Another month, another holiday- this is the theme of my Year of Travel. Today I'm off to Beqa Island in Fiji for a week of solid scuba diving with most of the same crew as Gizo last year.
Thankfully Beqa is much easier to get to than Gizo, just 1 day of transit consisting of a 4hr flight, 3hr bus and 40min boat, where we are greeted by friendly locals and a beautiful resort with all the mod cons- like hot showers & reliable WiFi.
After a good night's sleep, the next morning is straight into the first of our 14 scuba dives this week as we explore reefs such as Circus Circus (home of many clown fish) and Sea Fan Coral.
The next day we are blessed with high visibility (30m +) and low current which lets us visit a nearby shipwreck at Carpet Cove.
But then it's on to the main reason we are here- the shark dives. For these we go to a dive site called Cathedral Cove, which has a substantial (and very healthy looking) reef but also an attached flat area they call "the arena" which at ~20m deep is the perfect location for a carefully orchestrated shark feeding.
Here we were lucky enough to see as many as 5 tiger sharks being hand fed by our (very well trained) dive guides. While 2 dedicated feeders (wearing chainmail) take turns to hand feed these gentle giants, the remaining guides form a line of guards behind us as we crouch behind a small rock wall. Words cannot describe just how impressive, large, and close these sharks are.
Our next dive is to another shipwreck, this time at Beetle reef, but during the night. There is something eerie about diving a wreck at night, like you are discovering something you didn't know was there (except, of course, we knew exactly where it was). And diving the same wreck in a subsequent daytime dive was just as interesting.
We finished our week with another day of shark feeding dives, and a final trip to Cathedral Cove to search the arena for any shark teeth which may have come loose during the feedings. I am lucky enough to find 2 teeth, one from a bull shark (which appear like tiny baby toy sharks compare to the tigers) and one from a lemon shark.
With our diving done, we celebrate our more than 12 hours underwater this week over a few beers with the dive guides and take the obligatory group photos.
While I'm not sure I'll ever make it back to Fiji specifically, it was definitely a bucket list dive worth experiencing, and I can't wait to see where in the world my dive travel takes me next.
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