Fiji.     As i have explained on previous pages, virtually all the images from our 2001 trip were lost due to a hard disc failure.

We flew from Cairns down to Brisbane, while at the airport and waiting for our flight there was a big electrical storm and all the power went off in the airport, just what we needed before boarding a flight. 

Anyway we boarded our flight to Fiji and everything went smoothly……….we arrived in Fiji on December the 30^th 2001  just in time for the New Year celebrations.

We stayed at the "Hideaway Resort", about an hours drive East from the airport at Nadi. We chilled out here for a few days before diving, just soaking up the sun, the hotel was very nice, right on the beach, lovely gardens and pool. 

We were in a beach front cottage with palm trees and lawns right outside the chalet. I cant remember the name of the operation that we dived with but they appeared to a reputable outfit. On the morning of our first dive we were picked up by a taxi and drove down to Pacific Harbour, a beautiful location. The taxi turned into the dive center if we dare call it that, my lasting memory of the place is that it looked like it had been deserted for the past twenty years.........there was a building of sorts, and out the back was a swimming pool with no water in it, i remember there being a dead frog lying in the bottom of it though. Some guy turned up and we signed the normal waiver forms, now i know why they get you to sign these things. There was no sign of life at all, no kit to be seen, a completely empty room with a telephone on a desk, i wondered if it worked ? We were led out past the pool to where a boat turned up, the boat was diesel driven and had a solid cabin that you could either sit in or on to catch the sun. 

We made our way out past the beautiful houses and what looked like a golf course to open sea. I guess we we were about 10 to 15 miles out, you could see land in the distance but it was a good way off. The dives we did were very good, lots of fish, pinnacles to dive around, we were in Bequa Lagoon. After the dives we spotted a sand bank, beautiful white sand maybe 100 by about 30  yards, I wanted to take some photos of Janet so the boat dropped anchor about 150 yards out and we swam over to the sandbank, we had finns and mask on but no snorkel. On the way back the tide had turned, and having no snorkel made life extremely difficult, no matter how hard i swam i could not make any headway back to the boat, the waves though not big kept hitting me in the face, i was exhausted and getting nowhere fast, thank the lord that Janet is a very strong swimmer because she had to tow me back...........all because i had no snorkel. 

We made it back to the boat and set off back towards the mainland when all of a sudden there was an allmighty bang. It sounded serious, the boat ground to a halt and the boatmen were scurrying about, after about half an hour they managed to get "something" working as the engine roared into life, it was more of a cough and splutter than a roar but at least we were moving. On the whole we enjoyed our diving there but next time we will choose our dive operation more carefully, allthough the literature we had seen looked very good.     http://www.divesitedirectory.co.uk/fiji_beqa_lagoon.html     

Our flight out of Fiji was round about 10 pm at night, so rather than check out after lunch and hang around the quite small airport we checked out in the morning and booked into a hotel in Nadi so that we had a room and could take a shower and use the pool through the day and still be just 10 minutes from the airport, at about 7pm we were going out for a meal when there was a lot activity around the front of our hotel, we were told that there had been an attempted coup and the airport was surrounded by security personel and if we wanted to catch our flight we should make our way there directly as check in times were taking a lot longer than normal. We had a great week on Fiji and enjoyed allmost every minute, we did catch our plane but when we landed in Hawai we were so tired that we hardly got to see the place....................looks like we will have to go back.