Prologue
I started my trip to Fiji not in my normal Nashville place but instead in Los Angeles. The group I was going with, Midwest Aquatics, had booked out a group of tickets through Fiji Airways out of LAX so I went out about a week early to acclimate to the time change & get a bit of work done. It was good I went out early as I got to catch up with friends, had a few very productive meetings, & ended up having time to finish some coursework for specialty certifications I was getting as well as acquire the necessary equipment that I hadn’t realized I was lacking in my diver’s tool box. If you read my previous two blogs you’ll know that I was beyond excited for this trip to Fiji & could barely sit still in anticipation of its arrival, which, of course, it finally did! Shall we dig into it?
FIJI
PART ONE:
Day One
It’s a rather interesting experience flying across the international date line. We departed the US on our flight to Fiji at 11:55 PM PST on Thursday, July 14th, we then missed the entirety of Friday, July the 15th as, across the international date line where Fiji lies, it was already Saturday, the 16th. A very off experience to miss a day in its entirety. We all ended up not receiving the seats we had called & requested, each of us having spent about an hour on hold with Fiji Airways listening to the same song on repeat over & over, but they had bunched our group into the same couple handfuls of rows, so the awkwardness of sleeping next to a stranger on a red eye was eased. I was placed next to Roland in a middle seat though, much to our excitement, our aisle ticket holder never showed & I happily got to shift over, leaving the middle space blank for both of us to pile on items we wanted within reach & commandeer the absentee’s leg room.
I barely slept on the ride out. Call it nerves or simply sheer lack of comfort, but for whatever reason it evaded me. I think max I got three to four hours out of our eleven hour flight, all the while fading in & out of music & movies I’d downloaded to my iPad.
We arrived in Fiji before the sun around 5:45 am. Greeted by the upside down moon & a large line at customs we slowly made our way to the transport, collecting luggage & exchanged currency along the way. I was the last to make it onto the transport van having sought out coffee & an atm while everyone else in my group had gone through the exchange.
Once we were all crammed into the van we began our two-ish hour trek from Nadi to Waidroka Bay Resort. Along the way & towards the beginning of this ride our driver drove us by the gorgeous Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple & explained that nearly one third of the Fijian population is that of Indian decent whose ancestors had been brought in by the British to farm sugar cane. Formerly going by Indo Fijians, the newest Fijian President, Wiliame Katonivere, had recently declared all “Indo Fijians” as simply Fijians in an attempt to neutralized divisive language amongst his people.
Around an hour further down the road we passed through out driver’s home town, a small fishing village on the southwest coast of the island, before making our way to Vatukarasa to stop at Baravi Handicrafts & Cafe for a stretch break & a little sustenance.
Baravi is an interesting duck of a place. Majority of the store is a gift shop specializing in goods made by Fijians most for tourists; lali, carved masks, tanoa fai’ava, apparel, jewelry, ornate paddled & clubs, etc. Then tucked opposite, in the front corner of the store with a window to walk up from the outside is the cafe portion. I ordered two hand pies, butter chicken & paneer & corn, under the presumed assumption we wouldn’t linger long in addition to an iced coffee, served blended, & a bottle of sparkling coconut/pineapple drink. The hand pies were out of this world incredible! The crust was flaky & the filling was moist & rich. I definitely think I preferred the butter chicken one but maybe that’s just the white boy in me talking.
We lingered a little longer at our stop than I think we all had anticipated. Across the street a small village had set up food stalls of their own to compete with the cafe. They sold fresh fruit & boiled corn, though I got the vibe the menu changed seasonally based on availability. We all loaded back up in the van & headed onward to Waidroka.
Waidroka Bay Resort sits on the other side of a small coastal mountain range, something a van full of twenty three people might struggle to reach from time to time & though the main highways in Fiji are paved, the singular road going in & out of the bay was not. The radio station our driver had selected was an eclectic one for sure, playing anything from southern gospel to country to modern pop & 80s hits. The irony of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” was not lost on any of us as the van struggled to crest the mountain, we truly thought at a few different points we’d need to get out & push.
Finally on our decent we bobbled our way down into the resort where we were greeted by the two Scottish managers. They informed us all that our rooms weren't quite ready & that the group before us was still yet to leave but that we should hang out, place our lunch orders, & they would take care of our baggage & seeing it o our proper rooms in due time. I ordered the “catch of the day” before making my way down to the ocean, shocker, I know.
The tide had gone out during out voyage so silty mangrove shores stretched out for hundreds of yards past the etched coast line. Tide pools & fading estuaries dotted the terrain from the dock where the dive boats where now run a ground to the edge of the reef, far out past the exposed sand bed. The pools were teeming with life & one of the first things I came upon was a lagoon triggerfish trapped in water only about two inches or so deep. I asked Darin & Elaine if I should move it to the channel about fifty feet away seeing as I have experience handling live fish having managed reef tanks most of my adult life but the consensus was that the tide was returning & the porcelain bodied, strikingly painted fish would soon be able to return to sea. So off we all went in our separate directions to explore further pools.
Despite the numerous damsels, gobies, sea cucumbers, clams, corals, & starfish I came across I couldn’t shake the trigger & intuition got the best of me, which I’m glad it did. See the clouds had dissipated & while, yes the tide was returning, so too had the sun which had begun to dry out the innumerable tidal pools. About twenty minutes or so after our initial encounter I made my way back to where I believed the triggerfish to be & found it now sideways laying the same pool, now only about an inch deep. I decided to move it. Grasping the fish firmly, but delicately, holding it so that my index finger maintained its “trigger” I lifted the fish from its rapidly evaporating refuge & took it tide pool by tide pool all the way back to the channel. The trigger lingered a little when I placed it back in open water before darting out through the channel. I then made my way back through the muck to the resort for lunch.
After washing my feet I sat down to dine. The catch was Marlin, pan seared, sat atop a bed of fresh Fries, served with Fiji Lime & Tartar. It was delicious! I was then escorted up to my room, a sixty-four step climb back up the hill where room fifteen met me at the far end of a line of motel style rooms that shared a common porch/walkway. The view from my room was outstanding & it overlooked the entirety of the bay! I sorted my baggage & put my clothes in the wardrobe before collecting my dive bag & heading down to meet Jodi, our dive guide, with it all.
We had been sorted into two separate boats, that with those requiring special access for entry & exit of the water went on the Explorer with James, Jodi’s husband & fellow resort dive guide. I was placed on the other with Jodi as the ladder was a bit wobblier & we a few of us had specific tasks to complete for our different specialty certifications we were getting on the trip. Each boat was issued a briefing time & told to bring our BCDs (Buoyancy Compensator Device) & Regulators down for the staff to have set up & ready to go in the morning when we departed on our first dives. After our check-in & getting all of my gear situated I climbed back up to my room for a little jet lag nap before dinner.
I tried to keep my nap brief as I still wanted to sleep that night & in spite of my body begging me just to succumb to the slumber I managed to get up! Not feeling entirely social & in a state of calm I returned to the shoreline, where the tide had returned, & meditated atop a large chunk of lava rock next to an overturned palm tree. I exited my meditation to the sounds of fish catching insects in the shallows & found a large colony of fiddler crabs had emerged from the sand to wave their dominant claws at one another.
The Lali for dinner was beat & I returned to the main part of the resort to be met with a dinner of Stuffed Chicken with Cassava, Veggies Samosas, & Chocolate Donuts before pushing my way into my room barely able to keep my eyes open. I think I ended up falling asleep around eight or nine that evening.
End Of Day One
Day Two
I woke up on day two fair early. My body naturally said “time to go” around 6:30 AM Fiji time which is 1:30 PM Central US, hence why my body said “enough of this, up we go!” The kitchen didn’t open until around 7 AM for breakfast so I sleepily shuffled around my room collecting things I would need for the day for that thirty minutes time. The weather was a touch on the rainy side, which I’d come to learn if often far more common than sun in Fiji, but that didn’t me from stopping to take some pictures of the local Syngonium species growing in the run off ditch at the bottom of the hill.
The breakfast I had requested was Topoi, a local Fijian dumpling. The way breakfast & lunch worked at the resort was that the night prior you’d be handed a menu & prompted to choose your breakfast the next day right after finishing your three course dinner. The same went for lunch only you were asked to put in your order after finishing up your breakfast. Back to Topoi. Served with sliced fruit & a small ramekin of peanut butter, topoi is a dumpling made of Cassava & Coconut. It is similar in taste & texture to that of the southern American varietal of drop biscuits found in Chicken & Dumplings. The reason I chose this breakfast is simple. Why go somewhere you’ve never been to eat the same things you eat every day? In addition to choosing the dumplings simply out of curiosity I also got them somewhat at the behest of Elaine, my instructor & dive buddy for the week, who chooses Banana Pancakes on the days she dives especially if the distance required to travel to the dive site is farther by boat than normal. The reason? In addition to being a great source of carbohydrates, something you need when diving, bananas taste the same going either direction…
Our call time wasn't til 9 so we all sat around the table telling stories until it was time to go. It was a late start simply because the weather was up in the air. Jodi had decided to take us to a dive site called “The Pond.” She’d chosen this site for a number of reasons.
It was inside the reef & thus offered protection from the swells & winds the storm had brought in, literally making a bowl shaped, mostly sandy, retreat on the other side.
Some of us were working on Low Visibility & Night Dive Specialty Certifications, it would be murkier with the weather & thus qualify.
It’s a nice introductory dive to get reacclimatized to diving after having spent a whole days worth of time in travel mode.
I have to admit I got a little bit of FOMO when our dive site was announced because the other group was headed deeper into Beqa Lagoon. However, the weather said otherwise & the other boat ended up diving “The Aquarium,” a dive we would hit towards the end of the week.
“The Pond,” in addition to providing a respite for us, also offered one for the aquatic life around the lagoon, typically playing host to White Tip Reef Sharks, Sea Turtles, Breeding Chromis & Damsels in addition to Dogfaced Pufferfish. The only of the three we ended up seeing that day were the latter. As I said, “The Pond” is a bowl tucked on the inside of the reef wall, its sandy slopes are covered in boulders that host colonies of Lettuce Coral & Birds Nest. These then play host to the mating fish of the reef & hide Green Chromis & Domino Damsels all throughout their overlapping structures.
We ended up diving “The Pond” twice that day as the weather prevented us from going out onto the other side of the reef. During those two dives we saw a Great Pacific Octopus, a Maculiceps Tang, a ton of Scopas Tangs, several species of Butterflyfish, the only Goniopora Coral I saw all week, a Halfmoon Triggerfish, & the sites resident Sewing Machine (mark that as the weirdest thing I’ve ever found on the bottom of the ocean).
We headed back to the resort ahead of the weather & just in time for lunch. I took my lunch poolside & got a cup of Pumpkin & Coconut Soup with a Ham Melt Sandwich. During my time by the pool in the little sunshine we had that day I managed to befriend a rather curious little female Jumping Spider. She came & sat on my knee looking up at me before I’d scoot her into my hand & set her on the ground next to me just for her to come back over & over again, so I decided to let her stay & we enjoyed our lunch in the sun together.
Naptime rolled around with the rain. Our third dive was called off & up the hill I went to crash for a bit of time & start editing the GoPro footage I had accumulated over the day.
After my nap I decided I’d be a little more social, so I returned to the main lobby/dining hall of the resort. There I was met by Elaine, Billy (one of the Fijians working there), & Kai (the owner’s daughter). Elaine & Billy were in the process of teaching Kai how to bartend as she would soon have to be the one to do it in a few of the staff’s absence in the coming months. Elaine was writing out a list of basic drinks & recipes as she’d at one point owned a bar & we all got to be the guinea pigs for Kia’s bartending experience. I got handed a blended Papaya Daiquiri which was refreshing & light before then being passed a drink Elaine & Kai had come up with called a “Safety Stop,” a fruity rum drink with a cherry floater halfway submerged. If you’re a diver you already get the joke, if not allow me to explain (divers may skip ahead to next paragraph). A safety stop is a 3-5 minute hold spent around 15 feet below the surface. The purpose of the safety stop is to allow your body to expel some of the nitrogen that has been forced into your body due to increased pressure. It helps prevent decompression sickness a.k.a the bends.
After a dinner of Veggie Tempura, Pan Fried Marlin, & assorted fruits alongside a Rum Negroni, it was time for bed. I wrapped up my editing, posted my travel vlog video, & was out before the clock struck nine.
End Of Day Two
Day Three
Now entering Monday, I was awoken around 6:30 AM once again, this time by the sound of a screeching Masked Parrot perched atop a tree just off the side of the hill. The sun had risen & the rain had cleared so I made my way down to breakfast. My meal that morning was Muesli, a dish that I had been introduced to in the past by my former manager. The Muesli at Waidroka was less of an overnight oat & more of a cereal with a plethora of topping. Yogurt, honey, bananas, raisins, papaya, etc. It was amazing & quite filling though I think I owe part of my fullness to the endless supply of tank bread (fruit bread in the shape of a tank) that came with each breakfast.
Our dives were at “Pipes,” just off shore from the reef wall. “Pipes” in addition to being a great dive site, is also a rather attractive surfing stop, in fact that’s where it received its name. To us it was appealing not only for the abundance of corals & sea life, but also because Dave, my other dive buddy, & I needed to get down below 100 ft for our deep diving certification.
Upon our initial entry into the water I became immediately overwhelmed. Not anxious or panicky, but aghast at the amount & diversity of the corals that lay below me. “Pipes” was truly a spectacle & I couldn’t help but smile for at least the first 10-20 minutes of the dive.
We pretty quickly got to work plummeting down into the deep. Elaine, Dave, & for some reason Darin, Deb, & I all made our way over the drop off & down into the deep reaching around 108 ft. before beginning our slow ascent back up to the main part of the reef. I think Deb & Darin were simply following us, not because they were after the certification, lord knows Darin most likely already has it being a dive shop owner, but because they thought we were following the rest of our group. In any case, Deb was now just lacking the coursework to check off her Deep Dive certification.
At “Pipes” I found a gorgeous bubble tip anemone in addition to the only Powder Brown Tang I saw the whole trip, which just happened to be at depth! The reef teemed with life from Moorish Idols to Regal & Lemonpeel Angelfish to Firefish & Leopard Wrasse.
We dove “Pipes” twice before heading in to shore for lunch. During our surface intervals we sat drinking coffee, eating muffins, cookies, & apples, watching the surfers take in the surface enjoyment through a light drizzly rain that made way for a magnificent rainbow.
On our second dive we crossed the 80 ft requirement for the Deep Diving cert. Deb joined once again. I contributed to my daily bit of ocean conservation when I pulled a busted size 11 flip flop from the sand that a massive sea cucumber was attempting to eat. We also found a shining example of bubble coral nestled just opposite of a huge saddle anemone.
My lunch that day was a Fish Wrap served with a side of Island Slaw, a very cucumber heavy dish. No spider accompanied my mean but there was a rather large moth outside the dive shop when we initially returned. I also began my daily practice of post dive tea time; English Breakfast with a spoonful of sugar & a splash of milk. Really warms the bones from the chilly deep.
We were given the go ahead to trek out for another dive which we decided would be a return to “Pipes” only this time we would drift dive the portion that is normally surfed & end up tucked away from the current where we originally began. This is where we spotted our first Turtle of the trip! Off swimming in the current, lazily bobbing along, a turtle! Unfortunately the afternoon churn & our distance from it kept me from getting a good video/picture but it is there if you go back & watch the day three video from my TikTok or Instagram!
In addition to the turtle the wall was covered in beautify Zoanthid polyps & teaming with larger reef fish like Grouper, Snapper, & Squirrel Fish.
Dinner was Coconut & Pumpkin Soup with a Marinated Pork Chop & Ice Cream for dessert. I sat a few long, extra hours at the table editing video for the daily vlog before I began the sixty-four step climb to my room.
The frogs were out that night, massive tree frogs that came out to bask in the warmth of the concrete all while attempting to attract a mate.
I’m pretty sure I stayed up rather late editing, going to bed around Midnight instead of 9 or 10 PM.
End Of Day Three
Day Four
Tuesday started a little groggier than the previous. With more dive footage came more required for combing through hours worth of footage to find several one to three second blurbs to fit into my vlogs. I’m not complaining though, I’m beyond happy with how my vlogs turned out!
It was a clear day that we started earlier than normal because we were off to dive Beqa Lagoon proper! I started my day once again with Topoi as we had to brave the choppiness of the Beqa Passage between the main island of Fiji & Yanuca Island on the western edge of Beqa Lagoon.
As I said, the morning was a much quicker one, the wind was due to pick up in the afternoon making the Passage more & more difficult to navigate in our small dive boats, so our call time sat just on the other side of breakfast, the staff even arriving thirty minutes earlier to accommodate us.
Our first dive in the lagoon was called “Pinnacles” so named because of the labyrinth of pinnacle rock formations jutting up from the sand below which now house millions of individual plant, fish, coral, & invertebrate species.
Upon entering the water we were immediately greeted by a curious Remora. For those of you that don’t know, a remora is a fish with a sucker on the top of its head that attaches to larger pelagic aquatic animals such as whales, turtles, sharks, & manta rays. Seeing a remora is usually a sign that something big is swimming near by unless, as this one was trying to do, they see you as the bigger aquatic life & attempt to suction onto you for a ride, something I’ve heard is far from fun.
The Remora quickly lost interest in us & we began our dive. Wrapping around the first pinnacle we found an abundance of Sea Fans & Whips, Christmas Tree Worms Basket Starfish, & two massive Clown Triggerfish. We wove in & our of the different Pinnacles throughout the dive though I stayed around 5-8 feet above everyone else, my left ear failing to equalize the the pressure below that depth.
When it was time for the group to make our safety stop we were moved to the top of one of the largest pinnacles. The abundance of life just atop the large, looming tower was extraordinary. Hard corals abounded with damsels darting in & out of their folds, Male Lyre-tail Anthias flashing their displays, fighting over territory & harams of females, & the current swinging us all violently to & fro, now entirely unprotected by the walls below.
We took the opportunity of our surface interval to dip out of the wash & into calmer waters. We pulled over to the abandoned surf camp on Yanuca & claimed it as harbor while we sat around sun bathing & eating our carb heavy snacks. I took the time to tend to my clearly clogged sinus in preparation & hope that it would clear for the next dive ahead. My efforts were fruitful!
The original plan for dive number two of the day was to do a site called “Three Nuns” as the three massive pinnacles there resembled, you guessed it, three nuns. About halfway out the Fijians called it though & diverted to “Turtle Head” a dive site not as close to the passage where winds & waves had picked up exponentially.
“Turtle Head” is so called because one of the large pinnacle towers there jets out into the water reminiscent of a Hawks-Bill Sea Turtle. I personally didn’t see the turtle head during the dive, maybe it was because I was distracted by the incredible life found there but was definitely also partially to do with the fact that I spent the whole dive fighting my mask which had taken up the hobby of fogging during our surface interval. Well, that & the waves had kicked up quite a deal of sediment. None of that to say that the dive was a bust however, far from it.
In spite of the rather constant annoyance my mask was generating & the face I had to fill & clear it almost forty-five seconds, the dive was still incredible. We found several very large Porcupine Pufferfish, another Octopus, & a Trumpetfish, in addition to all of the coral & fish dotting the reef & its many tunnels that would have made great swim throughs if not for the fragile nature of the sea fans inhabiting them.
The top of the “Turtle Head” pinnacle was even more teeming with life though so too was the surge. It was truly a fight getting back into the boat even despite having the mooring line to hold tight too while being slung back & forth across the reef.
Lunch was Teriyaki Chicken Fried Rice served from the beach of the old surf camp. After paying a local $10 Fijian per person to a local islander we all climbed off the boat onto shore & gathered in the bar/mess hall of this now abandoned surfer camp, a location the island locals have helped to upkeep because it has since become a hot spot for dive boat lunches.
Another very popular surf spot, Frigates, is just off shore from the island, on the western edge of the Beqa Lagoon. Frigates is one of the top surf spot in the world, bringing people from all over to cruise its wave. This surf camp featured facilities for surfers to bunk in, running water, a full kitchen, etc. However, they decided at one point to stop paying rent to the locals who in turn kicked them out.
After lunch & failing to husk a coconut on the beach, I swam out to the boat for my mask. A beautiful reef say just off the shore & me being the fish I am, I had to explore it. This then gave Jodi an idea for our third dive. We would be doing a shore dive, starting just outside the little harbor & ending right before the shoreline. So I guess not technically a shore dive where you enter & exit from the shore.
This dive, which we named “Papaya Seed” because of the random swatches of papaya seeds all over the surf camp, was very reminiscent of my first ever dive in Maui with the exception that I think the water was a little more clear on this dive. The sparse reef was home to Massive Seacucumbers, Many a Cleaner Wrasse & their respective cleaning stations, Pillow Starfish, Queen Conches, Clams, Triggers, & Tangs & the dive ended up being a very relaxed, very quant one!
The journey back through the chop was a rough one & I was thrilled we ended up not being smack dab in the middle of it with “Three Nuns.” We were greeted back at the dive shop by the resort cat before I once again began the editing game for my vlogs.
The evening was meant to be a cultural night at the resort, of which I was unaware until one of the Fijian dancers, Sam Sam, came up behind me to fetch a spear from the building overlooking the harbor where I’d taken up residence with my post-dive tea & my iPad, just editing away.
The Fijians all circled up & sat by the pool bringing us all in to a group half circle to watch the festivities. They explained to us the dances & songs they’d be singing & then the party began. A group of young Fijian men rushed the “stage” they’d allotted & began their traditional dances. They ranged in age from early twenties to about eight to ten & the littlest ones constantly looked to their superiors for the next moves. After the dancing & singing we were moved to the main building of the resort where a line up of traditional Fijian foods awaited us.
I took way too much food & ate the lot of it which caused me to spend the duration of my evening editing very, very full. I ended up wrapping around midnight again but without finishing the video. I determined it would be better for me to wake up early the next day & finish which is precisely what I did.
End Of Day Four
END OF PART ONE