darook
Contributor
Bula! Just wrapped up packing and figured I would start my trip report. My LDS organized this trip with 5 nights at Beqa and 7 at Volivoli. We departed LAX at 11:30 Saturday night on Fiji Airways and landed just prior to 6am on Monday morning. All on time. Fiji Airways runs A330s and is fine. Seats are hard so you will get a sore a$$ before you get there. I am dreading that part now for our return flight tonight. Customs at Nadi (pronounced Nandy) was super simple and fast. We got on our underpowered bus to Pacific Harbor and took in the gorgeous views while becoming familiar with the Fijian spirit animal, the speed bump. Every village has a large speed bump on both ends of town which requires traffic to slow to a crawl. After a stop at Jacks Crazy Sale! about halfway through we got to Pacific Harbor and boarded the boats at a new and very swanky resort. We were on the faster of the boats to the island and that took about 25 minutes. The slow boat was more like 45. Once there check in was a breeze and we got our lunch and foot massages. Nice!
My wife stayed at BLR several years ago and enjoyed it but was not blown away. That was under different management. My perception is that is now very well run, and they do everything they can on an island that uses generators and solar for power and rain and wells for water. The staff was amazing. I had heard that Fijians are the friendliest people on Earth and I saw nothing to dispute that anywhere I went in the country. The food was fine to great and serving sizes were fine. The beds were truly comfortable, perhaps the best I have had at any dive destination. Our bure was huge for two people and had beds for three. It had a nice porch for laying stuff out to dry and had a lovely view back towards Vitu Levu, the main island and referred to as the Mainland in Fiji.
Diving was exactly what I had read. The lagoon reefs are good, not great and subject to intense currents at times. We were there for a Super Moon so really got the whole experience. The shore dive is really fun for macro and I was able to enter barefoot and use my full foot fins. We saw lots of cool stuff on all of the dives but let's get to why you go to BLR, the Shark Dive.
I have spent plenty of time in the company of sharks and enjoy it immensely. Nothing, and I mean nothing, I have experienced is like their dive. They do not do the shark dives at Pacific Harbor anymore as they have made their own site at Cathedral. Cathedral sits on the eastern end of the waters they dive and above a wall that drops to 1000' feet. You will be kneeling or laying in 65' of water for the 30 minute duration of the shark dive. By the time you drop in the water has been chummed for an hour or so and there will be massive Tawny Nurse sharks, lemons, reef sharks and if you are in luck, Tigers. They do not feed the bulls, only tigers. They will distract the bulls with a bag of fish bits higher up the water column which creates a crazy feeding frenzy. That is all fine and good but what you want to hear is three taps on someone's tank indicating at least one tiger is in the area. At that point it is on! There is a metal box in the "arena" which is just on the other side of the wall you are kneeling against. In that box are tuna heads and next to it are two feeders with chain mail gloves on. A tiger will approach and the feeder will grab their snout at which point their mouth naturally opens and they get a tuna treat shoved in. They will then usually swim right towards you behind the wall and skim over your head. There is a team of BLR dive staff right behind you with metal poles to guide the sharks around to keep everyone, including the shark, safe. After 30 minutes you go up as a group to the boat and relax for an hour, then you do it again. We did it two of our 4 days we were there. BLR does it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and it is a lot of work for the team. Day one we had two medium sized tigers, a MASSIVE goliath grouper, about 30 bulls and several of the huge nurse sharks. These nurse sharks are many times larger than what you may be used to in the Caribbean and are much more active. Day two we had the bulls and one really big tiger that was the star of the show.
More to follow...
My wife stayed at BLR several years ago and enjoyed it but was not blown away. That was under different management. My perception is that is now very well run, and they do everything they can on an island that uses generators and solar for power and rain and wells for water. The staff was amazing. I had heard that Fijians are the friendliest people on Earth and I saw nothing to dispute that anywhere I went in the country. The food was fine to great and serving sizes were fine. The beds were truly comfortable, perhaps the best I have had at any dive destination. Our bure was huge for two people and had beds for three. It had a nice porch for laying stuff out to dry and had a lovely view back towards Vitu Levu, the main island and referred to as the Mainland in Fiji.
Diving was exactly what I had read. The lagoon reefs are good, not great and subject to intense currents at times. We were there for a Super Moon so really got the whole experience. The shore dive is really fun for macro and I was able to enter barefoot and use my full foot fins. We saw lots of cool stuff on all of the dives but let's get to why you go to BLR, the Shark Dive.
I have spent plenty of time in the company of sharks and enjoy it immensely. Nothing, and I mean nothing, I have experienced is like their dive. They do not do the shark dives at Pacific Harbor anymore as they have made their own site at Cathedral. Cathedral sits on the eastern end of the waters they dive and above a wall that drops to 1000' feet. You will be kneeling or laying in 65' of water for the 30 minute duration of the shark dive. By the time you drop in the water has been chummed for an hour or so and there will be massive Tawny Nurse sharks, lemons, reef sharks and if you are in luck, Tigers. They do not feed the bulls, only tigers. They will distract the bulls with a bag of fish bits higher up the water column which creates a crazy feeding frenzy. That is all fine and good but what you want to hear is three taps on someone's tank indicating at least one tiger is in the area. At that point it is on! There is a metal box in the "arena" which is just on the other side of the wall you are kneeling against. In that box are tuna heads and next to it are two feeders with chain mail gloves on. A tiger will approach and the feeder will grab their snout at which point their mouth naturally opens and they get a tuna treat shoved in. They will then usually swim right towards you behind the wall and skim over your head. There is a team of BLR dive staff right behind you with metal poles to guide the sharks around to keep everyone, including the shark, safe. After 30 minutes you go up as a group to the boat and relax for an hour, then you do it again. We did it two of our 4 days we were there. BLR does it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and it is a lot of work for the team. Day one we had two medium sized tigers, a MASSIVE goliath grouper, about 30 bulls and several of the huge nurse sharks. These nurse sharks are many times larger than what you may be used to in the Caribbean and are much more active. Day two we had the bulls and one really big tiger that was the star of the show.
More to follow...
