BULA!!! (hello) Welcome to FIJI!
Vinaka (thank you) for your interest in the details of our honeymoon to Fiji. As some of you know, Tate planned the entire honeymoon on his own. It was to be a surprise to me which I wasn't to learn where were were going until we got there, or as close to it as possible. All I knew is that were were going somewhere tropical to SCUBA dive. He did a very good job of keeping the location of our trip secret until about a week or so before we were to leave. Unfortunately, my overly excited fiancé let it slip that the water temperature in "FIJI" was about 70 degrees this time of year... woops. Oh well. It allowed me to get very excited. Although my first question was "Where is Fiji?". This may be your question too so here is a handy little map of the world showing where in the heck Fiji is. Located in the South Pacific, tt is about a 10 hour plane ride from Los Angeles to the West and 3 hours from Australia to the East.
Next is an account
of our trip...
(click on photos to enlarge)
Tuesday, October 4th
We arrived at the
Sacramento airport at about 4:00 for our 6:00 flight to Los Angeles. Once
we arrived in LA, we waited for our flight to Nadi, Fiji (pronounced Nandi)
which didn't leave until 11:30 pm Tuesday night. This was my first flight
on a Boeing 747, man that's a big plane! 
Luckily
I took a Dramamine so I was able to sleep quite a bit on the long 10 hour
flight. I woke up enough to eat a couple of times and watch parts of a
movie. Tate didn't sleep so easily and watched parts of several movies. We
landed in Nadi at about 5:30 am Thursday morning Fiji time. Yes, I said
THURSDAY. Fiji crosses the International Date Line (notice the 180 degree
Meridian on the map below) so we lost a day during the travel. Fiji is 19
hours ahead of California. Nadi is located on the big island of Vito Levu,
and we still had another flight to go... We waited for our next flight to the
island of Taveuni where we would spend the majority of our stay in Fiji.
During this wait, we learned about "Fiji Time". The people of
Fiji are very laid back and aren't in any big hurry to do ANYTHING. Our
flight which was scheduled for 7:30 am didn't leave until after 8:30. How
does the first flight of the morning get delayed????? Anyway, we arrived
on the BEAUTIFUL island of Taveuni. It was just a short trip to the Garden
Island Resort.
When we arrived, we
checked in and went to our room to clean up and then eat. As we arrived in
the room, the phone rang. It was the front desk saying that they were
upgrading us to another room since we were on our honeymoon. We were
thinking WOW, this is great! We got to our new room... funny, it looked
just like the old room. Why would they move us to another room at the very
end of the resort... hmm.... Honeymoon, room at the end of the resort, HEY, what
are they thinking? Did they think we would be noisy or something?? I
can't imagine why 
. Anyway, we liked
our new room MUCH better...it was RED! Don't you just LOVE the view from
the balcony?
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| Yeah, its RED! | View from balcony | On balcony looking down the row |
Once we got changed, we we down to the Rainbow Room for some lunch and then headed back to the room for a nap.
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| the Rainbow Room | View from the Bar | View from our "usual" table | view from the chairs back to the Rainbow room | looking back towards our room at the very end |
Here are some pictures of the sunset on our first night. It was stunning.
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| Wrong camera setting | Still wrong, but who cares! | Getting prettier by the minute | Apparently, this is a very popular picture, they had one like it in the lobby and I've seen it on Webshots too. Daddy, aren't you proud of your photography influence? | The sun is all gone, but its affects remain. |
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| This is us the last night on Taveuni | The sunset the final night | |||
Friday, October 7th - Monday, October 10th
WAKE UP AND DIVE!!! Friday was the first of four days of diving the Rainbow Reef. We started each day by diving 2 dives in the morning, with a one hour break in between dives at a little lagoon on Vanua Levu. Not a bad little spot to rest for a while. We would get back to the resort at around noon and take a quick shower and head down for lunch. After lunch we would nap for a couple hours then freshen up to go downstairs to watch the band play, play some games and have dinner.
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| This is the little lagoon we had our surface intervals. And that's me hanging off of the back of the boat after snorkeling around the area for a while. | ||
The diving was absolutely beautiful! It truly was like diving in a giant fish tank. We saw schools of angel fish swimming around us, as well as
Click on the fishy below to see the wide array of underwater photos taken by Tate
We DID do a couple of other things other than nap in the afternoons.
On Friday, we took a little walk up the street to the International Date line (180th Meridian). This was a very neat thing to see. This is the actual line in which the yesterday, becomes today. For technical reasons, they have adjusted Fiji so that the entire country is in the same time zone and not in two different days.
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| Yesterday meets Today | Half of me in Yesterday, the other half in today | Me in Today and Tate in Yesterday |
On Saturday, we took a little hike to Kulanawai Waterfall. This is about a 10 minute drive by 4x4 up into the Rainforrest of Taveuni Island. Once we arrived, we realized that it was a HIKE to get to the waterfall. So off we went. As we started up, this was what we saw ahead of us
It took us about 20 minutes to get to the first falls... but no, we couldn't stop there, we had to keep going to the second falls, which was about another 10 minutes up hill. It was quite a hike, for me anyway, Tate did fine.
At one point, our guide decided to stop and talk to us and there was this giant spider spanning between a couple of trees. It was about the size of my hand. I just about had a heart attack waiting for the guy to shut up and keep walking. We passed several more on the hike up and one even had caught something large and had it all wrapped up and was apparently planning to eat for a week or two. I noticed that all of them were spanning between trees or bushes and had HUGE webs. A lot were flapping in the wind. I have no idea what kind of spider it is and have searched online for a name, but can't find one. Apparently it isn't poisonous. I don't care, it still could have killed me had I happened to have a heart condition or asthma. I didn't take this picture, I found it on the internet. Are you kidding, that would have meant I had to look at it. It was hard enough searching for a photo and downloading it!
Anyway, along the way, I was able to remove that eight legged giant from my mind briefly to turn around and look behind me at the beauty.
We finally reached the falls and it was just so pretty. We were hot and sweat and couldn't wait to get in the fresh cool water.
Once we were done cooling of we heading for the very top where our ride met us to take us home. Before going back. we walked a bit further up the hill where we could see Vanua Levu Island and the Somosomo Straight (between Taveuni Island and Vanua Levu). To the right is a small island called Korolevu where most of snorkeling occurs in that area. If you look real hard, you can see the lighter areas of water where the Rainbow Reef begins. If you can imagine the shorline below us on Taveuni, this is where our Resort is.
On Sunday, we decided to go to the Waitavala Waterslide s natural waterslide located in the rainforest. Traditionally, it's about a 25 minute walk, but there was no way I was walking all that way, up hill after diving for 3 days straight and the previous hike to the waterfalls. So, the resort arranged for a ride to the falls where we still had a short 5 minute hike to the slide. There were a bunch of Fijian kids running back and forth sliding. I opted to stay back and take pictures as I didn't have the right shoes for navigating the mossy rocks and I could just see me hurting myself. So, Tate made the journey alone. He made it the top of the slide and the kids were so excited to see him there. He waited while they went down first to see where they stopped then he came on down! He went back up for a second run and one of the kids wanted to go down with him. You can't see the little kid cause he's behind Tate with his arms around his waist. It was awfully cute.
Monday was our day to leave the beautiful Island of Taveuni and head back to the big island of Viti Levu for the final three days of our visit to Fiji, and for my BIG surprise! We left for the airport at 2:30 for our 3:30 flight. For some reason, they wouldn't let us on our original flight to Suva, perpahps we were too late and our baggage would have put the plane over weight? Anyway, we ended up on another flight that went first to Savusavo on Vanua Levu Island, then to Nadi where we had to get of, claim or luggage then catch another plane to Suva. This made us over and hour and a half late arriving in Suva and by that time, our transfer to the Lagoon Resort had already left. We ended up having to catch a taxi to take us to the resort. Having no idea where our resort was, or how long it would take to get there, we asked the driver and he mumbled something which all we heard was "36". We had no idea if that was 36 km, minutes or what. So off we went. It was getting dark and we are noticing that this island is a lot more urban with a lot of people walking on the roads. After about 45 minutes of driving and both of us wondering if the driver knew where the heck he was going, the driver pulled over and into a gas station. He pulled up next to the building (not the pump) and got out without saying a word. Tate and I looked at each other and wondered what the heck we were doing. A few minutes later, the driver came back with some snacks and as he started to pull away, asked if we wanted to go in an get anything, that he was starving. The people on Viti Levu Island aren't as friendly as Taveuni... at least not that cab driver. We asked how much longer and he just laughed and continued driving. About 30 minutes later, we finally started seeing signs for Pacific Harbor which is were our resort is located. We were quite relived to know we were almost there. THEN, as we were passing a large truck, we saw someown standing in the middle of the street with a red wand. The driver pulled over and come to find out, it was the police. Our cab driver was getting a speeding ticket! What an adventure this ride was turning out to be. Once he got back into the car, we drove for a couple more miles and finally came upon our resort. WHEW!!!
We checked in, ate some dinner and then headed to bed... the next day was my big SURPRISE.
Tuesday morning, we woke up early and waited for our ride to the Aqua-Trek Baqa (Banga) dive shop at the hotel across the street. Tate was taking me on a SHARK DIVE!!! For some crazy reason, I have had a thing for seeing sharks ever since I saw Carol Herrlie's video of the Galapagos Islands and the amazing footage of the Hammerhead Sharks swirling above them. I seem to always be asking to see sharks whenever we go diving. So, Tate planned this entire trip around the world famous shark dives in Fiji. I couldn't WAIT!! We got on the boat and there were six other divers, all men... where were all the women??? The dive masters briefed us on what to expect once at depth (Bull Sharks, Nurse Sharks, Black and White Tip Reef Sharks and the occasional Tiger Shark!) I was soooooo excited, and a little nervous.
Dive One
Once we got in the water, we saw a bunch of fish swimming around our feet and some that looked like miniature sharks. They turned out to be sucker fish. Those are the little fish that you see attached to to bottom of sharks. There were TONS of them! We reached the bottom and lined up at the line and the dive masters got in to position. One at each end of our line with long pokey things to fend of any wandering sharks (I assume), one guy with the video camera and one guy with all the food. As soon as the food came out, the fish went CRAZY. They swarmed the area making it hard to see through them. We finally were able to get a look at a HUGE Nurse Shark resting on the ocean floor. At one point, a Bull shark came along but he was a bit hard to see. We also had a Gruper about the size of me and a big ole Napoleon Racsh in the area. These fish are really big and so pretty. The visibility wasn't all that great due to the frenzy to get food and then once the food hit the ocean floor, the rush to get it mixed up silt from the river mouths that opened into that area. After 40 minutes, we headed up for our surface interval. This was the end of the dive one.
Dive Two
We entered the water much like the first dive and headed straight to the bottom. The dive masters were set up like before and the feeding began. This time, we had A LOT more sharks come to eat. Someone counted about 16 Bull Sharks at one point. They were just beautiful. I wanted to get closer to get a better look. I moved over to another side where Tate was taking pictures and you could see a ledge where they were apparently hanging out when not getting food. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any closer. The visibility was still poor due to all the other fish and the silt and food debris in the water. You couldn't see the sharks coming but you could see them going as their tails were a darker shade. It was still amazing. At one point, Tate felt something between his legs and looked down to see a large Moray Eel swimming through. He was pretty cool looking. He was trying desperately to fit into a hole that seemed to be just a bit too small for him. He eventually pushed though and poked his head out for a couple photo opportunities. We then turned our attention back to the sharks and saw a Black Tip Reef shark swim by us. He was swimming along nicely twitched his tail just slightly and took off. Wow! After 30 minutes, we headed for the surface. Wow, what an incredible experience! THANK YOU TATE!!! I LOVE YOU!
To see photo's of the sharks, click here:
Later that night, we found out that Wednesday's was a "Special Dinner" night at the resort. They ask all the guests to come to eat and sit at one table, After each course, the men would get up and move to another seat allowing for everyone to get to know each other. We were the first to arrive. Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture of everyone at the table. Those attending the dinner included the owners, Heather & Jim as well as two other couples all from Australia or New Zealand. They called themselves "Kiwi's" and were all retired. We were the youngest couple there. We thought it would be boring eating with a bunch of old people. As the time went on, we found that there was all kinds of things to talk about and they all were very nice people. As dinner wound down, they served a complimentary after dinner Port which was made in Fiji. Actually, the grape extract came from Australia but it was prepared in Fiji with the Island fruits. It was absolutely WONDERFUL.. even without chocolate (as most Ports need some chocolate). Jim & Heather ended up giving us a bottle as a wedding gift. THANK YOU!
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| Us waiting for the other dinner guests | Owners Jim & Heather |
Thursday, time to get ready to go home. We left our hotel at 3:00 for the 2 1/2 hour drive to the Nadi airport. Along the way, we stopped at a local handicraft store for some souvenirs. Everything there was hand made by local Fijians. We picked up a few trinkets and continued on. The road to Nadi was a highway that followed the coastline and was a beautiful drive. Our driver was very knowledgeable and told us about the Fijian history and local customs. Our only regret was that we didn't have a couple extra days to take some time to do some local excursions into Fijian culture. Next time...
Well that about sums it up. Thank you for taking the time to read through our honeymoon stories and looking at our photos. We have a DVD of our shark dives, if you are interested in seeing it, let us know.
Tate & Reneé Viehmann
