3:30 am is super early, especially when you woke up at 3:30 am the day before, and went to bed at 1 am (thank you Fiji water and TD – look it up if you don’t understand the reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveler's_diarrhea). Luckily I don’t need a ton of sleep to function and Warren got enough sleep to be ok with driving. We rented a car for the day to allow us to drive south to Pacific Ocean which is about a 3 hour drive from our resort. We had an 8 am dive scheduled with Aquatrek – the pioneers of shark diving in Fiji.
That’s right – shark dive. Of course, this is the thing we “couldn’t miss” in Warren’s mind. I was happy with the white tipped reef sharks that we had seen the day before. However, this is what he wanted to do so I was in. We got there, found the shop after driving in a circle for 30 minutes, asking 4 different people who gave us 4 really bad directions, and ended up finding the place 10 feet from where we were driving. Thing to remember if you ever go to Fiji – they are really bad at describing directions and there are no signs to anything. However, in this case there was a sign but it was pointing in the wrong direction. But, we made it. We got our gear and we were off.
Since we are only open water certified we are technically allowed to go to 60 foot depth. When we signed our liability waver we agreed that we were certified to go to the 100 ft depth that is included in the first dive. That was a lie. I was already nervous about diving with sharks and now I got even more nervous because we were lying about our qualifications. Messing around with a sport you can die doing is no joke but I was hoping that we’d be fine and went with it. I figured I seriously couldn’t be the first diver to do that and the company has a 100 percent safety record – it had to be ok. (Warren: I was too tired to realize that we weren't certified for deeper than 60 ft)
We hopped into the boat and off we went to the dive spot. We geared up and jumped in. It actually was pretty painful because some of the people on our dive were close to retarded. It made me feel better about my chance of survival – if they were going to make it back up to the boat then I defiantly would. I’m sure sharks have a sense of the pecking order as well – surely they’d go for the annoying woman who was in everyone’s way and took a year to do anything before a normal person like me, right?
We descended down a rope to the bottom where they had a line set up. We were over weighted so we basically dropped like a rock to the bottom and held onto the line. It was not so much a dive and more of an observation under water since we didn’t really swim anywhere. I had brought my digital camera but quickly handed it to Warren once I realized something was wrong with my regulator as it was leaking water into my mouth. I started having a panic attack (big fish that could eat me, too deep of a dive, water leaking into the device that is my only life line to the precious air) but was able to get myself calmed down and started enjoying the dive after I realize there were tons of fish swimming us around us including massive sharks. The reg was leaking a little with each breath but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t breath and I kept reminding myself that I had a back up if I needed it.
We stayed on the bottom watching the sharks for about 25 minutes before slowly ascending and surfacing. We stayed on the surface for about an hour or so before going on our second dive which was to about 60 ft. The whole time we were on the surface they were chumming the water to attract sharks. When we got down to the second spot there were hundreds of fish, some were 6 ft tall and a few meters long, and probably 30 sharks of about 8 different species. The bull sharks were the largest; some were 3-5 meters long and swam as close as 4 ft from us. They were not interested in people, but gobbled up the fish heads they were feeding them. There were guides behind us with metal rods to discourage curious fish from nuzzling us or defend us from a shark if it got the fish head confused with someone’s hand. Luckily we didn’t interest any of the wildlife and made it to the surface in one piece.Once we finished up, we went off to our resort which was about 2 hrs back North. Warren had found it since our time share was short one night. When we pulled up, our jaws dropped as it was amazing. When we checked in they handed us juice and hot towels to wipe our hands off with. We sat in couches while we checked in and got all the information we needed. We had a 4 pm massage on the beach, so we had just enough time to get our bags to our room and go off to the cabana our massage was in.
After relaxing with our beach massage we went to change into our swim suits to hang out by the infinity pool and have a drink. We had a private cabana dinner at 8 pm so we waited until the sunset before heading back to our room to get ready. 
Our room was unbelievable as well, and it even had a bathtub on the balcony that looked out over the pool. It was what I always envision 5 stars hotels to be like, but they never are. The dinner lived up to our expectations as well. We were in a cute little building that looked out over the beach and the ocean. We had our own serving staff that started our dinner with champagne. The customized menu had 2 appetizers listed, a bread plate, 8 entrees and dessert. We were assuming that we’d pick from the menu, but it ended up that it was prefix and we got EVERYTHING. I was full after the first appetizer and was not sure how’d we ever make it through the meal. On top of being full, exhaustion was creeping up on both of us and we were finally feeling the last 30 days of non stop fun. I ate a bite of everything, but nothing completely. I had no idea how much the dinner cost, but we estimated there was no way we were leaving for less than $1K based on the food we got. Luckily when the bill game it was completely reasonable and made me feel sick about how much food we wasted. Our server was super friendly and we really enjoyed talking to him. He kept telling us how excited he was that we were spending our honeymoon in Fiji and said that if we were staying longer he would show us his village (it was a genuine offer, not just talk). Typically you don’t leave gratuity in Fiji, but he was so good we left a normal US tip. However, he crossed it out when he came to collect the bill saying that we shouldn’t tip him. When we insisted he said the resort doesn’t give them the gratuity anyway, which made me ashamed of them. We snuck off and got cash to give him and caught him before he was done cleaning the table up to ensure that he actually got the money he earned.
We were asleep before hitting the bed and I had a migraine sneak up on me. I told Warren that I had been waiting for that feeling of “I’m ready to be home” and it didn’t come until the last few minutes in Fiji. I felt ok with the trip ending even though I was sad it went by so quickly. It ends up that I think I had gotten a bit of CO2 poisoning from the first dive since my breathing was irregular and had a migraine for 3 days. Warren took good care of me on the way home and even let me get room service on our last night during the layover night in Auckland (we flew home via New Zealand to SFO but spent one night in NZ). The trip home was successful and easy as we had no flight or luggage issues our entire trip.
You’d think we’d need to sleep for 5 days after getting home, but on Sunday night Warren had bought me tickets to see Straight No Chaser (an a capella group that we got into a few years ago but always seem to be away when they tour). Their concert was awesome and my head ache had gone away. It was a perfect ending to a perfect trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment