Republic of Fiji
Melanesia
Coral · Warm · Pacific
Fiji is the dominant global power in Rugby Sevens — the national team won gold at the 2016 and 2020 Olympics, and the sport is so embedded that it is played on every island, often with bare feet on grass.
Más allá de la capital, las principales ciudades son Lautoka, Nadi — cada una un centro de cultura regional, economía e historia. Suva on the eastern side of Viti Levu receives so much rainfall from the trade winds that the colonial-era British built their administrative centre in what is now the Pacific's wettest significant city — a lush tropical capital where the Fiji Museum houses the 200-year-old cannibal fork (i boto) used to eat Reverend Thomas Baker in 1867, whose descendant tribe publicly apologised in 2003.
Los principales idiomas hablados son inglés, Fijian, hindi, que reflejan el patrimonio cultural del país y abren puertas a una amplia comunidad internacional. Internacionalmente, Fiyi se contacta mediante el código +679. Fijians navigate the demographic and political tension between indigenous iTaukei Fijians and Indo-Fijians (descendants of indentured labourers brought from India by the British between 1879 and 1916) — two communities with separate land rights, religious practices, and political allegiances whose relationship has produced four coups since 1987 and an ongoing constitutional conversation about equal citizenship.
El tráfico rodado circula por la izquierda, en consonancia con la convención de
La vida económica y cotidiana se rige por la zona horaria de UTC+12:00, alineando el país con sus vecinos regionales.
Lovo — food wrapped in leaves and cooked in an underground earth oven on hot stones — is Fiji's traditional celebratory cooking method, producing slow-cooked fish, cassava, and dalo (taro) with a smoky earthiness impossible to replicate on any modern appliance, while the hybridisation of iTaukei and Indo-Fijian food has created a local Indian cuisine adapted with tropical Pacific ingredients.
Rugby Sevens is Fiji's greatest sporting gift to the world — a format of rugby that allows Fiji to compete as equals with much larger nations due to the natural athletic talent and traditional village-level rugby culture, with the Fijian national sevens team winning consecutive Olympic gold medals in 2016 and 2020 in a nation of under a million people.
Taveuni Island, the 'Garden Island of Fiji', is bisected by the 180th meridian (the International Date Line) at a point marked by a sign where visitors can jump between yesterday and today — its dense rainforest sheltering the endemic tagimaucia flower (red and white) that blooms only above 600 metres, visible in season in the forest around Lake Tagimaucia.