Hintermann
Contributor
- Messages
- 1,049
- Reaction score
- 317
- Location
- Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, UK
- # of dives
- 500 - 999
Just got back from Fiji, a trip that included a week of liveaboard diving on board the Island Dancer and a few days of land based sightseeing. Overall, it was a good trip but not as good as I expected because of unexpected heavy weather.
Going from the UK, I flew on Korean Air via Seoul, stopping overnight in the South Korean capital both ways. I am happy that I chose that route instead of going through LA. The flights were good with surprisingly good legroom in economy, excellent service and convenient hotel near the airport. I also managed to do a night tour of Seoul on the way back.
On arrival in Nadi, the weather was comfortably warm and very sunny. I met the private transport arranged we set-off for Suva right away. As we moved further east, the skies got cloudier and by the time I arrived in Suva, it was drizzling. The cloudy skies stayed with us most of the diving week with only the occasional sunny interval. Moreover, the wind picked-up and the sea was quite rough most of the week, making the crossings very rocky.
The boat itself was a mixed bag. It was clean and well kept but there was very limited lounging space for 10 guests. The dive deck was also rather cramped and we had to be careful to avoid bumping into each other on the dive platform when kitted-up. On the positive side the cabins were larger than usual with plenty of storage space and good-sized en-suite bathrooms.
The crew were excellent, spearheaded by Joji the Captain. They bent over backwards to make the cruise as comfortable as possible for us and get full marks for everything. My only problem was the mediocre food, which I found too greasy; but then Fijians are not known for their cuisine and the chef did the best he could.
As mentioned, the weather was unfavourable and this was a big disappointment to me. We hardly saw the sun all week and the strong winds rocked the boat severely during the longer crossings between islands. The Captain had to modify the itinerary based on weather reports but he did a great job in ensuring that we got a reasonably good cross section of reefs under the circumstances. We were forced to spend a whole day in the shelter of Namena Islands where the diving is mediocre at best but it was great elsewhere, particularly in Coral Heaven, Black Forest etc.
Once underwater, the visibility was very good on most dives with only a couple under 30m (100 feet) due to plankton bloom or sediment. Also, the Captain and Moses the DM cleverly planned the dive at each reef so that we did very little swimming against the current. But the choppy surface conditions made in awkward at the end of the dive and we spent a lot of energy getting back to the boat deck or the dinghy, as the case was.
The diving itself was very good. Most of the reefs we visited were small to medium promontories with colourful soft and some hard coral at the top and up to around 20 metres. Further below the coral thinned out and the topography was more rocky. There were plenty of smaller critters - damselfish, snappers, groupers, regal angelfish, emperor angelfish, many-spotted sweetlips, titan triggerfish, clown triggerfish and so on. There were also a lot of nudibranches. Also on the menu were green moray eels, blue-spotted stingrays, a school of barracuda. As for the larger stuff, we saw the odd shark in other dives but we did a couple of shark feeding dives in Nagali Pass on Gau island and saw a lot of the pelagics and also other fish.
The following is a link to the photos that I took during the diving week.
Fiji 2013 - a set on Flickr
Going from the UK, I flew on Korean Air via Seoul, stopping overnight in the South Korean capital both ways. I am happy that I chose that route instead of going through LA. The flights were good with surprisingly good legroom in economy, excellent service and convenient hotel near the airport. I also managed to do a night tour of Seoul on the way back.
On arrival in Nadi, the weather was comfortably warm and very sunny. I met the private transport arranged we set-off for Suva right away. As we moved further east, the skies got cloudier and by the time I arrived in Suva, it was drizzling. The cloudy skies stayed with us most of the diving week with only the occasional sunny interval. Moreover, the wind picked-up and the sea was quite rough most of the week, making the crossings very rocky.
The boat itself was a mixed bag. It was clean and well kept but there was very limited lounging space for 10 guests. The dive deck was also rather cramped and we had to be careful to avoid bumping into each other on the dive platform when kitted-up. On the positive side the cabins were larger than usual with plenty of storage space and good-sized en-suite bathrooms.
The crew were excellent, spearheaded by Joji the Captain. They bent over backwards to make the cruise as comfortable as possible for us and get full marks for everything. My only problem was the mediocre food, which I found too greasy; but then Fijians are not known for their cuisine and the chef did the best he could.
As mentioned, the weather was unfavourable and this was a big disappointment to me. We hardly saw the sun all week and the strong winds rocked the boat severely during the longer crossings between islands. The Captain had to modify the itinerary based on weather reports but he did a great job in ensuring that we got a reasonably good cross section of reefs under the circumstances. We were forced to spend a whole day in the shelter of Namena Islands where the diving is mediocre at best but it was great elsewhere, particularly in Coral Heaven, Black Forest etc.
Once underwater, the visibility was very good on most dives with only a couple under 30m (100 feet) due to plankton bloom or sediment. Also, the Captain and Moses the DM cleverly planned the dive at each reef so that we did very little swimming against the current. But the choppy surface conditions made in awkward at the end of the dive and we spent a lot of energy getting back to the boat deck or the dinghy, as the case was.
The diving itself was very good. Most of the reefs we visited were small to medium promontories with colourful soft and some hard coral at the top and up to around 20 metres. Further below the coral thinned out and the topography was more rocky. There were plenty of smaller critters - damselfish, snappers, groupers, regal angelfish, emperor angelfish, many-spotted sweetlips, titan triggerfish, clown triggerfish and so on. There were also a lot of nudibranches. Also on the menu were green moray eels, blue-spotted stingrays, a school of barracuda. As for the larger stuff, we saw the odd shark in other dives but we did a couple of shark feeding dives in Nagali Pass on Gau island and saw a lot of the pelagics and also other fish.
The following is a link to the photos that I took during the diving week.
Fiji 2013 - a set on Flickr
Sorry to hear about that problem though because I know it's one you can't escape from.
