Kadavu has all the activities you are looking for. I had a memorable village visit, hike in to the interior, and did some fantastic deep water drift snorkeling. Choose your resort carefully, the one we went to (now under another name or gone) was a mosquito factory. Beautiful island otherwise with some magnificent beaches and water. Pub

Kadavu is awesome! I love that little rugged island. Two places I would suggest are Matava and Dive Kadavu. Matava is an eco resort, very picturesque, great food that Jeannie, the owner, grows right out of her organic garden. They have kayak trips, waterfall treks, village visits, and a great staff and wonderful owners. It is very reasonable. The only drawback is that they don't have a white sandy beach, but you can kayak a few minutes down the way, and you find your nice sandy beach.

Dive Kadavu is right on a nice sandy beach, but the food is not as good, and it's a bit more expensive. They have great snorkeling right in front of the bures. Bures are also a bit more upscale. So you have 6 of one, half dozen of the other. I think you'll find the people at Matava more warm and welcoming, but the rooms a bit nicer at Dive Kadavu and the beach is nicer too.

Matava have started to upgrade their older rustic bures into their new look mahaganony finish bures. Send an e-mail to Richard and Jeanie and ask how their bure building is getting on.

My recommendation would be Matava on all your requests.

Stuart

I was just at the Matava resort and loved it...this was heaven on earth. Yes, there isn't a white sandy beach, but you can see the white sandy beaches on the small island just across the way. The staff was the most personable of all our trips. The food was outrageous. I don't eat 3 meals a day, and found myself asking what the next meal was. They bake bread for each meal, (I am a caterer and very picky), lots of fresh fruit and veges from the garden. I love eggplant and they made that for lunch and dinner each night for me!!! We walked with Maggie to the village, I did it on the days i didn't snorkel, to go to the amazing waterfall and swim in the hugh pool with all the locals. Maggie gets the kids to jump off the 75ft high sides of the cliffs, the local ladies made us leis one day. The snorkeling was wonderful. We had a huge lumbering fish follow us the whole way and saw large conch shells with the animals inside. One day when we got home from some excursion, the staff had sprayed our bure with flowers, everywhere and gardenias on the bed posts.

The new bures are finished and beautiful. I would still stay in the one we did, way up top on the left. The seclusion and view were amazing. So romantic. When they did the lovo, I hung out with the boys and helped, loved that.You can work in the garden, too. The last night we were there, they made us a going away cake and sang songs to us, while we drank kava. I still dream of Matava....email Jeanie...matava.com and she will give you the new updated info. Please tell her that Carla and Peter from Idaho said hello.

We also did the sailing safari, from Captain Cook and that was fabulous. The oarsman was nice as well. enjoy

Has anyone used Tamarillo Tours on Kadavu? They offer 5 or 7 day kayak expeditions around the island, and we were interested that doing something like this.

Carol