Tavewa Seabus

An absolute rip off on an unsafe tiny boat that looked nothing like the one on their website. Shame, shame on you for lying so openly to your customers. My mum and I boarded the Yasawa service on Tuesday 30/12/25 from Lautoka. At first we were looking around for the boat until we realised the tiny fishing/freight boat next to us was going to be the one to take us all the way to northern Yasawas. Instead of a double decker ferry with indoor seating as advertised on their website, it was a 10-15 seats tiny fishing boat where all supplies for hotels on the way were pilled up - we barely had room for our feet and zero comfort on the seats. Needless to say boat is fully open so no windows let alone aircon. Captain spent more time checking his smartphone than looking at the sea. They refilled the tanks in the middle of the ocean while the boat was running full speed - how can it be safe? On a side note I also felt awful to put my mum who’s almost 70 through this bad experience. A 15 minute ride would have been possibly acceptable but absolutely not for 3 hours. I paid over 400 Fijian dollars for 2 people which is way, way too high considering the ride we had. So far no refund and no apology. See attached pictures for expectations vs reality.

Like the comments said, it’s not the red boat but a smaller boat, but when you know it’s not a problem. I took it to go to the Nanuya island. It’s was $150 and included the transport from your hotel if you are staying close to the airport. Would use it again!

2 stars because this service did get us from Point A to Point B. It was NOT the red boat as advertised online. Instead, a smaller speed-boat-style boat picked us up. Luckily the top was covered to protect from the sun and they were able to roll down plastic covers from the side to protect from the waves/spray. I booked this as opposed to South Sea Cruises to pay a bit less and because they told me it was only 2 to 3 hours to Lautoka (and our hotel on the mainland was closer to that port than Denarau). In reality, it took 4 hours due to the small boat and choppy water. It was pretty uncomfortable, and with the plastic covers down it can get stuffy - if you are prone to sea sickness make sure you have some meds of some kind. Halfway through the crossing to Lautoka, the engines ran out of fuel so they were siphoning gas into the tank from plastic bottles they had on board while we were just floating. This might be common practice for the size of the boat that they used that day. As you will read in other reviews this is how the locals travel and all the locals on the boat with us were completely at ease the whole journey (napping, chatting, happy). I read that tourists are charged significantly more, so the price difference to South Sea Cruises isn't that significant. Our recommendation - do yourself a favour and book South Sea Crusies to and from Port Denarau. The minimal cost savings was not worth it for us.

I would not recommend using this ferry. The boat pictured is not the actual boat you will go on. The actual boat is much smaller and does not handle rough weather well. We were saturated and it took much longer than predicted to get to our destination.

AVOID AT ALL COST! USE SOUTH SEA CRUISES INSTEAD Sam sent us an email the night before our scheduled ferry to the Yasawa Islands saying they were fully booked even though we had booked several weeks in advanced. He did not provide any reason. Notice you may think you are saving money with this ferry, but the risk is not worth during your vacation. Fortunately, we were able to find alternatives late at night, but feel sorry for people that may not be able to do this after all the effort they put to fly thousands of miles to Fiji. Moreover, these ferries are located in the sketchy industrial part of the island.

Okay! It's not the usual ferry service I'm accustomed to, but then again, for a catamaran, it did its job – safely transporting us from point A to point B. The journey was a bit rough, but the weather was to blame as Fiji had just received a cyclone alert around the same time we were spending the weekend in Yasawa. If you're looking for comfort, then the Yasawa Flyer is there for you. 😊 If affordable and mingling with the locals is something you wouldn't mind, then try out Tavewa – it's about 85FJD for locals and around (starts at) 180FJD for tourists.

It got us from point a to point b. Thought it would be faster and cheaper than the Yasawa flyer but noooo. All the information says 2.5 hours but it was 4.5 hours. Small boat so much more likely to get seasick. But you get to travel like a true Fijian travels.

Good and Bad... The boat we got on was much smaller than the red boat advertised (I think it was a replacement service) It got us from coralview resort back to lautoka in 2hrs 45 which was great and the staff were good but there was some water coming onto the boat so if you don't like small boats... It's a bit bad