We’ve always talked about taking a live-aboard dive trip. I’ve spent a lot of time on these trips when I worked for Scripps and loved it. Getting up in the morning to a nice breakfast (that someone else made). Diving. Eating lunch (that someone else made), diving, diving, diving. Instead of the two dives a month we get now, we’d be able to make three a day for a week or ten days.
The thing that puts me off about this is that, even compared to Legacy, living on these dive boats often means living in less than comfort and luxury or even roughing it. But next to us here in Pacific Harbor is the answer: Pacific Quest. We got to go aboard for a tour. Wow. This boat is beautiful. See for yourselves…
Cyndi almost lost me when I saw the bridge. It was really touch-and-go when I looked at the workshop! This boat is really beautiful and so practical for diving, featuring a big RIB tender for diving that is on it’s own lifting platform. There’s an amazing “patio” on the top deck with a big dining table where the views during dinner would be stunning. And it’s captained by Ned, a really nice guy with years of experience running live-aboard trips in Fiji.
It’s a little expensive, but not really that expensive when you consider what you get, and that the price is all-inclusive with no hidden taxes or charges. We probably won’t make this happen this season, but it might be in our future. I haven’t gone out with them but based on what I’ve seen, I’d sure recommend Pacific Quest to a friend.
We’ve had amazing weather this season. Because of the light winds and great conditions, we’ve been able to do much more than usual. Not any more. It looks like the bad weather will be making up for lost time with lots of wind and more rain than we’ve ever seen in our three previous visits to Fiji.
This is a picture of our precision rain gauge taken in Lami near Suva. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen that much water in our dinghy. That was from just one night!
We left Lami, in part, because of that brown water that shows so clearly in the photo. We can’t make fresh water out of that. Our filters would clog in about seven seconds. The other reason we left was that, with the coming winds, we weren’t sure that we could keep our mooring. The owner might need it to further secure his boats. We didn’t want to have to scramble for a spot to anchor during the worst of the blow, so we moved back a berth at Pacific Harbor as it doesn’t look to get better anytime soon.
Here’s what windy.com has to say about our future weather…
Intense rain next week as the South Pacific Convergence Zone descends over Fiji. It’ll be accompanied by strong winds.
We’ve never seen this much lightning in Fiji. We had an intense thunder storm in Suva a couple of days ago. We are forecast to have very high winds too.
Even the pool is rough today…
(just kidding. Click for larger version. I love Photoshop!)
When it all passes, we’ll get going again, but in the mean time, life in Pacific Harbor is very good.
One of the things I hoped to do this season was a rafting trip on the upper Navua River, high in the mountains. This river has cut a deep and narrow chasm through the solid rock, creating what’s known as “Fiji’s Grand Canyon.” The resulting scenery: immense vertical walls topped by the lush rainforset.
For thrills there are rapids, their intensity varying depending on the time of the year. In summer, the rainy season, the rapids are strong and fast, making it a real white-water rafting adventure. In winter, the river is much lower and the rapids much milder. The advantage of winter (July through September), is that the lower water level makes the canyon walls higher and more dramatic.
It would be ideal to make this trip at both times of the year: once for the wild white-water ride and once for the spectacular scenery. Unfortunately we’re only here in the winter, but if we could pick only one trip it would be the one we had: the scenic canyon ride.
(Some scenes along the river. Click to enlarge and scroll.)
Since there are other river trips (including one on a bamboo raft that includes a visit to a village), I had to research carefully and make sure we chose the trip we wanted. It quickly became clear to me it was the Upper Navua River, but there was a hurdle to cross: we anchor in Suva, and the starting point for this trip was a place called Pacific Harbour, about 40 minutes away by car with no anchorages. When this dream of mine was born, it was the end of the cruising season 2015 and time had run out for this sort of excursion. Still, I hoped to return in the future and make it happen. I knew a marina was being built in Pacific Harbour at the Pearl Resort. It looked small, but maybe they’d have room for visiting yachts.
Now it’s 2018 and we’re back in Fiji. I researched the marina to see if we could rent a berth but never found a clear answer. One source seemed to indicate they wanted super yachts, another said the marina was for the local working boats but visiting yachts were welcome to take a mooring (problem: there are no moorings). I think things were written at various times when their goals were changing. At this point all we could do was call, and yes, they had room for us and it would be $25USD a night. Fair enough.
(Pictures from the Rivers Fiji guy. We’re in the yellow boat. Click to enlarge and scroll.)
Thus began our time at the Pearl Resort Marina in Pacific Harbour, “The Adventure Capital of Fiji.” It’s a place well known to regular tourists but way off the beaten path for yachties. A few have trickled through but not enough to spread the word; so Pacific Harbour is still largely unknown in the cruising world. Naturally, coming here was a real adventure in itself, and what a great adventure! We’ll do further posts about Pacific Harbor, but suffice to say we loved our time here. Aside from access to the bull shark dive with Aqua Trek Diving and our river trip with Rivers Fiji, we’ve enjoyed the beautiful (though somewhat funky) Arts Village with its great eateries and the pleasant ambiance of the area.
But back to the river trip. It was all that I’d hoped for, and Rich (not having much idea about it as this one was my doing) was thrilled with it. The whole excursion was so well run and the staff were great. Our day included all transportation and equipment of course, plus a morning snack, a satisfying lunch by the river, and several swims—floating along in our life vests we could imagine we were tubing. While we do show some rapids in our video, we don’t the have most dramatic ones as before Rich discovered the hold-the-camera-in-his-mouth technique, we had paddle or hold on with both hands.
During the trip we heard interesting stories from our guide, making it a cultural experience–we’re familiar with seaside fishing community life but the lives of the mountain people and their terrifying boar hunting was new to us. Of course we had lots of fun in general and several water fights with the other raft. Probably the biggest surprise was how long the canyon was. I just assumed the photos I’d seen were of a small area, but no—their grand canyon is big. Really big. This truly is one of the jewels of Fiji.
For anyone interested you can check out their website: riversfiji.com. You can book the trip at a resort tour desk, call them at 679-345-0147, or book directly online (you’ll get a discount for booking it yourself). For those staying in Suva, they do offer transportation from the various resorts for which you’ll have to pay extra and get up earlier. I don’t know if they pick up from the yacht club.
Note About the Music: You might notice we put some music in during the quiet parts of the video. It comes from one of the products we invented, Musical Waters. Water drips from a tube onto keys positioned above a pool, which plays various musical instruments depending on the program you choose. Basically, the random dripping water makes the music. This was sold in The National Geographic Store in the early 2000’s.–Cyndi
(A big Yay for full-duplex headsets in general,
An equally big BOO for Sena’s quality and execution.)
They call these Sena headsets “Marriage Savers” and I think that’s an apt description.
Trying to be heard from the helm at the bow or the other way around requires a raised voice. No matter how much kindness we try to infuse in our speech, when loud, it usually comes across as angry. And hand signals don’t work for us, and it’s not because we’re slow, it’s just that they can’t work. She’s looking forward and concentrating on the anchor chain. I want to let her know that she needs to stop letting chain out at 150′ instead of the 180′ I’d originally said. She doesn’t have eyes in the back of her head! (That is, unless I try to sneak something by her!) How’s she supposed to see my hand signal? And I have to scream to be heard above noise of the windlass and chain.
Enter Bluetooth 5 headsets. These are full duplex and that’s key. You can both talk and be heard at the same time. (Talking at the same time is something, after almost 30 years of marriage, we’re very practiced at.) You don’t have to push a talk button. That’s important as with the other “walkie-talkie” solutions we’ve tried, we’d both push the talk button at the same time and then get mad that the other person didn’t respond.
These expensive headsets are the solution to all these issues and I don’t know how we’ve done without them. But their execution – quality and functionality – leaves something to be desired. For the most part, they work fine, until they don’t. We’ve only had them about three months and in that time, they have failed several times – always at the most inopportune time, like coming in through a shallow and narrow entrance just the other day. And when they fail, it’s really critical. Cyndi, on the bow, could have been saying “stop, there’s a rock right ahead” and I wouldn’t have known. She couldn’t know that I wasn’t receiving her urgent warning. Crash! It didn’t happen, but it could have.
The problem is that the firmware is buggy. Sometimes, they won’t turn on. Sometimes, they just turn off for no reason. One speaker on mine goes out randomly. Also, the plastic seems rather flimsy. I’m not impressed with the quality, especially at $179 each (from Amazon – and you need two!).
I wish I had a better solution. I think I will give these a try when we get to NZ this cyclone season.
They are from AliExpress – the Chinese version of Amazon. They are only about $40 each. Since they are meant to be installed in a motorcycle helmet, I’ll need to find some way to head-mount them. Maybe I can hack them on to an inexpensive set of headphones for that.
I’ve bought from AliExpress before and I was very impressed. At first, I was put off by the long delivery times quoted but a friend who’d used them a lot said that this was just to protect themselves and that everything he’d ordered had come in about a week. My previous order arrived in NZ in five days. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy from them again.
You can search the AliExpress, Amazon (they actually have a lot of them) or the internet for “Bluetooth intercom,” Bluetooth motorcycle intercom” or similar. I think it’s important that they are Bluetooth 5 and that they are full-duplex. Waterproof is nice too.
By the way, we have found other uses for our Sena headsets. They are amazing for those trips up the mast.
(It sounds from this like we have a terrible relationship, but that’s absolutely not the case. Being married to Cyndi has been a thirty year long magical, amazing experience! It’s only when separated by 38 feet of boat that things get dicey.)
It’s been a long while since I’ve written a blog post. The reason: it’s been an intensive cruising season in Fiji, and between the research, the cruising, and writing in my journal I haven’t had time to work on my blog entries. Things should slow down soon, but meanwhile, here’s a quick, real-time update from Fiji (Sept. 2018).
Our intent this season was to make this a “Farewell Fiji” cruise. The years are passing and it’s time to think about heading further west. Over the past few seasons we’ve pretty much covered Fiji, but there were a few things we’d missed along the way. I wanted to go back and see those places; so I mapped out a plan which would take us from one end of Fiji to the other. So far it’s been going very well–in fact it’s turned out to be a surprisingly wonderful season.
The biggest suprise has been the sheer beauty of the places we’ve visited. This season has brought us some of the most stunning scenery we’ve seen in Fiji, which is saying a lot because this is a beautiful country in general. This season has also been a reminder of how warm and friendly the Fijian people are. We’ve been visiting other countries the past few seasons and the newness and beauty of those places had overshadowed our memories of Fiji. Now that we’re back, we see that Fiji can hold its own in comparison with any other place we’ve been, and we have more appreciation for it than ever. (Below are a few photos I feel represent this season so far–you can click to enlarge and scroll through them.)
Meanwhile, we’re glad Fiji seems to be thriving. They had a devastating cyclone in 2016 (Cyclone Winston), but the vegetation seems as lush as ever, reefs are recovering and business appears to be good.
There’s an especially interesting development with the arrival of the Grace Road Kitchen group. Their Christian church in Korea believes that Fiji is the center of the world and all that will be left after the end of things. So, they have come here on a mission to make Fiji a true paradise on earth in preparation for this future.
We wouldn’t have thought Fiji needed much help in the paradise department, but between the rice (and produce) farming, their good works including sharing Asian agricultural techniques with Fijian farmers, and their outstanding eateries (located in Fiji’s cities), Grace Road Kitchen has added an extra-special element to Fiji. We would advise anyone traveling here to treat themselves to a meal at a Grace Road Kitchen and breakfast or dessert at a Snowy House, two of the restaurants they own.
So far this season we’ve visited Vanua Levu, Taveuni, Matangi, Suva, Kadavu, and Beqa and have thoroughly enjoyed them all. Currently we’re in a place called Pacific Harbour and have been surpirsed to fall in love with this place, too. This season has had many surprises, but the biggest one just happened. We’ve always said we’ll never do a shark dive of any kind. So what happened? We did the biggest, baddest shark dive of them all: the shark feeding in Beqa which has some of the most dangerous sharks in the world. And . . . we loved it. Another wonder in a season of wonders. Here’s a link to our post that includes a video of the dive.
Naturally we’ve been asking ourselves: “Why the heck are we saying good-bye to Fiji?” Well, never say never with us, but we’ll probably stick with that plan or we won’t be able to pull ourselves away from this part of the world. Still, traveling through Fiji has been so special this season. Fiji is always beautiful; this season it has been paradise.–Cyndi
