The story behind the Coconut Grove

I finally got Ronna Goldstein, the owner of the Coconut Grove Beachfront Cottages on Taveuni, to sit down with me for more than five minutes. She was extremely jumpy. At first I thought it was just because she was worried we were going to be interrupted again, but she fessed up that writers make her nervous. She spoke honestly with me about the challenges (and joys) of opening a little hotel on an isolated Fijian island, admitting that it wasn’t nearly as glamorous as most people think. Here’s part of what she had to say.

Ronna Goldstein in front of the Coconut Grove. Photo by David Lansing.

Me: Tell me how you ended up on Taveuni?

Ronna: I walked away from a $70,000 a year job in the mid-80s trying to figure out how to live and travel at the same time. I ended up here because my boyfriend said to me one night, Did you know that in Fiji you can own the land. And that’s rare in the world when you’re talking about an island.

Steve—my boyfriend at the time—and I were thinking of buying a resort in Rarotanga. But Fiji’s freehold was the draw. I think Costa Rica and Fiji were the only tropical places at the time where you could own property without being a citizen.

Steve had owned a restaurant at one time so we originally decided that’s what we’d do on Taveuni—open the Coconut Grove restaurant. I bought some undeveloped land and we basically lived in a lean-to while building two bures. Then I ran out of money. So we had to open the restaurant on a shoestring. Steve cooked and I did everything else.

You know, people think that living on a little Fijian island and running a resort is very glamorous but it doesn’t always feel that way when you’re living it. It’s very challenging living in a third world country unless you have a lot of money. I mean, we spent five years of doing without. We were sleeping in a hut and using kerosene lanterns for light and bathing from a bucket of water carried back from up the road. Doing all this to open a little restaurant and just barely making enough money to get by on.

Me: So what happened with Steve?

Ronna: He liked the idea of living in paradise more than he liked the idea of working in paradise. One morning he just woke up and said he was going home. Just like that. I remember watching him get in the taxi to leave and turning to Bimla, my right hand girl, and saying, “There goes our cook. Now what are we going to do?” And Bimla smiled and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll cook.” And I had to remind her that she didn’t know how to cook and neither did I! But we learned—both of us.

To be continued…