Vanua Balavu Atoll

Vanua Balavu is the principal island of the northern Lau group, a long island surrounded by bays, reefs and smaller islands. It lies east of Taveuni and the Somosomo Strait, in waters connecting Fiji’s larger islands with the Lau archipelago. Before the nineteenth-century unification of Lau, the northern islands had their own chiefly relationships, including ties to the Tui Cakau of Somosomo.