lynnemari:
Hi, we have been diving mainly in the carribean since it is so much closer to the USA. We would really like to go to fiji. I have looked around on the web fors airline ticket prices,(cheap tickets, expedia ), they start at $2000.00 plus. I wanted to know if anyone knows of cheaper tickets to fiji. I am from the middle of the USA. but was hoping there was a better deal out there. I would love to go to the south pacific and see those exotic looking fish!
thanks
Lynne
I just returned from Bamboo Beach Resort (BBR) in Fiji. They offered a package that included a week at the resort (meals, lodging, five two-tank dives, unlim shore diving) plus r/t airfare LA to Nadi, Fiji. The package was $2695 p/p. They would also do it without air for something like $750 less. The package makes it hard to figure what we actually paid for airfare, but if $1945 sounds reasonable for the resort ... and in that remote part of the world, that's about the going price ... then we paid $750 for the LA/Fiji air. When I started researching the trip, LA/Fiji was running about twice that through on-line reservation services, so we jumped on the package deal.
(I, too, am from the American midwest. I had to arrange my own flight from St Louis to LA, but that's a pretty mainstream flight. I think we hit it around $300. Air Pacific, which will probably be your carrier from LA to Fiji, tells you that you have to inform the agent in LA if you're making connections. Otherwise, they won't guarantee your checked bags will make the trip with you. We did that, but the agent we talked to said it wasn't necessary, and there was no hitch in the baggage transfer. Checking the bags through is definitely preferable to having to claim them and recheck them in LA.)
BBR is now defunct, but I gotta think other resorts do pretty much the same thing or they couldn't compete.
We had a marvelous time in Fiji. The coral, hard and soft, the clownfish, nudibranchs, flatworms, and amazing profusion and light at the top of the bommies was extraordinary. Not much big stuff, though: one whitetip shark and one yellow stingray all week). Be comfortable with current, and take a full complement of surface signaling devices just in case.
--Eric