Tahiti vs Palau vs Fiji....thoughts and advice?

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LittleB

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My husband and I are making our first trip to the South Pacific, and were hoping for recommendations on where to go. A bit of background: We have about 70 dives, all throughout the Caribbean (Belize, Turks, Honduras, Mexico, Bahamas, St Maarten, Saba). We are pretty easy to please, but flying from Calgary we are looking at long expensive flights, so we want to make sure we make an informed decision.

We want a destination that has a nice beach to relax, and diving that has a good variety - sharks, other pelagics, macro, and sites that are somewhat easily reached by land.

Is the diving really so good in Fakarava/Rangiroa compared to Fiji/Palau that it is the worth the price, remoteness and lack of topside activities?
Will we see the best of Palau doing land based diving?
How does the diving in Fiji compare?

Thank you so much for your opinions and thoughts!!
 
We did land based diving in Palau with Sam's Tours. The rides out are kind of long but very beautiful. We stayed at PPR and it has an AMAZING beach !!! We even saw a shark in their lagoon. It is a super fabulous place to stay. Sam's tours sends a boat around every day to get you and then gives you a shuttle ride home at the end of the day. If we had it to do over, we would do the exact same thing. Land based! We also spent a week at Sea Passions and it was not as luxurious as PPR but the location is great! We loved Palau and the diving sounds right up your alley! If you decide on Fiji then stay at Wananavu. They take you out to the Bligh waters which is again a long boat ride but so worth it! The corals are unlike anything I have ever seen elsewhere. We have also gone diving in Tahiti and it was nice, but not as nice as Palau! If you go to Palau plan on a couple of weeks if you can swing it!
 
I recommend you consider what season you will be traveling in before making your decision. North American summer is not the best time to dive Palau. Warmer water means fewer sharks seen on dives. Last I checked, some months of the year it was possible to snorkel with humpback whales in some parts of Tahiti. If you are considering the Beqa shark feed dives (Fiji), some months of the year the bull sharks are scarcer.

Re. Fiji, the Wananavu dive managers have turned over several times since I was there, but there has always been a list of requirements in order to get a Blight Waters trip to run. When I was there it was (1) no new divers to the resort on the boat, (2) minimum 6 divers, (3) all divers want to go to the Bligh Waters, (4) amenable sea conditions. Unless you are traveling with a ready made group, it may not be easy to get all 4 of these things to happen simultaneously if the resort is not that busy. I was assured by phone and by email that there would be at least 1 Bligh Waters trip in the 4 dive days I had, but 0 trips ran despite my follow up. One day the only two "new" divers were professional marine biologists who were working in another part of Fiji. Another day the ocean was like a mirror, but we only had 5 divers, not 6. The local diving is not as good as Bligh Waters diving.

I too did Palau land-based as I wanted to focus on the top sites and not dive what I considered second tier sites as much as the liveaboards did. Sam's has apparently restructured their dive offerings since I was there in 08 - apparently it's now a much longer day on the boat. If that matters to you, I would check the dive schedules directly. When the weather is good the Rock Islands are stunning, and the boat driver often added a little extra treat each day on our trip out or back. Apart from the one day with rain, I never regretted a minute I spent on the boats. Make sure you get to Peleliu if you go, and I would highly recommend the land tour. The Indian restaurant was still fantastic when I was there. The prison still offered the best selection of carvings. I enjoyed both Sam's kayak tour and the topside tour I did with an independent guide.
 
As someone with a similar number of dives albeit only in Bonaire and BVI, I would love to hear the comparison of the difficulty of these destinations. Which would you start with if you were an intermediate beginner like me? [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]Thanks![/FONT]
 
For the OP, staying land based makes the diving comparison difficult for the reasons stated above: Bligh Waters is one of the best places for diving but is not guaranteed to go if land based which means you will only get a few dives there (if at all) and the rest would be more local diving which while likely blowing away most of your Caribbean diving experiences in volume of critters wouldn't be the best they have to offer so you can't really compare each based on the best diving there is to offer. There is also Taveuni, which would probably end up offering more high end diving from land than the Bligh area, and Kandavu, which can have awesome diving but is not as developed and is more remote and could be "rustic" in accomodations depending where you go. I do liveaboards nearly exclusively then worry about the everything else on the trip, so I do both but I take care of the important stuff first and also quit worrying about getting sick and punting my diving (a considerable problem for the cost involved). Living with the crew and living the sea life and going to many sites is what I really enjoy and have had some awesome experiences I would have a hard time duplicating on land because you are onboard for a week or more. But the cost is higher because you don't share a hotel room, you pay each. But for me, I get what I pay for. To each their own. Fiji itself is really great for the people being the nicest in the world. Palau is good too but the airfare to get there stinks nowadays, and it's a considerable trip, including crossing the dateline where you lose a day going, though you get it back, jetlagged though you now blissfully don't care after being in paradise, on the way back. As mentioned liveaboards are good way to go there depending on your priorities. Diving is relatively easy there as it is typically either going along a wall with not much current or being carried along on purpose in the current, and you get to go to Blue Corner, etc. Tahiti is great sites but is pretty far remote and the diving is typically very deep like 80-90 feet but you get to see big schools of sharks and other cool stuff.

For DiverJen, the easiest diving is probably Palau due to the proportion of current dives which are easy once understood.
 
Wow!! I consider our group very fortunate because we went to the Bligh waters 5 out of our 6 dive days. We had beginners to advanced with us! You are right, the local diving is not that great! I would have been upset if we had not gone out there so much!! Also, I agree that Peleliu is a must! We did 2 dives then the land tour! Have fun!

QUOTE=NatashaS;7321978]I recommend you consider what season you will be traveling in before making your decision. North American summer is not the best time to dive Palau. Warmer water means fewer sharks seen on dives. Last I checked, some months of the year it was possible to snorkel with humpback whales in some parts of Tahiti. If you are considering the Beqa shark feed dives (Fiji), some months of the year the bull sharks are scarcer.

Re. Fiji, the Wananavu dive managers have turned over several times since I was there, but there has always been a list of requirements in order to get a Blight Waters trip to run. When I was there it was (1) no new divers to the resort on the boat, (2) minimum 6 divers, (3) all divers want to go to the Bligh Waters, (4) amenable sea conditions. Unless you are traveling with a ready made group, it may not be easy to get all 4 of these things to happen simultaneously if the resort is not that busy. I was assured by phone and by email that there would be at least 1 Bligh Waters trip in the 4 dive days I had, but 0 trips ran despite my follow up. One day the only two "new" divers were professional marine biologists who were working in another part of Fiji. Another day the ocean was like a mirror, but we only had 5 divers, not 6. The local diving is not as good as Bligh Waters diving.

I too did Palau land-based as I wanted to focus on the top sites and not dive what I considered second tier sites as much as the liveaboards did. Sam's has apparently restructured their dive offerings since I was there in 08 - apparently it's now a much longer day on the boat. If that matters to you, I would
iunischeck the dive schedules directly. When the weather is good the Rock Islands are stunning, and the boat driver often added a little extra treat each day on our trip out or back. Apart from the one day with rain, I never regretted a minute I spent on the boats. Make sure you get to Peleliu if you go, and I would highly recommend the land tour. The Indian restaurant was still fantastic when I was there. The prison still offered the best selection of carvings. I enjoyed both Sam's kayak tour and the topside tour I did with an independent guide.[/QUOTE]
 
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I've dived Fiji (Jean-Michel's resort as his guest) and Tahiiti (but only Moorea) and am heading to Palau (land-based with Palau Dive Adventures) in March. As a marine biologist, I am generally happy with almost any dive site as I always find something interesting to observe and film. I remember Fiji as being very beautiful but don't remember seeing any sharks (maybe I just had my head pointed down all the time). Moorea teemed with sharks which I enjoyed quite a bit (not to mention the nesting triggerfish... probably far more dangerous!) and my friends tell me Fakarava is incredible so I'm sure I'll return there soon. Other friends who were in Palau in November said it was the best diving they had done.

Although I enjoy diving the Caribbean, my preference is for Asia and the Pacific. Far greater biodiversity. I think you will be amazed wherever you choose to go.

I rarely consider topside amenities myself as after a full day of diving, I'm either editing the video footage... or, more likely, falling asleep!
 
It's surprising how little free time there is on liveaboards at even 4 dives a day, if you write in a log, talk with others about the last dive, and relax a little...
 
diverjen as Shasta_man's post suggests, this difficulty level of the diving depends somewhat on where you are going in Fiji.

I dove Taveuni with a very capable but newly certified OW diver for 8 days and we never had hairy current to deal with. There was some current - necessary when you want to see soft corals at their best - but generally we were diving with it or dives were timed so that it was minimal at the start but getting stronger by the end of the dive (when you're doing just 2 land-based dives a day with fewer than 4 divers it's easier to time the dives to the conditions). With a good dive op and good buddy, no problem. Bligh Waters you can be dealing with stronger currents and sometimes pinnacles. I can't recall much/any current on the local Wananavu dives. The Beqa shark feeds (near Pacific Harbour) start around 90 fsw but in 5 days diving there I never experienced a current.

I would agree that country to country, Palau diving is less challenging on the whole because you are either drifting or hooking in if there is any current. Many dives I did there was no current.

If you want to dive the best French Polynesia sites at the most ideal depths, you want to have higher level PADI certifications as the dive ops convert PADI certs to CMAS levels and limit your depth accordingly (searching trip reports here will pull up more info on this). Personally I would dive Galapagos before FPolynesia. Yes different conditions (cooler water, lower vis, liveaboard mandatory for the best sites, coral is not the focus), but the sharks are much closer.

jake11 it's possible that I was just extremely unlucky at Wananavu, but I have friends who also struggled to get out to Bligh (sometimes also there is a boat going but not enough space for everyone on the boat), so it's something I feel should be flagged in advance as a potential issue depending on how large the group traveling is and how many other divers are there at the time.

As someone with a similar number of dives albeit only in Bonaire and BVI, I would love to hear the comparison of the difficulty of these destinations. Which would you start with if you were an intermediate beginner like me? Thanks!
 
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Tahiti itself is not the diving destination of FPolynesia - Rangiroa and Fakarava and to a lesser extent Tikehau if my memory serves me correctly are. The Tuomoto Atolls is the highlight and only (IMO) great great diving in FP - and it is awesome. You will be surrounded by big stuff, sharks of many species , eagle rays mantas, napolean wrasses, turtles and its possible to have a marlin or sailfin show up on a dive and finish your safety stop with dolphins while a whale passes by. Whales again are seasonal. Biomass of fish is stunning the schools of snapper and bara etc are quite amazing. A CMAS certification card will come in handy as Natasha has pointed out. Rangiroa and Fakarava are all about diving passes so expect big currents and big fish and depth. Fakarava has more soft corals but expect very close up encounters with perhaps 50 - 100 sharks present on one dive if you get lucky. I had giant hammerheads, black tip reefies, white tip reefies, silkys, oceanic white tips and a glut of lemon sharks every dive at Tipuata pass...magic.

Screw the expense and distance..its truly memorable diving you wont regret if you get there. When the pass is running its a thrill a minute ride :D
 
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