Finally! The trip our dear friend, Kim Rogers, had labored to put together was actually happening. It had to be one of the most amazing feats of cat-juggling yet achieved. Fifty-one people, many who’d never met each other, all with the common thread of diving with Kim via Dive GalaxSea Cozumel over the last several years, herded together onto Fiji Airways, a shuttle bus and then three boats with the ultimate destination of Beqa Lagoon Resort.
Having learned from our last trip to Fiji, using Seat Guru, I managed to book us bulkhead seats to ensure we got some legroom. Sure, first class would have been awesome. Really awesome. But this made sitting in Steerage manageable and my crappy knee thanked me for the extra space.
After landing, we started to meet some of our future resort-mates as we gathered to board the shuttle bus headed south. The hot tip was to hit Duty Free and grab some sauce before leaving the airport because umbrella drinks at the resort can add up quick. Naturally we snagged a few nice bottles of Fijian rum.
Fifty divers-worth of dive gear makes for a lot of luggage. So much so, that they had to bring a bob-tail truck to load what wouldn’t fit on the bus, which was pretty much most of it. We watched with concern as the loaders strung an elaborate web of straps across the back of the truck to keep the contents in. Nearby spiders were heard laughing at the total lack of symmetry, while the rest of us stood by, harboring visions of our gear bags bouncing down the road after the first encounter with a sizable pothole.
Three hours later, with a pitstop in between, we arrived at the dock and loaded onto the boats for the 20-minute ride across the lagoon to Beqa Island. We waded ashore on a sandy beach at the edge of the jungle, with a huge crowd of smiling resort staffers waving and singing a traditional Fijian welcome song. It was pretty damn cool.
Welcome to Paradise!
Beqa (pronounced M’beng-ga) is a small, mountainous jungle island comprised of 9 separate villages, located off the southern coast of Viti Levu – the Big Island. No cars, no bikes, no coconut radios (that we saw); just boats and feet to get from one place to the other. Jungle covers the entire island with the exception of the villages and the resort. The resort is spread across beautiful open grounds of grassy lawns dotted with flowering trees and shrubs everywhere. All of the rooms are basically a bunch of duplexes called bures. Our bure had a nice private back yard made up of a big deck, plunge pool, and an undulating grassy yard that ended with a beautiful view across several miles of lagoon to the main island. Coconut palms swaying in the breeze, lush plant life all around, and lots of beautiful birds completed the experience. Aside from the singing birds, we noticed one thing right away – and that’s how utterly peaceful it was. No roar of civilization in the background, just a breeze through the trees. Ahhhhhhhhh.
This! This is what I want! I want this!
I know, I know, What about the diving? Well let’s start with the shark dive. It is the reason resorts all over Viti Levu offer day trips to Beqa as one of their excursion packages. Later in the week it was finally our day with the sharks. With a dozen other people, we descended to about 70 feet and kneeled behind a man-made coral block wall about 30″ high. Several feet behind was a large coral wall that rose to about 20 feet from the surface. It created an amphitheater of sorts and ensured no sharks could sneak up behind us. Even so, we had 4 handlers in back of us and 4 in front of the wall, all carrying long aluminum poles that looked like shepherd’s crooks. Two more divers, outfitted with chainmail sleeves and gauntlets handled the feeding. About 10 feet in front of the wall was a huge stainless steel box anchored to the sea floor which held the food and kept it safe from the sharks. They lowered down the food for the two dives in a large roll-off garbage can and filled the steel box. Now it was feeding time!
We saw four species of sharks swimming about; Tigers, Bulls, Lemons, and Tawny nurse sharks. The Tigers were big. We saw about 6 total, the smallest around 8 feet with the biggest being two very pregnant females at about 12 feet each. Just beautiful. In the background, 6-8 big Bull sharks swam around clearly in deference to the Tigers. And swimming all about were golden hued Lemon and nurse sharks. Even a huge black Grouper was hanging around along with schools of hundreds of various reef fish, hoping to get tiny morsels that might fall by the wayside. It was an adrenaline-filled experience, no doubt. Despite no cages, we felt safe enough thanks to our ever-vigilant handlers making sure sharks would not veer into our group, using the poles to guide the sharks away from us. Shelli and I had a couple of Tigers swim by on the other side of the wall, with pectoral fins no more than 6 inches from us. A couple other occasions I got a head-on view as a Tiger swam directly toward me, veering off only a couple of feet away. Wow!
Sounds a little crazy, but there is a method to the madness. The feeders were handing off huge tuna heads to the Tigers, basically shoving the food in their mouths as they rested their other hand on the shark’s nose. We learned a few things about what we saw: They shove the food into the shark’s mouth, safe from bites with the chainmail protection, to ensure the shark had it solid. A dropped fish head could result in more than one shark trying to retrieve it, which would add some dangerous chaos around the feeder’s unprotected torso and legs. The feeder always puts a hand on the feeding shark’s nose to give the shark a clue that they were right there and help guide them away. As you may have seen, when a shark bites, its nictitating membrane covers its eyes for protection and so it is flying blind for a few seconds. Lastly, a newly fed shark would often head to the wall we were kneeling behind because this was the one place they could go where nobody was going to steal it, and then would soar a few feet over our heads to finish their meal.
Got sharks? Yeah, we got some sharks.
After about 30 minutes we got the signal that the feeding was over and we should rise to the surface, keeping close to the wall that was behind us. We would then finish our safety stops and re-board our boats. On the way up we saw some of the smaller Tigers cruising away from us. A silver-tip reef shark also came by, making that 5 species for the day. We had some snacks during our surface interval and then got back in the water to do it all over again.
It was one of the most amazing diving experiences we’ve had*. Twice. When it all was over, I told Shelli, that was a shark encounter I never ever want to have by accident. *In the top 5, for sure.
What about the rest of the diving? This is where it gets a little tough to talk about. As beautiful as the island was on top, the lagoon itself was pretty ravaged. Damaged coral and over-fishing have taken their toll. Most of the dive sites were on coral bommies with the bulk of the life on the top 40 feet. It was pretty spectacular up there, as you’ll see in the videos. Around the bases and off into the surrounding seafloor, it looked gray and broken. Unlike the Bligh Waters we dove off the north side of the big island on our first Fiji trip, life was low density and lacking the schools of bigger fish and diversity. A lot of us were disappointed with that aspect of the diving but when you come this far, you make the best of it. Thanks to our dive guide, Nix, I can honestly say I saw something new on every dive. There were plenty of fascinating creatures to find if you took your time cruising around each dive site.
The Diving.
Shelli and I were fortunate to be on the smaller boat with Kim and her friend Justin so that made entries and exits pretty easy. The other boats numbered about 12 to 14 divers per, which is by no means bad, but boy did we hear grumbling from some folks. You’d have thought they were packed on one of those miserable 50-diver cattle boats in Cozumel or Hawaii. I think by day four, “How do we get on the smaller boat?” was getting to be a really old tune. In my head, I came up with a lot of clever retorts, but there was enough drama between Petey No-Soup and Bipolar Babette, I didn’t need to add more. Whaaaat? I know. Man, am I getting old.
I, for one, welcome our new cephalopod overlords.
When we weren’t diving, we took our time to enjoy the relaxing atmosphere of the island. We spent lots of post dive time on our back deck, gazing at the view, having Fijian rum and Cokes made with cane sugar, and just unwinding like we haven’t for a long, long time. On my to-do list one afternoon I had: 1) Wander across the yard and look at that interesting flower. 2) Pick up that recently fallen coconut. I was exhausted.
If you happened to stop by and we weren’t chilling in our backyard, we could be found in the great hall having food or drinks with our group. In fact, ours was the only group at the resort. We had taken every room. The food was excellent and we had a great variety of choices. We were told that if you don’t eat a lot, you can order a half portion. Some people did, but it always came out a full portion anyway. “Did you order a half portion?” became a running joke. We were worried about the waste, but later found out anything that was not eaten made its way to the pigs. Same fate befell a few disrespectful guests, but we were asked to not discuss it… and quietly divide their belongings amongst ourselves. Pro tip: Don’t be a hangry douchebag. Ever.
Allow me to share my feelings about drama with you.
Joking aside, and I can never stop saying it: Fijians are warm and friendly people and we were honored to be their guests. With hardly any exceptions, we felt genuinely welcome. Even on the shuttle bus ride to and from the resort, we passed villages where people would look up from what they were doing and wave. I found myself looking forward to it at each enclave, being ready to wave back. It’s actually a little infectious. I know it’s not all perfect but, thus far in my limited travels, I have yet to find a culture that is more kind and caring than what I found in Fiji. Our hosts at the resort lived up to that every day.
One day we took a walking excursion to the village school to drop off the small mountain of school supplies everyone brought in their luggage and, in return, the students put on a small performance for us; mostly singing, dancing, and of course a human sacrifice. We were hoping it would be the school principal. After all, he did greet our group while carrying a rather large switch. He eventually ditched it, but he had already made his impression. The school hosts kids from 3 of the 9 villages. Those that aren’t within walking distance are boated back and forth in big, open motor boats, rain or shine.
After the performance we got a tour of the school. Holy crap! The school was this two-story concrete monolith with about 5 classrooms per floor. The rooms were beat to hell, with bare floors and furniture that dated from the 1950’s. The Soviets would have been jealous. They also would have called them luxury apartments. But I digress. It was amazingly destitute compared to what we’ve all experienced growing up. But on the walls were chalkboards and signs brimming with lessons. You could not believe the amazing things these kids were learning. I bet they get a better education than we did at their age. We all walked away suitably impressed.
This is how you fill 4 dive boats and take over an entire resort.
Because the diving lacked, we were glad to not to have chosen the optional two-week stay. On the other hand, we so enjoyed the time with our wonderful hosts, we weren’t anywhere near ready to leave.
Mixed feelings? Without a doubt.