Talanoa Treks is Fiji’s only, international award winning dedicated hiking company. It’s the end result of friendships created exploring Fiji’s mountainous interior and getting to know the iTaukei communities living there.
Talanoa Treks run treks, hikes and tramping trips in partnership with 4 rural iTaukei communities and 2 locally owned and managed lodges to create a mix of great walking and authentic culture.
These iTaukei communities are exactly why Talanoa Treks was created, and they all work together to ensure that the treks are great for you and just as important great for them too.
The single- and multi-day treks take trekkers well off the well trodden beaten track to experience the true heart of Fiji.
They all escape the crowded beaches and visit remote waterfalls, walk through pristine forests, climb Fiji’s highest mountain, wade across tropical clear rivers, cross open grassland, and stay in iTaukei remote villages.
All the treks can be enjoyed separately or even combined into a amazing five day adventure to cross the entire country.
They are scheduled throughout the year or tailored for groups on request.
Partner communities
Talanoa Treks support all the partner communities they work with, to provide hiking guides, host trekkers and provide meals and accommodation.
Each trek provides an important supplementary source of income to these largely subsistence iTaukei village communities.
This income, in the form of payments for guides, accommodation and food, as well as contributions to village development funds boost the communities regularly and sustainably.
Talanoa Treks support the communities to take the lead on trips while at the same time ensuring overall trip management, logistics and safety.
Ancient tracks
Talanoa Treks’ hiking routes often follow ancient pathways between indigenous iTaukei villages, pig-hunting tracks, plantation tacks and farm paths. It should be noted that these can be rough and muddy.
The iTaukei villages do work with Talanoa Treks to keep the tracks clear, but there are no ‘national park like’ built and maintained walking paths.
A good level of fitness and a healthy spirit of adventure are musts!
Accommodation
On the multi day hikes overnight accommodation is in the villages hosted by the communities or in locally iTaukei owned and managed colonial style lodges.
It can be seen as basic by some, but the reception is always welcoming.
Be assured that there are real flush toilets at all stopovers, and cold-water showers to freshen up in the evenings.
Talanoa Treks
‘Talanoa’ is the Fijian word for talking and telling stories, this is the oral history of the people.
As you walk and talk, hikers discover all that is around them, hidden in plain sight, medicinal plants, old iTaukei village sites now in ruins, food plantations, grazing sites for the goats, fishing grounds for fish and prawns, and even some battlefields.
For your guides this is their heart and home!
This is where they played as children, where they hunt and farm as adults, relax and joke, and it’s where they guide you.
These community partnerships ensure you can enjoy your trek knowing that you are respecting Fijian iTaukei culture and trekking with the blessing of traditional iTaukei landowners.
As a symbol of this, at ever night stop, your guides will lead you in a simple, traditional presentations of the root of the yaqona plant, respectfully asking the host iTaukei communities, and their ancestors, to give you their protection as you cross their land or vanua.
All along the way you’ll experience genuine Fijian iTaukei hospitality and leave with new friends, unique memories, and stories that last a lot longer than those blisters which will have healed and faded!
Those amazing beaches will still be waiting for you after your hike, and will be all the more relaxing after a hiking adventure into the heart of Fiji.
