only break in winter).

For more than a decade it has been a stop on the world professional surfing tour.

The planet’s best surfers can be found surfing around Tavarua Island, 8km off Viti Levu’s southwest coast.

But Matanivusi Beach Eco Resort, about 100km east, is the only surf resort of its kind in the area. Located between the Coral Coast and Pacific Harbour, it flies under most surfers’ radars.

A rapid-fire lightning storm passes overhead as Mcdonald finishes his tour of the resort, but it passes as quickly as it came. Mcdonald tells me to get ready: the storm has killed the wind so conditions are perfect.

We motor – the two of us – across the lagoon as fish scatter among the coral below. Mcdonald kills the outboard and ties us to a mooring as I watch wave after wave break right-to-left across the reef.

It is only a two-minute paddle to a completely empty lineup. By the time I am in position, the coral is bright below my board, like I am surfing in an aquarium.

When the first wave shapes up towards me, I am so shocked by the idea that it is all mine that I nearly miss it.

To non-surfers, our quest for the perfect wave with no-one on it probably seems a little selfish – can’t surfers learn to share? But only a surfer understands that no surf is ever the same. No wave ever breaks the same way as the one before it.

So when the perfect wave comes at us – delivered across thousands of kilometres of empty ocean – it stings to watch someone else just a few metres better off than us take it.

I surf until dusk, until my shoulders ache and the skin on my fingers looks like sultanas. On the trip home, I can’t see the resort from the sea. It is low-impact, part of the forest it us built within.

It took the Mcdonalds five years of hard work and planning to turn a hunk of forest in the middle of nowhere into an eco resort. Rather than knock down the ancient trees that line the beach, the Mcdonalds built around them.

All the buildings have rainwater collection gutters and tanks, waste and sewage is converted into compost and water to irrigate the gardens, and solar panels provide all the power the resort needs.

These qualities, and more, made Matanivusi Beach Eco Resort the first surf resort in the world to become a certified sustainable surf resort.

After a Jacuzzi by the lagoon, I finally make it to my room. It is open to the sea breezes, cocooned within mosquito screens, and just a few metres from the ocean.

Dinner is served outside under the stars, beside the lagoon. The main course is tuna caught this morning, with vegetables from the garden. I turn in early to listen to the noises of the forest outside – fruit bats squealing, coconuts dropping, frogs croaking – and the waves crashing on the reef.

For four days I surf deserted breaks, have massages, do yoga, eat, swim, soak, drink coconut nui, and I become the luckiest surfer on Earth.

– traveller.com.au

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2023-03-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

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