The widespread ownership of cars revolutionized resort travel by making it possible to situate hotel and recreational sites far from both cities and railroad stations. Florida and California owe much of their development to the American's love affair with the automobile. A British colony for nearly a century, Fiji became independent in 1970. Only about 105 of Fiji's islands are inhabited. Vegetation varies according to rainfall, with dense forests in the mountains, tropical savanna grasslands in the west, and dense vegetation in the east.
Mangrove trees dominate coastal areas.
Native Fijians, who were a minority in their own country at independence, are mainly of Melanesian stock. If more people did not take to the road, it was because throughout most of recorded history travel was no pleasure. There was little incentive to tourism when roads were poor or nonexistent, inns uncomfortable, and transportation expensive and inconvenient. Only the favored few even tried to escape the congestion of the city for mountain or seaside retreats in summer, or for curative thermal spas if they suffered from ill health. The country estate and the watering place of Roman times and the religious pilgrimage popular in the Middle Ages, however, represented the small beginnings of what would one day become a tidal wave of tourism.