Fiji 29th August 2005

We got up and checked out in time to catch our bus transfer to Port Denerau where the boat departs for Beachcomber. The bus picked us up at 8am and dropped us of at 9am after taking a circuit around the hotels to pick up others. Once we were all on board the half hour boat journey took us out past other islands to arrive at Beachcomber at approximately 10.00am.

Beachcomber, what a place! It’s basically your castaway island paradise with the creature comforts of home – fantastic! You can stay in either the dormitories (cheap and nasty) the lodges (comfortable but not flash) or the Bure’s (the nicest accommodation, Bure is Fijian for house). We stayed in a lodge, Coconut lodge to be precise which was perfectly adequate, cool at night and we weren’t there much during the day.

After a complimentary pineapple juice to welcome us we had a little bit of time on our hands before we could move into our room. So we went down to the dive shop and signed up for the dive lessons we had organized from New Zealand – that’s right, we’re going to go diving in Fiji!

We spent the day wandering around the island, played a bit of mini-golf on the 9 hole course they had there and generally oriented ourselves.

The weather was a little overcast and the water was a bit choppy on the non-sheltered side of the island, but still fantastically warm - and this was as bad as the weather got all holiday!
We also started the studying that was required for the first three of the five modules in the dive course. So relaxing start to our holiday throughout the day.

At lunch we meet a Bulgarian called Vlad who lived in Japan (probably the most unlikely combination of nationalities possible) and spent the evening playing cards then at the bar with our neighbors at the lodge and their friends. The later part of the evening was spent at the bar where we were taught the ‘Bula Dance’ (bula is Fijian for hello/greetings) which is basically the Fijian Macarena – a touristy gimmic, but a lot of fun.