We chose Fiji as our next destination after Australia. It would be a shame to be in the area and not to visit. We went there with visions of pristine white sand beaches, coconut trees leaning above the crystal clear water, dolphins jumping out of the water and half-naked girls serving sweet drinks with little umbrelas... Well, lets say that we did see a lot of coconut trees :)
Fiji is a lot of islands. There's a main island Viti Levu, where the Nadi international airport is. We arrived there late at night flying from Darwin through Sydney, so we stayed at a hostel in Wailoaloa beach (which is very close to the airport). Next day we jumped on the domestic flight to the Taveuni island, which is the 3rd largest. After hour-and-half flight, we landed on what seemed to be a football field with a shack on a side. The shack was the "terminal". If you think I'm kidding, check out the pictures :)
The main reason for us coming here was the Rainbow reef. It was supposed to be pristine, full of fish, soft corals, the works... Comparing the options online and from the guide, we picked the TovuTovu resot as our base. It was kinda scary as when I tried to call them from Darwin, I had a lady on a phone, who I think knew only one english word - "YES" - which was answer to any question I asked. Anyway, after landing and getting our bags, one of the two taxi drivers told us he'd take us to TovuTovu as we had no clue how to get there. Well, it was on the other side of the airport. Almost literally :) So in less than 10 minutes we were lead to our nice little bungallow.
The original plan was to start diving the next day, so that we can get 3 days of diving and the final day off to do some touring around. Well, the next day was sunday. World stops spinning around at Fiji on Sunday. So we were lucky enough to be able to get a driver to take us to the Bouma national park to see some waterfalls. On the way there I realized why all the cars on Taveuni were 4WD. Parts of the road must've been riverbeds on Tuesdays and Saturdays... :) Anyway, we made it there, the waterfalls were beautiful, the rainforest was dense, spiders, crabs, exactly what we expected.
Monday, finally, we started diving. After the disappointment at the Great Barrier, I honestly didn't expect much. Even less did I expect to be thrilled about corals. I've spent 6 years diving on Bermuda after all. Well, let me tell you, the corals here are, for the lact of better word, stunning. I've never seen anything like this. We were lucky to be able to do the White Wall (apparently very famous) as our first dive and it's just impossible to explain. Unfortunately even the pictures can't give you the true impression. During the two days of diving, we've seen so many corals and so much life... I consider this to be my No.1 place in the world so far as far as reef beauty goes. Oh, on the breaks between the 2 dives we always went to a beach with white sand and coconuts. On the 2nd day, I actually managed to crack-open one just using rock! I was very proud of myself, despite the deep bloody cut on my hand from doing so :)
On the final day we went to the western coast of the island. The is one main reason to go there. Taveuni happens to be one of the 2 places in the world, where the 180 meridian passes through land (the other place is somewhere in Siberia). So, technically, you can be standing with left leg in Tuesday and right in Wednesday, same time. We found the marker in the middle of a football field :) Btw, in the guide they said that long time ago, bad farmers made locals work on Sunday, claiming it was Monday where the fields were ;) There's also a shop which "opens as the first in the world". I guess they're right :) Then we went to see a pearl farm. Pretty interesting, the dude even showed us how they insert the pearl cores into the living clams, etc.
That was it for Taveuni, we were off back to the main island on the next day.