Need help deciding where to stay in Fiji

I've read the Lonely Planet guide, done research over the Internet, looked at hotel websites, but still having trouble narrowing down places to stay in Fiji. This will be our first visit to Fiji.

There will be two of us traveling, my bf and I. We are mature adults, 50+ years of age, adventurous travellers. WE've ben to places like, SEA, Africa, Hawaii, etc. We are up to pretty much anything.

We will be flying in from LAX and will more than likely stay for about 5-6 days in Fiji before moving on to Vanauatu. WE would like to visit local villages, snorkel, relax and do a little shopping. We like staying in places off the beaten path, but don't want to eat up too much time traveling since we have limited time in Fiji.

I am currently leaning toward spending a few days at a resort along the Coral Coast? Any recommendations?
Should be rent a car to explore the island, or use public transportation? Is it necessary to go to one fo the outer islands to snorkel? We would like to be able to snorkel off the beach rather than take a boat to a snorkel site. We also want to interact with the local people as much as possible.

Edited by: travelmaven

The beaches and snorkelling on the mainland range from bad to mediocre. Since you have 5-6 days, you should absolutely head out to the islands instead. You could do 1 or 2 places in the islands within that time frame.

Plenty of reasonable options, but my choice would be to head out to Blue Lagoon Beach Resort. There you have an excellent beach with a nice reef, you can hike around Nacula Island (without restrictions like at some other resorts/islands), visit a village, take a boat trip out to the Sawa I Lau Caves. The resort itself is also great for just lazing around too and far more authentic than some of those mega-resorts on the Coral Coast and Denarau.

Octopus and Nanuya resorts also get lots of good feedback.

I agree with tch7. Blue Lagoon Beach Resort is a good place to chill, but it's not exactly off the beaten path. The beach is stunning though, the house reef very nice and accessible from the beach, lots of activities on offer, a good atmosphere, a great and very approachable staff, excellent food and an eclectic mix of guests due to different types of accommodations, from low budget to luxury.

The village is lovely, authentic and welcoming (and a lot of the staff actually live there) although they don't want you to visit unannounced and/or unaccompanied. If you do go there, usually on a tour, you get a welcome ceremony which is good fun and afterwards you have an opportunity to shop with the local ladies.

The resort is very much involved with the village. They have a school fund for the children and among other things the proceeds from the weekly crab race are donated to that fund. If you want you can bring stuff for the children with you, like school supplies, tooth brushes, clothes etc.
Octopus Resort has a similar set up, it's the sister resort of BLBR.

You can check both places on tripadvisor.com.
Hope this helps.

I;d take one of the short cruises, both Blue Lagoon and Captain Cook have good tours, you see a variety of islands, visit villages and schools, snorkel or swim in different places morning and afternoon, I think its a great way to see f the Fiji islands, there were lots of Americans on one of the tours I did and they loved it.

All good advise. Get out to the islands.
We have done several Blue Lagoon cruises and they really are great.
Don't hire a car on the mainland. Public transport and taxis are cheap and plentiful.

Cheers,
Peter

'Shopping'+ and +'Off the beaten path' are mutually exclusive terms.

In the end you'll be following the same well trodden tourist track just like hundreds of thousands before you-that's exactly what the other posters here recommend it's and it's exactly what you'll be doing.

"'Shopping' and 'Off the beaten path' are mutually exclusive terms."

Sorta like the Caribbean travelogue I was watching on TV last week where the narrator's descriptive words "pristine" and "untouched" were drowned out by a passing tour boat's engine noise. Then the camera cut to a shot of a jet landing at the nearby airport.

Hello, I'd recommend taking public transportation (there are some fairly nice buses nowadays- Pacific and Sunbeam are good companies). Lets you enjoy the scenery with low stress, and maybe interact with some of the locals. The Coral Coast is rather touristy, and in many places there are about 300 yards of tidal flats at low tide, so it's not my personal favorite. A neat place off the beaten path is Natalei Ecolodge, which is on the eastern side of Viti Levu (2-3 hours north of Suva); it's locally owned, well run, and near some beautiful snorkeling and villages.

If you're after shopping for something authentic (i.e., actually carved in Fiji by a person keeping a dying tradition alive), the best bet in my opinion is the Fiji Museum gift shop in Suva. They've got some cool stuff, and can actually tell you who carved it, the significance of the object, etc. The kitschy shops in Nadi are more likely to have something made in China. Much of the tourist-oriented shopping is filled with forgettable garbage.

Finally, for a very adventurous experience I recommend Navotua village stay/homestay, which is on Nacula island in the northern Yasawas. It's a small, comfortable thatched house in a beautiful village, on a beautiful beach, with great coral and a cool cave (Sawa-i-lau; story I was told is that it once housed a nine- or ten-headed snake that was slain by a guy to avenge its killing his sister in times of old) a very short boat ride away. Good luck, Fiji is wonderful in so many ways.