Just returned from 1 week diving the Bligh waters at Volivoli Resort . Dive crew was very good, boats not so great. Too many divers on the boats, but we are finding that is the norm at many dive resorts. Boats had no water or soap in bathrooms, I know that a small thing but not to most women! Reefs were pretty along the tops especially. Lots of small fish everywhere, a few sharks but no big fish. Water was 79F-80F, seas were choppy so boat rides were tough to get to the Bligh dive sites. We paid for the Marine Park Fee and not issued a tag or receipt from the Marine Park. Is this normal? Most Places we have travelled to with a marine park at least gives you a receipt or tag to carry on the boat to prove you paid the fee. (This is important to us since Bunaken Island Indonesia where our boat was boarded without permission by machine gun carrying police questioning us for our marine fee proof, in another language, it was a 10 minute verbal fight with the boat capt., we were afraid for our lives!) Volivoli Resort has great food, pretty views, nice employees, great pool, tons of stairs up and down to get anywhere. If we return to this area we will stay at Wananavu Resort.
Next stop, 1 week on Taveuni, Paradise Resort. More of a rural Fiji experience, truly a beautiful island and people. Prepare for over an hour on unpaved road to get to that end of the island where Paradise sits right on a lovely spot. Diving the Rainbow reef each day, tops of the reef were so pretty but most every dive had too much current to dive along the tops so we ended up down at the dead bottom edge of the reef for the good share of the dives then just when we would go up the the beauty the dives were over. Don’t know if it was just the dive crew plans or what but we were never allowed to ride a current and view the beauty (Kiel Wakatobi and the Philippines), the guide said we would just fly away. My impression was that they didn’t have it in their plans to follow a group on a drift dive. The white wall was a natural wonder , nice swim throughs, but we did that too without current so the white corals were mostly closed. One site that was very nice was Cabbage Patch. Very healthy, huge cabbage corals.
The resort boat is very crowded but we were lucky because a big group of 23 divers had it full so they borrowed a smaller, fast boat from neighboring island Cousteau Resort, so our group of 5 had our small boat all to ourselves with 2 dive boat crew from Cousteau and 1 dive guide from Paradise.
Food was so-so here, rooms were kept clean. Be sure you request NOT to be in the 3 Vale rooms near the dive shop because the compressors run off and on all day and it’s noisy in those rooms, VERY noisy. Not fair when you are paying for an Ocean View Vale.
We probably won’t return to Taveuni.
Next stop, 1 week on Taveuni, Paradise Resort. More of a rural Fiji experience, truly a beautiful island and people. Prepare for over an hour on unpaved road to get to that end of the island where Paradise sits right on a lovely spot. Diving the Rainbow reef each day, tops of the reef were so pretty but most every dive had too much current to dive along the tops so we ended up down at the dead bottom edge of the reef for the good share of the dives then just when we would go up the the beauty the dives were over. Don’t know if it was just the dive crew plans or what but we were never allowed to ride a current and view the beauty (Kiel Wakatobi and the Philippines), the guide said we would just fly away. My impression was that they didn’t have it in their plans to follow a group on a drift dive. The white wall was a natural wonder , nice swim throughs, but we did that too without current so the white corals were mostly closed. One site that was very nice was Cabbage Patch. Very healthy, huge cabbage corals.
The resort boat is very crowded but we were lucky because a big group of 23 divers had it full so they borrowed a smaller, fast boat from neighboring island Cousteau Resort, so our group of 5 had our small boat all to ourselves with 2 dive boat crew from Cousteau and 1 dive guide from Paradise.
Food was so-so here, rooms were kept clean. Be sure you request NOT to be in the 3 Vale rooms near the dive shop because the compressors run off and on all day and it’s noisy in those rooms, VERY noisy. Not fair when you are paying for an Ocean View Vale.
We probably won’t return to Taveuni.
