The Bouma National Heritage Park sits on the eastern side of Taveuni Island, which is known as the Garden Island because it does receive frequent rainfall and is quite green. We self drove to the park though I believe there is a cheaper alternative by hiring a shuttle (you'd have to check for departure times), which I believe covers most of the resorts (most of them, including the one we stayed at, were on the Western side of the island).

Once at the small car park for the park, we paid the admission fee, and then we were on our way. The initial part of the hike seemed to be like we were walking on wet grass. But barely 10 minutes into the hike, we reached the Lower Falls (see photo at the top of this page). It had a wide plunge pool that seemed to be conducive to swimming thereby making it quite popular. We even saw a changing area to get in and out of swimming clothes into something dry.

Beyond the Lower Falls, the trail started to ascend several steps as it went pretty extensively uphill for another half-hour. Somewhere along this ascent, the trail briefly flattened out so we could go across a rope-assisted stream crossing. Then, we ascended a little more before we got right in front of the Middle Falls. Even though this part of the hike required a bit more physical exertion than the first, we thought the trail itself was fairly easy and weren't surprised to see a few more people still come out to here.

Beyond the Middle Falls, things got a bit more challenging. The trail became much less developed and overgrown in places while we constantly had to be wary of slipping and falling due to the slippery rock and mud surfaces throughout. I believe we had to go through two more stream crossings with ropes to help us keep our balance. Plus, the trail did climb some more.

Eventually after an hour of this moderate-to-fairly-difficult hike, we reached the Upper Falls and its double-barreled drop. I actually scrambled to the middle of the stream to get a clean photo of it, but it felt nice to just chill out here with Julie. After all, we were the only tourists on this part of the hike when we did it in January 2006 (I don't recall seeing anyone else except maybe a villager or two). Still, you can imagine given the tropical humidity, we were quite relieved to have reached the falls and looked forward to heading back.