Good Bye Fiji

So finally the time came when a decision needed to be made. We had been hanging on in Fiji trying to conserve money whilst I waited for a work visa to start a dive job I'd been offered. The problem with getting the work visa was that I was already 'in country' so special permission was required in order to apply for the work permit. My would be employers were unable to provide me with accomodation in the mean time or hurry the process up so it simply became unmanageable to continue waiting, this was compounded by the fact our friends Russ and Sue wanted crew to sail to New Zealand departing as soon as a weather window allowed. Fate it seemed was pushing us away from Fiji for the time being at least.

A BIG tip if you would like to work in Fiji, make work contacts before you arrive, (if you are a dive professional there are plenty of opportunities!!!!!) then when you land and have to fill out the little form at the airport, simply tick that you are there on business, this gives you a 3 months working visa provided you can prove you are employed within 2 weeks of arriving. Simple!!! From there you can get 6m or 3 year visas although it gets a bit more complicated.

Anyway I bit the bullet and decided to move on and a 1050nm open ocean voyage seemed to be the right choice.

I am a little gutted Fiji didn't pan out as we had hoped but we got a very real experience of living there and met some amazing people. I will miss the sugar and honey, pineapples, curries and weather. Also we will never know what happens to our wee puppy but we did all we can for her.

Good bye to Fiji and hello to the next chapter.....

Sharky and George, well just sharky.

We had heard really good things about this shark dive in a place called Beqa on the Coral coast in Fiji.  We left cool water lodge and got the bus from Nadi down to Pacific harbour which is the best place to stay if you are thinking of doing the dive.  The bus was super cheap and they usually have films playing but I usually prefer to look out the window and watch the world go by.  The further south and east we went the more the weather deteriorated and it became more windy and rainy.  We arrived at our hostel and it was blowing a hooly!! We did not hold out much hope for doing the dive the next day.  We were correct the dive was called off dude to bad weather so we headed back to Nadi.  We met some cool people when we were staying in the dorm that night and they were all heading to Nadi as well so we agreed to meet for dinner that evening.  Not a wasted journey by any stretch.

Anyway I digress as usual, we headed down to Pacific Harbour for a second time a few days later as we really wanted to do the shark dive before we headed off on Russ and Sue’s yacht for our Ocean voyage from Fiji to New Zealand.  We hopped on the bus and hopped off 2.5 hours later in Pacific Harbour.  The next morning we were picked up by the dive company, kitted out with our gear, put on the boat and we were heading out for our close encounter with sharks.  We went with a dive company called Beqa Adventure Divers (http://fijisharkdive.com/) and they were good and professional.  We were told we could see up to 7 species of shark on the dive so excitement levels were high.  The highlight of the dive was going to be the bull sharks and if we were lucky maybe a tiger shark.  As we motored out to the site we were given all the usual safety briefs plus some shark info.  We arrived on site, had pre-dive chat about what was going to happen and then we were off.  The dive is extremely easy as all you do is sit on the bottom while the dive guides drop fish heads above your heads and fish and sharks come in and feed.  You get to see loads of big fish, like trevally and snapper and the odd bull shark on the first part of the die and then you head upto a shallower area where they feed the reef sharks which are smaller but still very cool.  I even had a 5ft white tip reef shark swim between my legs.  

Picture borrowed from the internet as we can't as yet afford an underwater camera

That was the first dive done and dusted but we still had another to go.  The second was awesome!! We dived down and lay on the seabed at about 26m and had about 20 bull sharks circling and coming into to eat the fish heads that were being dropped.  It was amazing to see the beasts of the ocean, the biggest was a pregnant female about 10ft long! Or 3m in new money.

In all we saw 4 species, Bull, White Tip, Black tip, Grey reef shark. Unfortunately no tigers but it wasn't really the right time of year. Also there were less Bull sharks than other times of year as lots had headed up river to pup, saying this we saw around 20 in a very small area which was impressive enough!!  

Also stolen photo, don't judge me!!!!

We were both in two minds about going on this dive as the sharks are fed and this is obviously not completely natural way of seeing the sharks and it does interfere with their natural behavior.  The plus side is that all the money raised through people going on the shark dives is used to conserve the area as a marine reserve, it also allows them to collect population data.  They educate local communities in shark conservation and also compensate the local villages for not fishing in the marine reserve.   I would definitely recommend doing this dive if you got Fiji.