Fiji resort keen to run up eco-colours

COLIN MOORE* parries the hard-sell about Cousteau resorts' environmental friendliness and breathes fresh life into his scuba career.

Poor Willy. Keiko the killer whale, as he's known outside the cinemas, is free to swim around a wire cage in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic while the sympathisers who put him there are sunning themselves in the South Pacific.

If it's any consolation to the film-star orca who is the cause celebre of Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society, he is not forgotten by those languishing in the tepid waters of Vanua Levu island, Fiji.

As soon as you get past the singing welcome and into the lobby of Cousteau's Fiji eco-resort, you'll be ushered into a video room for a touching free Willy update. It's all part of the American way, and doubtless the only guest likely to be at all disturbed by the Willyganda is a cynical old journalist from New Zealand.

Jean-Michel is the black fish of the Cousteau family. He fell out with his father and his stepmother, Captain Jacques' widow, before Sir Peter Blake did, and started the Jean-Michel Cousteau Institute as a rival to the Cousteau Society.

Enter Willy Keiko, the orca who can tug heart strings and dollars from American wallets. The Free Willy Keiko Foundation and Jean-Michel's institute merge to become Ocean Futures with Willy as its emblem.

If you wonder what an Arctic-waters orca has to do with a splendid holiday resort at Savusavu on Vanua Levu, the answer probably lies in a single word - "marketing."

Thanks to Willy and the Cousteau name, Jean-Michel's eco-resort is regularly featured in the glossiest of American magazines. That is not to say that any readers will feel dissatisfied if they have the good fortune - and the money - to get to Savusavu. Willy Keiko won't be there but I doubt they'll miss him.

For a start, Vanua Levu may be Fiji's second biggest island but getting there on the small planes of Sunflower Airlines - who weigh passengers as well as luggage - gives it the sense of isolation that its rudimentary grass airstrip confirms.

And the Cousteau resort sits on the tip of a peninsula that juts into Savusavu Bay so that by the time you have switched on the overhead fan in your bure and discovered that there is neither television nor telephone, you're likely to feel as remote as poor old Willy, though a lot more comfortable.

The bures at the Cousteau resort are huge and come with their own veranda, a large lounge, dining table and kitchen/mini-bar area, which makes them practical as well as comfortable.

Some Tahitian resorts may have more extravagantly luxurious bures than these but it is unlikely that anything selling itself as an eco-resort does. The last such place I stayed at, on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, was Stone Age by comparison.

While you are sitting back with your first attack on the mini-bar, soaking up the heaven-sent draft from the ceiling fan, you can reflect on the table-top welcome of Jean-Michel.

"Our resort is the culmination of a lifetime's exploration and adventure, both above and below the waters of the world," he writes on recycled paper.

"It is a point of departure for a new understanding of ocean, land and culture.

"In Fiji, one can experience intact tropical forests, healthy reefs and the never ending miracle of the sea. In addition, you will spend time with the Fijians - extraordinary, warm, friendly and proud indigenous people.



And if that doesn't give you the message that there's a price to pay for being in paradise, there's more from Richard C. Murphy PhD, Jean-Michel Cousteau Productions' environmental systems designer.

"Islands are a perfect place to understand how our planet works and to celebrate how we can live in harmony with it," he writes.

"On this island we are not insulated from nature by steel and cement. Here we can come to understand and develop respect for processes which have kept our planet habitable for billions of years.

"We see the azure waters which provide the fish served for dinner, the trees that offer coconuts for our snacks, and the rain, brought to us by the sun, sea and wind, flowing from the tap on our bures.

"Our kitchen waste and garden trimmings restore the land which provides us bananas and papayas. Here we can learn from local people who have been residents for thousands of years and share in the excitement of traditional celebrations."

There's much more about the environmental ethic including a plea not to buy any seashells when you visit local villages. Murphy is busy developing "edible landscaping," so that the plants around your bure may end up in your salad. And so on and so forth.

The fact that the soap in your bure is biodegradable is almost passe. As is the promise that the resort never, ever, buys undersized crayfish, or serves rare reef fish or giant clams.

In fact, it has seeded the water around the resort jetty with giant clams and you can snorkel off the beach and take a good look at them - so long as the locals stick to a gentleman's agreement not to grab them for dinner.

Children are not forgotten, either.

"Bula Camp reflects Jean-Michel Cousteau's commitment to children as the future caretakers of the earth," says the brochure.

"At Bula Camp, children have fun while learning about the ocean environment and the role they can play in helping to protect the earth's natural resources."

So while you are lying in a hammock beneath the palms enjoying another pina colada, your children, starting from 8 am, can be helping on the resort's mangrove reforestation project, exploring a tropical rainforest, learning Fijian dances and becoming expert in coral reef ecology. You can leave them to have meals with Bula Camp counsellors and, with star-gazing and slide-shows to keep them busy in the evening, you might not see them until 9 pm.

But for all the environmental brouhaha, this is no beads-and-sandals, New-Age retreat. In fact, it is not a lot different from other Pacific or Australian resorts in the same class who don't want customers swimming in dirty water.

At Cousteau's Savusavu retreat you can follow a daily eco-schedule that starts with coral reef ecology on Monday through to weaving coconut palm baskets on Saturday. Or you can go straight to the "day of rest and relaxation" on Sunday, sail catamarans or kayak in the lagoon, snorkel or explore in a glass-bottomed boat, drink and eat to indulgence, have a game of tennis or a spa with an essential-oil wrap or perhaps choose, at $US80, an aromatherapy seasalt glow.

What made the resort different, and memorable, for me was the scuba diving.

I've struggled to come to grips with diving ever since completing a PADI course at the more basic eco-resort of Lady Elliot Island off the Queensland coast.

Before going to Savusavu I'd decided I wasn't up to struggling into thick wet suits, puffing and panting in anxiety, and sucking on compressed air so fast that dive times were short and hardly worth all the effort.

But Gary Alford, the Australian divemaster at the Cousteau resort, turned me around. First I did a brief refresher dive off the resort jetty where a sign pleads: "For their own welfare, please do not feed the fish." (In Tahiti they leave baskets of stale bread for the guests to throw in the water - which is murky with stale bread.)

Then we motored out to a dive site on the edge of the reef. The warm water meant there was no need to struggle into a wet suit, my weight belt was minimal, and I stepped easily into the water off the open rear deck of a large launch.

The water was clear, the coral expansive, and the fish numerous. We glided at 20m through grottoes and mini-canyons, eye-balled a huge Maori wrasse and swam alongside a turtle. When I surfaced I had been under water for 43 minutes - about 20 minutes longer than with the same amount of air on recent dives in New Zealand waters.

L'Adventure Jean-Michel Cousteau Fiji, the scuba side of the Cousteau operation, promises to share with divers the "wonders, power and fragility of the sea, and awaken the desire to protect the priceless treasures of life beneath the sea."

To that it might add - and give inexperienced divers second thoughts about giving up, at least when they are at Savusavu.

*Colin Moore dived Savusavu courtesy of Jean-Michel Cousteau Fiji resort, Sunflower Airlines and Air Pacific.

CASENOTES

GETTING THERE: Sunflower Airlines fly from Suva to Savusavu $F124 ($132) (one-way) and Nadi to Savusavu $F178.

ACCOMMODATION: Costs range from $US405 ($965) a day for a bure with garden views to $US625 for a split-level bure on the ocean front. The rate is based on double occupancy and includes all meals and airport transfer. There is a three-night minimum stay.

DIVE RATES: One-tank dive, $US65, two-tank dive, $US110; equipment rental $US33 a day; snorkel adventure $US55.

MORE INFO: Jean-Michel Cousteau resort is represented in New Zealand by Hogan and Associates, ph (09) 478 6959, e-mail hogan@xtra.co.nz