About a year after I took my first confined water diving class – I took my first big dive trip. Mexico was fun, but Fiji was AMAZING!
Day 1 (Saturday & Saturday)
The flights were uneventful, though lack of sleep was an issue. We had instructions from the dive shop to make sure that the first leg of our flight arrived before 2pm in Los Angeles. I landed in L.A. at 12:30pm Pacific time. My Fiji flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 11:30pm Pacific time. I worked on my laptop and tried to stay awake. Since I was alone, I couldn’t doze off in the airport or someone could steal my stuff. At around 7pm, I got a text from the group leader that they were in line to check in for the flight. (That would be 10pm Eastern – and past my normal bedtime.) I got in line with the group (25 of us) and we got our boarding passes. At around 11pm, we finally started boarding. On the plane, I had 3 small pillows, ear plugs, and an eye mask, and in the 11 hour flight, I managed to get 3, maybe 4 hours sleep. I could not get comfortable.
In Fiji, we went through customs, got our luggage, went through security, and finally got on our way. We had a 2-hour bus ride to the opposite coast of the island from the airport. We made a stop at a shop and I bought a couple of sarongs so I’d have something to bring Kendra. They had the most gorgeous pearl necklaces. I LOVED one of them and got them to price it for me. White gold chain. White gold infinity loop around the huge Fijian pearl was studded with diamonds… $1000. Even just a simple pearl on a white gold chain was about $350. Needless to say, I didn’t buy any pearls.
Then we headed to the coast. From there, we took a 45 min boat ride to the island resort. At the resort, there’s no dock, so they came out to get us in aluminum boats and we had to wade into shore. Then we had a fabuluous lunch, got our orientation, and I went off to get a free foot massage. After the foot massage, I went to my hut (bure, it was called), turned on the AC, unpacked my dive gear, and took a shower. I had won a drawing to get a free 60-min relaxation massage. I upgraded that to a 90-min deep tissue massage.
After my massage, I took an hour nap before dinner. For our lunch and dinner, we got to choose from 3 items. For lunch, the choice was Mahi-mahi, meat lasagna, or vegetarian lasagna. I had the fantastic meat lasagna. For dinner, I had fresh fish of some sort, a delicious pasta, and baked pumpkin. Dessert was a chocolate layer cake with a cream whipped with strawberries between the layers.
See some menus here: http://www.beqalagoonresort.com/cuisine
After dinner, I came back to the room and finished unpacking and organizing my stuff. I had bought some converters on Amazon and was able to get all of my electronics charging. I sent some text messages on my MacBook and went to sleep.
Day 2 (Sunday)
I slept very well until about 4am on Sunday. Since I woke and couldn’t go back to sleep I loaded my photos and video from Saturday onto my iPad and uploaded photos to Facebook.
I headed out for breakfast at just after 6am. It was still dark, but the lights along the path were not lit up. I was able to make my way by moonlight since the moon was very close to being full. I went down to the shore in front of the pavilion and took some photos and hung out in the hammock a bit.
They were still setting up for breakfast and I heard the clank of tanks that indicated that the dive shop was open and they were working. I went over to ask about doing a weight check since I didn’t do a check out dive on Saturday. I went ahead and analyzed my Nitrox tanks while I was there.
I relaxed and chatted with people until breakfast. We were given menus to choose our lunch and dinner for the day, and we watched the sun come up. It was winter in Fiji, so the sun comes up around 6:45 and goes down around 5:30.
Once the buffet was set up, I had orange juice, watermelon, pineapple, and papaya, and made some toast in the world’s slowest toaster. I could have done better with a cigarette lighter. They took our orders and I ordered a ham and cheese omelet. They used some local white cheddar and the omelet was delicious. They also had cinnamon pancakes – which were more like cinnamon sugar beignets. I was completely stuffed by the end of breakfast.
After breakfast, I had a little time so I walked around to look at the pool and go back to my bure for a few minutes. Then I went down to join the group that was prepping for the dive. There were tons of people hanging out and analyzing their air.
It took a while to get everyone ready and in the boats, and then we took a half hour boat ride out to our first dive site. Quite a few of us had trouble with our weight check. The waves were beating us around pretty good. I burned a lot of air at the surface trying to add weight to my BCD. Then we went down and dove a reef. There were LOTS and LOTS of small fish. It was straight out of Finding Nemo. Some people saw a shark off in the distance and I heard there was GoPro footage to prove it. I was too busy dealing with my buoyancy and looking at the small details around me. I had to add a bunch of air to my BCD on the bottom, so must have been over weighted. I dove to a maximum depth of 51 feet for 43 minutes, thanks to using up so much air on the surface. The water temperature was 81 degrees. I had to keep notes on here since I didn’t have enough room or available weight in my bags to pack a log book.
After the first dive, I was feeling pretty nauseous, so for our surface interval, I drank some water and hung out on the top deck. The gear change and check went well and soon, we were back in the water. Just before I did my giant stride into the water, I reached for my GoPro in the bucket of water… and realized that I had forgotten to swap out for a fresh battery. I hopped in and got a few seconds of video before it died.
It was then that I knew that it was going to be an amazing dive. We saw the most beautiful coral formations, a sea cucumber, and a happy little sea turtle. I saw some clownfish living in a sea anemone. We saw eels and oysters. There was a color-changing coral. It was amazing. I dove to a maximum depth of 67 feet for 52 minutes on the Shark Reef.
After the dive, I fought off more nausea and headed up to the deck. We had a beautiful ride back to the resort.
When we arrived back at the resort, I headed to my bure to shower and change before lunch. Lunch was the best tuna salad sandwich I’ve ever had in my life. Tuna is much better when it is caught fresh in your backyard. I headed over to Aaron and Diane’s bure to get the card with his dive footage and borrow a humidity strip for my GoPro.
I hung out at my bure writing my dive journal and editing video until it was time to head down for the 4pm shore dive. Once there, several people were gathering gear. We had to analyze our tanks and gather our gear that was put away by the dive shop guys. This included weights, which became an issue. They hadn’t pulled everyone’s back weights. They had to go out and get weights off of the boats.
Once we got in, several of us did weight checks. Mine was a mess. I sank like a rock when going down butt first, but if I was face down, my feet floated to the top. I also listed to starboard. After a trip back up to the shore to swap some weights, I was good to go.
Walter was my dive buddy (the doctor with the 16 year-old that Travis kept talking about). We headed out and to the right and found tons and tons of things to look at. I was amazed at all of the things to see a few feet from the beach. That’s why they have to moor the boats so far out and use jetties to bring people to and from the shore.
After I turned around to head back to the shore we ran into Aaron and Diane and followed them into shore without surfacing. By the time we rinsed and stowed our gear, the choir had arrived, so I rushed back to the bure for a quick shower.
I got back to the hall at 6:30 and the choir was already singing. Dinner was served at 7 and I had potato soup, lamb, mashed potatoes, zucchini, and a poached pear. The soup was a little disappointing and I didn’t like the pear, though others loved it. It was poached in a wine reduction. I’m not a fan. The rest of the food was delicious.
We chatted a little, and were thinking of playing Cards Against Humanity, but I was completely exhausted and went back to my bure and went to bed.
Day 3 (Monday)
I woke at around 3:00 and couldn’t go back to sleep until about 4. Then my alarm went off at 6:00 and I slowly got up. I got another video loaded and headed to breakfast at just before 7am.
After breakfast, we went out for our dives. Our first dive was at Carpet Cove. There, we got to dive an amazing wreck and see a Spotted Eagle Ray, a blue striped eel, a sea turtle, and some puffer fish. It was a great dive until the end when I had to do my safety stop while constantly swimming down. It was exhausting. I dove down to 94 feet and the dive lasted 37 minutes.
Our second dive was at some weird name I don’t remember. Before the dive I added a pound to my weights and it was much easier to go down. I still had to add some air at about 40 feet, but that’s expected. I went to a depth of 62 feet for 50 minutes. Again, the water was a balmy 81 degrees.
Since I was nauseous the day before, I took nausea meds the night before and that morning. It seemed to help a lot.
When we got back, I took a shower and had some tasty fish tacos and fries for lunch. After lunch, I bought some lotion in the shop and went for the Coconut show. It was amazing to hear about the myth behind the first coconut tree, how it is used, and to taste the water and meat from green and brown coconuts. The green coconuts have sweet water and soft, juicy meat. The brown coconuts have flavorless water but thicker meat. The meat tastes like coconut. Once a coconut starts to have roots and shoots, there is no water and the coconut fills with foam that has the texture of a root, though it is juicy.
My memory card filled up during the coconut show, so I had to go back to the room and play video games – no, not that kind. I guessed that my jet lag was catching up with me because I was exhausted. I decided to take a 2-hour nap before dinner.
At dinnertime, I was too exhausted and wasn’t hungry so I stayed in bed. Actually, my tummy had been bothering me all day, but it wasn’t anything to be concerned about. Or so I thought.
Day 4 (Tuesday)
At 1am, I found out differently. After spending a pretty miserable morning doing nothing but going to the bathroom and editing photos, I had a decision to make. We had three things going on that day: a 2-tank dive in the morning, a trip to the schools after lunch, and a night dive before dinner. I decided to miss the morning dive and do the other two, since they were only being done once.
Naturally, the dive that I missed was awesome – calmer waters, clearer viz, and beautiful marine life. Oh well. I spent the morning relaxing by the pool and getting a 90-minute massage.
The view from the massage “room” was amazing. Once again, I got the Mango massage oil and even made a stop by the shop later to purchase a pack of lotion, lip balm, and massage oil to take home.
For lunch, I ate part of my plain burger and fries. After lunch, I relaxed for a bit and then at 2:45, we headed to the school. We walked to the villiage, visited the elementary school, the high school, and the nurse station. By the end of the trip, I wasn’t feeling well and went back to my room.
Unfortunately, I did not feel up to going on the night dive, and it’s probably best that I made that decision – they had to deal with some significant swells and currents.
When the night divers returned at around 8pm, we had dinner. I had the fish with no sauce, some zucchini, and the risotto. Mostly the risotto. I then came back to the room and slept through the night.
Day 5 (Wed)
When I woke, I felt well enough to dive, though a few others were out. Since I first got sick, I started drinking bottled water and continued that trend. (Though it was not cheap!)
The dives were great. Dive #1 at the Golden Arches reef featured a White Tip and a Black Tip shark as well as a huge puffer fish. I dove to a depth of 63ft for 37 minutes. Dive #2 at the Side Street reef had lots of color with a mild current. I dove to a depth of 60ft for 46 minutes.
The waters were calm and the visibility was considerably better. Closer to 60ft. On the boat trip back, we came up on a pod of 20-30 dolphins. They were amazing, swimming with the boat and hopping above the water. The boat captain looped around two more times so we could play with them.
When we got back to the resort, we took showers and had lunch. I had chicken skewers and mashed potatoes. Someone had gotten the grilled cheese and fries off the kids menu and I had half of that sandwich. It was good – made with white cheddar.
After lunch, we walked to a different nearby village. It was amazing… I bought a sarong tie and two necklaces.
After the visit to the village, we came back and had time to cool off before the firewalker and kava ceremonies.
After the firewalker show, I tried something called the “Happy Fijian”. It included pineapple juice, orange juice, passion fruit juice, grenadine, and vodka. YUM! I had two. And that was before the kava. I’m lucky that I stayed awake through dinner.
Dinner was a cold marinated fish appetizer, free-range beef filet with the wine sauce on the side, mashed sweet potatoes that were white – boy was that confusing, zucchini, and a chocolate soufflé with hand-whipped cream. Awesome.
I did some video editing and journal entry before bed then went to sleep.
Day 6 (Thurs)
Thursday was our shark dive. The day started out beautifully. The skies were clear, the seas were calm, and as we took the skiff out to the boat, we could see how great the visibility was.
We had an hour boat ride out to the dive site. My group was once again on the Reef Ranger and Travis’s group was on the Tradition.
We had varying degrees of nervousness, but nobody was sick and everyone dived. And it was worth it. Not long after we started our first dive, “Survivor”, a female tiger shark showed up. They told us that she is 14 feet long and weighs 1300 pounds. She was huge and slightly aggressive. It made for a fantastic dive. I dove to a depth of 83 feet for 29 minutes at the Bistro reef.
Our second dive was shallower and we didn’t see a tiger shark. We did see similar nurse and bull sharks to the first dive. Also, there were HUGE Moray Eels on the wall where we perched. This dive was a lot longer and they kept feeding and feeding the sharks. There were fish everywhere and the feeding frenzy became an amazing swirl of fish. As we came up to do our safety stop, the feeders gave the sharks more food and a few nurse sharks fed right beneath us. Some of the group got to pet the nurse sharks. I dove to a depth of 64 feet for 50 minutes at the Bistro reef.
We came back and I had grilled cheese and fries for lunch then went to my room to look at my video. I panicked when I spent 15 minutes importing the video to my iPad only to have it tell me the video could not be read. Deep breaths, deep breaths. I was able to view it on my GoPro camera – for a few seconds until the third battery died. I was able to use the camera USB cord to import the videos to my MacBook through iMovie.
What I learned:
- Use the following settings for your GoPro:
- 1080p (not 1440 if you have the GoPro Black) This is too high-def for Apple, it seems.
- 30 frames per second
- If you use an LCD bacpac, don’t use it without the housing. You can randomly touch things that change the settings. I accidentally changed from 1080p to 1440.
It was quite the ordeal. To fix it, save the video to my computer, save it again at a lower resolution, then save it back to my SD card (in small chunks) to get it on my ipad.
I spent the afternoon and all the way up to dinner doing video and photo editing. For dinner, I had the fish with the sauce on the side, red potatoes, and green beans. After dinner I came back to the room and did some more editing, then went to sleep.
Day 7 (Friday)
On our last full day at the resort, we woke to rain. It was gray and cloudy and lightly drizzled most of the night and all morning. I wasn’t feeling well and decided not to dive. I had yummy French toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast again.
After breakfast, I checked on my massage schedule for later in the day and came back to my bure. I sat on my front porch enjoying the rain while video and photo editing Wednesday’s stuff. I uploaded 110 pictures for that day.
At lunch time, the internet slowed dramatically, and I went down to the main building early. It turns out that they get satellite internet from the mainland and the storm interferes. Makes sense. The dive boat was late getting back, so Lavon, Walter, Leann, Elizabeth and I played Cards Against Humanity. I had a tasty “Happy Fijian”.
When the boat arrived, they were pleased that the seas hadn’t been as rough as they looked from the shore. They had good dives and played with a turtle at their safety stop. I had a grilled cheese and fries, then came back to the room to do more editing.
Later in the afternoon, I went down to the dive shop to rinse out and get my gear. It had taken a nice boat ride earlier in the morning since I forgot to tell the divemaster that I wasn’t going out.
I skipped the cooking show. Let’s get real. I did have a massage at 4pm.
Day 8 (Saturday)
On Saturday, we had breakfast and left Fiji. So sad. We made the return trip to the main island and slowly across it. When we got to Nadi, we checked in to our day hotel, had some lunch, and took naps. Saturday evening, we flew from Nadi back to L.A. The trip was a little quicker back. We must have had a tailwind.
Day 9 (Saturday Again/Still)
In L.A., Travis, Lavon, Phil and I took a shuttle to the car rental place and picked up the rental that Phil had gotten. We drove to the hotel and checked in. After a few minutes, we hopped back into the rental car and drove down to Santa Monica Pier for a little fun in the sun and dinner before we went to bed.
Sunday morning, we took our flight back home through Detroit and I finally made it home.
