My Travels: Fiji ( Part 2)

At dawn

We stayed with The Pearl, which is one of the better hotels in Pacific Harbour. It was surprisingly cheap for a 5* star hotel. For some reason, they were running a promotion at that time, so it only cost FJD 221/night which was a pretty good deal! The hotel was recently refurbished, so it looked really quite new and I loved the lobby. It was a minimalist setting with large couchs and always had a breath of fresh air with it's open concept.

Our lovely accommodation for 6 nights

Didn't notice the bouquet till the next day! Nice touch~ :)

We woke up early the next day to head over to the dive shop to organize our dives and gears. We booked our dives with Beqa Adventure Divers (BAD), as it was recommended by the hotel. The other dive operator that also runs the shark dives is Aqua Trek. I don't actually know why the hotel recommended BAD as Aqua Trek was actually in the hotel's compound.. Not that I minded. The service from BAD was pretty good.

Gearing up for our first dive

The thing about Fiji diving that wasn't impressive was the choppy sea. For anyone who knows me, I have a terrible vestibular system. That meant motion-sickness pill popping for me. Same goes for the boy. We always travel out to and stay at sea all day between the dives, which was pretty rough on the first few days. I've always been the sort that looks out for the shore breaks, coz it gives me a break from feeling nauseated.

First dive: Seven Sisters.

First view - The Japanese Trawler 1994

The giant lionfish

The lone ranger

Our lovely DM for all dives - Sivo.

Having worked with BAD for the last 4 years, Sivo was really friendly, although not very talkative. His English was pretty good, and he definitely had an eye for spotting critters. He amazed us when he found a frogfish hiding behind some corals. Definitely not an easy sighting! Not only that, although he didn't participate in the shark feeding, he is qualified to do so. Probably wasn't allowed to feed the sharks as he had to keep an eye on the clumsy two of us :P.

And the following is what Fiji diving is famous for :

Fiji Corals Definitely breathtaking. We no longer see such
beautiful corals in Malaysia unfortunately.

Loving the coral passages

My dive buddy photographing intently

And now, for the soft corals and sea fans :)

Highlight of the first two dive day!!!

Leopard Shark!

It was just coincidental that we spotted the shark. We were diverting to the other side of the coral as the current was getting too strong. I'm glad we diverted! Probably as long as I am.. we estimated about 1.5 metres

We also did a few dive throughs, which was quite interesting although a little scary initially going in to the dark but ultimately seeing the light at the other end :)

Sivo - Looked like he was praying.. LOL

The calm sea

Wasn't very often that we had the calm waters. This was taken when we went to hide away from the wind behind a large island. The water was still magnificiently blue and clear. It was also here that one of the divers did some of his diving skills requirement for open water.

Loving the water

What truly struck us was the large sea fans. As big as one of us, the sight of it was truly awesome. We do see a lot of sea fans in our diving time (although it's not been that long!), the sea fans in Fiji were truly large and gorgeous! People always say that if you spend long enough looking at the sea fan, you'll see lots of little critters/marine life on them - unfortunately for us, the currents were always so strong that it was virtually impossible.

Sunset from our rooom

Feeling quite tired from the day, we decided on having dinner in the hotel itself, at Mantarae Restaurant.

Hotel restaurant

His spaghetti cabonara

His dinner wasn't all that yummy, but mine was pretty good. We've decided that the Fijians eat quite healthily. The food was a little bland for us, so we ended up topping up most of our food with salt.

My lamb shank :)

We did have our lunch packed by the hotel on our first day as we didn't know what time we would get back from our dives. Fortunately for us, the dives usually ends at about 2 p.m so after the first day, we decided to head back to shore for our late lunch. The heavy breakfast ties us over anyway :P.

Massive sea fans *SY and Sivo*

More corals

Sea fan and the shark behind it

Blue spotted sting ray :)

Christmas trees :)

I don't know what this is called

Nudi nudi!!

Loving the corals once again

We had our second night dinner at Oasis, which is located at the Cultural Village. The restaurant had a very simple setting but the food was really pretty good. And for a reasonable price too! We ended up revisiting the place quite a bit during our stay.